guess who,
guess when and
guess the situation
in the game of jasoomian gathol thrones

[ links to  Colonising genre-space  and  Jasoomian Gathol ]

Place these in their right context if you can...

THE KING HIDES IN A SEWER

The King had been staying in a priory over the Christmas season.
    One night the treacherous chamberlain of the royal household laid planks over the defensive ditch around the priory, and eight armed conspirators entered, while the King was alone with the queen and her ladies.  
    Noise of clanking armour gave the King warning of approaching danger.  The locks of the doors had been rendered useless by the chamberlain, so the room could not be secured.  Therefore the King sought to escape by using a poker to wrench up the planking of the floor.
    Having done so, he let himself down to the sewer that ran beneath...

THE HESITANT QUEEN

The fifteen-year-old girl was bewildered when the noblemen knelt to kiss her hand.  She blushed scarlet when one of them called her "their sovereign lady".  Not knowing what was going on, she was led into the Chamber of State where her family - father, mother, husband, father-in-law - bowed and curtsied low.  She was then led further, into the area under the canopy reserved to royalty.
    Then the Duke, her father-in-law, announced the news: the King was dead.  That was the first shock; for the secret had been well-kept.  The second shock was to hear the Duke say what the King had done just before he died.
    She heard the shattering news that the King had disinherited his own immediate family and bequethed the Crown to  -  herself.
    The Duke was continuing, "This declaration hath been approved by all the Lords of the Council, most of the peers and all the judges of the land, and all this confirmed and ratified by letters patent under the Great Seal of England.  There is nothing wanting but Your Grace's grateful acceptance of the high estate which God Almighty, the sovereign and disposer of crowns and sceptres - never sufficiently to be thanked by you for so great a mercy - hath advanced you to..."
    Eventually the girl fainted; when she came to, she burst into tears.  She denied that she had any right to the crown.  The Duke responded angrily, "Your Grace doth wrong to yourself, and to your house!"  Her family pleaded with her, then stormed at her.  Silently, then, she asked God what she should do.
    There seemed to be no answer; no voice in her mind telling her what to do.
    She took this silence to mean that she was permitted to wear the crown.
    Between three and four o'clock on that afternoon of July 9th, she was being conveyed on the state barge down the river towards the royal apartments in the Tower.  She had been gien shoes with three-inch soles to increase her height so that the crowds could see the Queen whom they hardly knew...

>>  revealed here

A STUNNING RAPPROCHEMENT

The scene: Angers, capital of the province of Anjou, in northern France.
    The exiled queen of England sat in the castle, looking at a sight that should have amazed anyone who knew the wrongs which she and her family had suffered.  The man who had been her greatest enemy - the powerful earl who more than anyone else had been responsible for her exile and for the dethronement of her husband - had come to kneel before her and beg her forgiveness!  More than that, he was now proposing that she and he join forces, and that he would recompense her for the past by his future achievements in her cause!
    For now the earl was an exile too.  He needed her help, just as she needed his.
    He knelt before her for fifteen minutes before she could bring herself to reply.  Eventually, with the King of France acting as go-between, an agreement was reached: the earl would lead an army to restore the queen's husband to the throne of England; and the earl's daughter would wed the queen's son.

>>  revealed here

A "SUMMIT" OF THE TWO BRITISH KINGS?

The King of England had arranged with the King of Scots that they would meet at York for a discussion of how to ease the growing tension between their two realms.
    Fifteen hundred workers laboured for weeks, building and painting, to furbish the abbey hall of St Mary's at York till it was fit for an encounter between sovereigns.
    With thousands of troops and retainers, the King of England went north and waited at York for nine days, but the King of Scots never came.

>>  revealed here

THE CLAIM AND THE SILENCE

The duke rode to Westminster accompanied by five hundred armed men, trumpets blowing, banners with the royal arms of England held aloft, and a sword borne upright before him.  When he reached the palace of Westminster he 

    "...went straight through the great hall until he came to the chamber where the king, with the commons, was accustomed to hold his parliament.  There he strode up to the throne and put his hand on its cushion, just as though he were a man about to take possession of what was rightfully his.  He kept it there for a while the, withdrawing it, he turned to the people and, standing quietly under the canopy of state, waited expectantly for their applause."

