I just lost my camper van in the same week as where I dropped my phone in the river and my shoulder inexplicably became totally useless and pain-ridden. Bad luck comes in threes, but you decide what comes out of it.

I am reminded of my podcasts on the Burgundians and the Habsburgs. Both of these families suffered a threefold defeat at their beginnings. One family perished and is almost unknown to most, the other went on to conquer the world. What makes the difference? What you learn and how you respond to your environment.

I personally don’t believe in bad luck, really, I don’t. To me it seems that life keeps doling out messages and lessons. We either pay attention and learn and evolve or we lose the game of life.

Let’s go back to the summer of 2019, the 9th of July, my birthday.

My ex, of whom I generally have little good to say after our six years together, had organised a surprise birthday party at the squat. Seeing as she generally did not like birthday parties and did not very often do nice things for me, it really did come as a surprise, or rather, shock. The squat we lived in was called Epanage. It used to be a towing service, which in French and Flemish is called a depanage. The D had long ago fallen off the building. It had a huge garden in which we had many vans and caravans set up. We had built a beautiful stage from scrap wood collected from all over, building sites where the left-over wood had no purpose. A lot of friends came by, more than I would have thought, including even my by now wife and her then boyfriend.

We had concerts and DJs. I even played a very memorable Kobi One electric live set, even though that name had yet to be born. The afternoon bled into the night and before I knew it, had turned into morning. I was well on my way to lovely pastures of my dreamscape but Clara wouldn’t let me sleep. She couldn’t sleep so why should I? She tried to keep me awake by poking and prodding in a supposed cheerful manner at my half sleeping body. Eventually she resigned to pinch me with all of her might, right in the balls. That kept me awake alright.

As I screamed out in pain she said I shouldn’t be such a pussy but now that we were up we could go walking the dogs, so off I stumbled. During the walk she started dredging up this thing that happened during the early hours where she started making out with one of the girls that lives with us and literally pulled me into it. I think to myself, this has drama written all over it, but it is my birthday after all, so I cave and I join in. The party is interrupted by one of the sleeping drunks not being very sleepy anymore upon discovering what is happening next to him. He tries to join in and gone is the moment.

By now, hours later, I am being assaulted over this very situation. I try to explain that being jealous is a bit strange, seeing as she initiated the whole thing. Her response: ‘Yeah, but only because I knew you would want it. And see, you joined in, didn’t you? I knew you thought she’s hot, I just knew it.’ There is no reasoning with madness, but it took me years to figure that out.

The next day my testicle had swollen to a good three or four times its regular size. I presumed, very wrongly apparently, this was a direct result of the pinch given by Clara. I continue life and wait for my ball to heal. It doesn’t.

A week or more later, I am talking about it to my parents, too ashamed to admit it was Clara who did it, I spin a story of sitting on it on the bicycle. They say, go to the doctor so, off I stumble. The doctor seems worried. He sees no signs of direct physical trauma and refers me to the hospital. Turns out I’ve got cancer. I can’t believe it at first. The ball was normal until she pinched it. Within one night it grew four times in size, bigger than a goose egg, and it’s cancer?

I go back to the squat and I want to tell people but they seem too busy. I take the dogs to the park and I cry, for about five minutes. Then I tell myself, you survived so much already, you got this. I took off my shoes and vowed to discharge electrically, literally ground myself with my bare feet in the dirt, more often again from now on. I got this.

The trip itself, losing my first testicle, then the chemotherapy, the most hardcore chemo doctors are allowed to give, the cancer was in my lymphomas, all of that will get its own episode but one thing I will say. I never gave up. I am too impatient. Sick? Forget it. No hair, pale as a ghost, Nosferatu looked like Adonis in comparison, I kept hosting jams in the squat, I kept rehearsing with my band, named Kobi One & the Full Sacks in honour of my fallen testi, I would not be defined or restrained by my body. I dictate the terms around here. People that got to know me then, thought that was just how I looked. When they eventually found out I was going through chemotherapy, they couldn’t believe it.

I have today a friend, one of our very best friends, and she is going through something similar as we speak. She too, is impatient. I couldn’t be more proud. She is stuck at home and she can’t wait to get better. Literally. She can’t. She just went to a concert, in a wheelchair, with my wife and son just yesterday. At home she is making music, reading or writing. She feels sick, she is in constant pain and she doubts herself and if she is anything like me she wants to curse this body of hers. But instead, she stays busy with what she loves and passion and love will eventually prevail. She will heal because she turns bad luck into positive change.

