guess the situation
in
jasoomian gathol:
answers

answer to #10 The King Hides in a Sewer:

THE FIRST JAMES IS CORNERED AT PERTH, 1437

James, first of that name to be King of Scots, had made many enemies during his firm rule.  To quote historian Ranald Nicholson (Scotland: The Later Middle Ages (1974), P.324):
    ...Using a poker the king wrenched up the planking of the floor and let himself down to the sewer that ran beneath.  Its outlet had been sealed a few days previously since the king had lost so many tennis balls there.  He remained hidden in this noisome tunnel while the conspirators burst into the chamber above.  One of them wounded Queen Joan...  Disappointed in their quest the conspirators left the chamber only to return when one of them remembered the sewer.  By the light of a torch they caught sight of the king in his hiding place.  Though unarmed he fought manfully before he died by the strokes of the assassins...

answer to #9 The Hesitant Queen:

THE NINE-DAY-REIGN

In 1553 John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, the most powerful and most hated man in England, prevailed upon the Protestant boy king Edward the Sixth, who was dying of tuberculosis, to disinherit his Catholic sister Mary who was next in line to the throne.  The Duke got the King to make a will leaving the Crown instead to a cousin - who happened to be the Duke's daughter-in-law, Jane.
    Ostensibly the purpose of this political manoeuvre was to preserve the Protestant religion in England.  Actually the Duke's purpose was to keep himself in power and put a line of Dudleys on the throne of England.  For the measure disinherited not only the Catholic Princess Mary, but also her Protestant sister Princess Elizabeth.
    Jane - formerly Lady Jane Grey, now officially Queen Jane the First - reigned for nine days.  At first it was thought that she would last, for the power of the Duke seemed strong; but it melted away as people flocked to join Mary.
    After the defeat of the Duke and the triumphant accession of Mary, Jane was imprisoned in the Tower of London, judged guilty of treason, and sentenced to death.  Probably she would have been pardoned if it had not been for an event which occurred early in the following year: a rebellion, raised in her name, in which she had no share.  She was beheaded in February 1554, at the age of sixteen.

answer to #8 A Stunning Rapprochement:

DISTRUSTFUL RECONCILIATION BETWEEN QUEEN AND KINGMAKER

The queen was Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry the Sixth.  Her enemy-turned-friend was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known to history as the Kingmaker.
    Their dramatic reconciliation occurred in July 1470, and was followed by a successful expedition to England in which Warwick carried out his part of the agreement, driving the Yorkist King Edward the Fourth out of the country, and releasing the Lancastrian King Henry the Sixth from the Tower of London.
    However, Queen Margaret still could not bring herself to trust the earl, wondering what his ultimate intentions might be.  So she delayed following him with an army of her own to England; and this hesitation proved fatal when Edward made his comeback in 1471...     

answer to #7 A "summit" of the two British kings?

HENRY VIII IS STOOD UP BY HIS NEPHEW JAMES

The year: 1541; the month: September.  If the arrangement had gone through, it would have been a unique occasion.  But possibly James the Fifth, King of Scots, had doubts about his personal safety on English ground; might not his uncle seize the opportunity to kidnap him?  (In fact the following year Henry considered a proposal to do just that, though his council talked him out of trying it.)
    So Henry waited in vain, and was not in the best of tempers when he returned south, only to find that his wife Catherine Howard had been having an affair...  

answer to #6 The claim and the silence:

THE MISSED MOMENT OF THE HOUSE OF YORK

October 1460: the Duke of York finally tried to claim the throne, after years of the disastrous rule of his cousin Henry the Sixth.  If Duke Richard had succeeded in his claim, he and not his younger son would have become Richard the Third.  But the Duke, although his claim by descent was better than Henry's, suffered from two handicaps.  First, he and the other notables of the realm had sworn allegiance to Henry.  Second, he lacked the ruthlessness which was to be subsequently displayed in the reigns of his sons Edward the Fourth and Richard the Third...
    Two months later the Duke was killed in battle and shortly after that his eldest son demonstrated how to seize a throne: without qualms and without hesitation.

answer to #5 Ambassador's bluff:

