Monarch or monster?

With all of the reports and movies surrounding the current vampire craze, I believe that Elizabeth Bathroy was simply caught up in a fantasy created by the imaginations of over active spiritual leaders and fears of men.

In the era that we are seeing this take place, it was common for nobles to “punish” servants in ways that are not heard of in today’s society. Taking a look back in history there are several accounts of nobles taking cruel and unusual methods of keeping their kingdoms in line. Elizabethan punishments included being hung, drawn and quartered. Where the offender would be hung until half dead and then quartered and then having their innards removed and thrown into a fire. Other forms were burning at the stake, beheading, severing of limbs or other body parts and even starvation in public.

Of course with any society that grows the punishments become less severe. For example  theft and murder are now “punished” by incarceration for a period determined by peers of the accused. Even if death be the penalty, this is done in a more humane way with drugs. A far cry from the stake or electric chair that proceeded this punishment.

In my eyes Elizabeth Bathroy was a victim of this “society’s view” of how the governing of the era was determined. If a monarch did not deal with the crimes of his or her subjects in a way that made other subjects fear the same outcome, civil unrest and chaos would be the obvious result.

Many people seem to forget that these same rulers are also responsible for providing for the subjects of their court. While not all monarchs took that responsibility to heart most did. You are probably familiar with the way kings and queens in history lived in lavish castles while the people of the court lived in shacks and lived day by day.  Ironically, the monarchs that did care for their subjects are not heard of often. You do not hear stories of the nobility that takes in a parent-less child or tends to the injuries of a sick or plagued subject. It is far easier to see these rulers as the monsters they are made to be for the duties they do not have a choice in.

Elizabeth Bathroy was a mental unstable woman made this way by the acceptability of the time period for excessive incest due to saving a bloodline. She was raised seeing the punishments of her family that were carried out on the subjects they governed. It was also rumored that Elizabeth was forced to watch the degradation and murders of her older sisters as a child.

As far as the outright murders of the young women in her care I find it hard to believe that for many years this would continue without someone standing up and making this known even if this was just a rumor. Yes one man did stand up but whom else was witness to these atrocities? Or were these punishments brought on by legitimate crimes committed by these subjects? The country was in one of the bloodiest and most gruesome wars of all time.

Personally, I do not believe these reports, stories, or whatever you wish to call them. I believe that Elizabeth Bathroy was simply doing the job she was expected to do. She did this job with a mental handicap and society watching and criticizing her every move. No woman was given any serious thought when managing her husbands affairs while in his absence. Sure your subjects believed in you. They had to! You were the last resort they had. But other nobles, especially men of the time, saw a woman in charge as an opportunity to take what they wanted from land to other more personal virtues. The woman of the realm had to deal with not only these attacks but also the well being of her subjects. Leaving one thef with no consequences for the crime would have spawned more chaos and uprising. The best way to deal with this was to act swiftly and make the punishment memorable to all as not to encourage the same behavior.

The facts of these punishments can be construed in the telling of time. Documents can be created or destroyed in the interests of a family or government. There is no way to really know if the Countess was bathing in blood or if she was  ahead of her time and bathing in bath salts or herbs to heal or calm the body due to the illness she suffered. In our time it is not uncommon for a person to buy some cream or other goo to apply to the skin to make them look younger or remove old age lines.

And when one thinks about this, mascara is made of the placenta of a child birth. Thousands of men and women use this daily and they are not called monsters for this.Follow this with the conflict of abortion and stem cell research and are we not in the same place as our ancestors?

Elizabeth Bathroy….lady, caretaker, monarch and victim.