Instead of which, there was a stony silence.  No sign of acclamation for his claim to the throne.
    Eventually, the archbishop of Canterbury approached him and asked him if he wished to see the king.
    The duke replied, "I know no one in the kingdom who ought not rather to wait on me."
    But he had hesitated, and the vital moment had passed...

>>  revealed here

AMBASSADOR'S BLUFF

Custom required that a foreign ship strike its colours whenever it entered a harbour in the Channel in which an English warship also happened to be floating.
    The new ambassador, however, immediately after his landing at Portsmouth, instructed his captain to refuse to lower his flag.
    The English captain informed him that he must either lower his flag or be blown out of the water.
    The ambassador asked for time: just enough time to write a letter to the King of England, saying what had happened and asking permission to return to his ship, so that he could go down with her if she were sunk by the guns of the English.
    The ambassador was guessing that the King of England would not risk war on the issue of prestige involved.  And the gamble paid off.  Permission was given to the ambassador, to travel up to London without the need for his ship to give the salute.
    The ambassador had won a special concession for the pride of his country.

>>  revealed here

VOLTE-FACE OF THE REBEL HEIR

The heir to the throne, who had rebelled against the King his father, was actually leading a party of pursuers in an attempt to capture his father, when one of the old King's loyal adherents laid an ambush for the pursuers and attacked the heir, knocking him off his horse.
    This gained the King a bit of time, and he reached one of his castles in safety; but he died a few days later.
    Thus the situation was suddenly transformed.  The rebel leader had now himself become King.  Suddenly he became totally in favour of loyalty to the throne.  Needing loyal supporters, he regarded those who had shared in his own rebellion as traitors; while he respected those who - unlike himself - had remained loyal to his father.
    A prominent example of this respect, was that the new King rewarded and promoted, instead of punishing, the knight who had unhorsed him.

>>  revealed here

THE THRONE PASSES TO A COMMONER

It was an extraordinary occasion, unique in English history.  The dying, childless King of England bequeathed his crown not to his nephew who was of royal blood, but to a man whose only relevant family connection lay in the fact that he was the King's brother-in-law.
    The arrangement was carried out.  The man without a single ancestor of the royal line became the new King.

>>  revealed here

THE KING KILLED BY AN EXPLODING CANNON

The common touch, in this case, was fatal.
    The King who was "fellow to every private soldier" strayed close to watch the cannon firing a salute to welcome the arrival of the Queen.  The idea had been, that her presence beside him would give further cheer to their troops, were were besieging the enemy stronghold.  But the celebrations went tragically wrong.  The cannon exploded accidentally, a flying fragment killing the King.

>>  revealed here

THE QUEEN MAKES WAR ON HER HUSBAND

The King of England allowed his wife to go to France on a diplomatic mission. 
    She completed it successfully under terms which required the attendance of the prince, their eldest son.  So the King allowed the prince, also, to travel to France: accompanied by the Bishop of Exeter, the boy crossed the Channel to join his mother.
    Once the Queen had the thirteen-year-old heir to the throne in her power she felt able to defy her husband.  The Bishop of Exeter fled her party in disguise and returned to England to warn the King that she had taken a lover and was plotting treason.
    The King tried to fortify the coast and the castles of southern England as a defence against invasion, but the unpopularity of his ministers hindered his efforts and caused mutiny in the fleet, preventing the interception of the Queen's supporters when they finally set sail.  
    The Queen landed in Suffolk with only a few hundred followers, but rapidly her forces gathered adherents.  The Bishop of Exeter was seized by the London mob and decapitated with a butcher's knife; his head was sent to the Queen who accepted the gift with thanks.  
    The King and his ministers meanwhile fled westwards...

>>  revealed here