GONDOMAR INTIMIDATES JAMES

The ambassador was Don Diego Sarmieno de Acuña, later Count of Gondomar, arriving in the spring of 1613 to represent Spain at the court of King James the First of England.
    Gondomar was formidably adept at steering the mind of the King into directions that suited Spain.  Most memorably, he successfully insisted upon the execution of Sir Walter Ralegh, who had kept trying to foment war with Spain.  At one point, so much under Gondomar's spell was James, that he went as far as to put before the Privy Council the idea that Ralegh should actually be surrendered to Spain.  The Council must have made their shock felt, at the idea that a King of England could surrender a subject to a foreign power for execution.  They must have made James see that this was simply not on.  Ralegh, therefore, was beheaded in his own country.
    Meanwhile playing continually upon James' desire to be known as a great peacemaker, Gondomar managed to keep England neutral during the start of the Thirty Years' War, dissuading the King from supporting the Protestants in Germany even though James' own son-in-law was the key ruler on the Protestant side.  In 1621, Gondomar talked James into dissolving the Parliament that had been eagerly offering to provide financial support for a war with Spain.
    England never did get into the Thirty Years' War, thanks to a great extent to Gondomar.
    History driven by personality...

answer to #4 Volte-face of the rebel heir:

THE LIONHEART TEASES THE MARSHAL

The rebellious heir was Richard, eldest surviving son of the old King Henry II.  
    The date: July 1189.  The ambush took place outside Le Mans.  The obscure knight who knocked Richard off his horse was William Marshal.
    Richard - now King Richard the First - summoned William, teased him a little with having attempted to kill him, then pardoned him and made him one of the richest and most powerful barons in England. 
    The new King - sobriquet the Lionheart - needed reliable men above all because he was planning to leave his kingdom for several years while he went on crusade, and he wanted it kept intact for when he returned.
    (William Marshal's remarkable rise to fame and fortune later culminated, when he was in his seventies, in being made Regent for the boy Henry III and saving the kingdom by winning the Battle of Lincoln in 1217 against an alliance of baronial rebels and French invaders.)

answer to #3 The throne passes to a commoner:

HAROLD GODWINSON SUCCEEDS THE CONFESSOR

The date was January 1066.  King Edward the Confessor had designated the most powerful man in the kingdom as his heir: Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, whose sister Edith was the King's wife.
    By blood alone the successor would have been Edgar the Atheling, the Confessor's nephew; but Edgar was too young to satisfy the need that was felt for a leader in this threatening time.
    For there were powers with designs on England.  Two threats, one from the north and one from the south.
    Norway's King, Harold Hardraada, had a claim based on an old arrangement made with the Confessor's Danish predecessor; a tenuous claim, but sufficient as an excuse to mount an invasion.  And the banished Tostig, treacherous brother of the new English King, was ready to help the invader.
    In the other direction, Duke William of Normandy claimed that the Confessor had promised to make him his heir.  The records suggest that this was probably true at one time; and though the old King had later changed his mind, the damage was done: he had given William an excuse to invade.  
    Both threats materialized that same autumn.  Harold defeated the northern one brilliantly, then without rest or pause marched south to deal with the Normans...     

answer to #2 The King killed by an exploding cannon:

A DEAD MAN WINS ROXBURGH CASTLE

3rd August, 1460:  Mary of Gueldres, wife of James the Second, King of Scots, arrives to join him at the siege of Roxburgh Castle, which James is determined to recover from the English.
    (Now seems a good time to try it - while the English are occupied with their dynastic war between the House of Lancaster and the House of York.)
    The cannon explodes and the twenty-nine-year-old James is killed; but such is the unity which he has achieved during the last years of his short reign, that the army he has assembled remains intact until his purpose is achieved.
    Thus is fulfilled the prophecy, that a dead man will win Roxburgh Castle.  

answer to #1 The Queen makes war on her husband:

ISABELLA'S REVENGE ON EDWARD THE SECOND

Matrimonial bliss eluded Edward and his French wife.  Isabella wanted revenge on the two favourites - the elder and the younger Hugh Despenser - whom Edward had raised to power and who treated her with contempt.  She hid her feelings at first, causing her enemies to underestimate her and to lower their guard.  Then, safely out of the country and with Prince Edward in her hands, she announced that "discarding my marriage garment, I shall assume the robes of widowhood and mourning until I am avenged".
    She achieved her wish.  She and her lover, Roger Mortimer, defeated and executed the Despensers, deposed the King and set up the boy Prince in his place as King Edward the Third in January, 1327.
    Later that year, the ex-king was murdered in the dungeon of Berkeley Castle.  His tomb soon became a place of pilgrimage, popular hatred having swiftly been transferred from his fallen ministers to the Queen's lover.  Isabella meanwhile had earned the epithet "the she-wolf of France".