I had cancer three times. In two testicles. What are the chances? First time, we remove the testicle, we put agent orange on my garden to destroy the naughty weeds and everything else alongside it. I don’t know if I will ever be able to have children after so, I save some seed first. I get better, I change my life and find my wife. She gets pregnant, naturally, with us hardly even trying. Hooray, I am still fertile!

While my wife is still pregnant, the doctor does a routine check, explaining to me that he is considering never doing it again because his entire career, he has never seen someone have the second testi hit by cancer as well.

He finds cancer that same day. We save the ball by cutting the cancer away and I walk around with pain between my legs for months.

And then, we find cancer again.

I lose my last testicle.

I am now forever sterile and dependent on testosterone from a lab. I fought my entire life for independence and have dependency thrust upon me in this manner and what say I?

Bring it on baby. I have things to learn still and I am greatly impatient, just like Philip the Bold from my last Strange Origins. Moult me tarde.

Three battles, three times cancer, and it has left its marks. These marks have become the roadmap to my soul and as I walk the lines, my soul and I inch closer to one another.

Whatever has happened to you, and whatever will happen still, does not define you. You define you. All the s**t the world keeps throwing at you will only break you if you try to carry it around like luggage. Learn what you need and do what you love as much as you can. Or do something else all together, you choose.

You got this.

that grinding meat,

through peculiar trades,

to make ends meet

destroys our faith

and what we seek

may come too late

FEAR NOT!

there is always more meat for the grinder

but here is a noble reminder

that but a dot, a speck of cloud

we are no more than only one

And I for one am very proud!

That throughout these tears and blood stained times

comes an era of truth

and beauty mind

of hymns and hers

and brightly colored things

of swing and jazz

and everything

that makes the meat

but a fling

a briefly colored amourette

an amour passé that our lives once met

and throughout this ever clinking

ever dwindling past

sinks a truth that will godlike last

Throughout our souls

into our now

So may I remind you,

of your beauty somehow?

THE LAUS PERENNIS

Time, my friends, is not easily described. The more we know about it, the less we know of it. For the aboriginals, time as a concept did not even really exist. For them it lives as much in man’s collective imagination as does Winnie The Pooh. So how then did this beast finally succumb to the will of man? Did we frame time and with it, tame it as well? Or did time enslave us to its will? Let’s dive in to the sea of time and see which creatures therein lurk.

Let us start with Alexander. Now here is a man with a serious set of ye old cojones. It is recorded that this man set out, off into the desert, to convert some hardened desert hoodlums and robbers into christianity. ‘Hey crooks and robbers! Have you heard about Jesus?’ He actually came back out of the desert with a good three to four hundred followers. Thusly the Acoemetae were founded around 400AD. Alexander, bold as ever, then went on and took his newly found Christians back into his native, and not incredibly Christian, Constantinople, where they were in turn driven out. Shocking, I know. They then went on and got themselves settled into a real monastery at the Black Sea, in Gormon. This is where they got serious about praising the Lord and his dominion over this world. The practice was named eternal praise and you’re probably going to want to fact-check me later, I’m sure.

These monks sang their praise to God non-stop, 24/7. Of course one person could not sing indefinitely, so the monks were divided into six rotating choirs, each one relieving the other. In a way they literally embodied God’s time by singing praise throughout it continuously. Their bodies became God’s clockwork, each breath a second, each exhale a note to mark time passing. They continued their eternal praise from the fifth century on until somewhere in the 1960s. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a solid 1,445 years of singing without ever stopping. Ludicrous. As a potential direct result, one of the French Benedictine monasteries (no relation to eggs Benedic t) collapsed of fatigue. It seems time finally caught up with them.

GOD OWNS TIME

Friends, the hour is upon us. I mean that quite literally. The medieval day was divided into eight canonical hours for the same reason as with the eternal praise, to mark the times at which monks were required to pray. Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline. The monastery bell announced each one. The city organised itself around it. People did not own clocks. God owned time and the Church administered it through sound. This sound had a name long before it had a tower. The word bell comes from the Old English belle, likely from Proto-Germanic balljo, to roar, to bellow. The same root that gives you the bellowing of an animal, the belly that resonates, the ball of sound expanding outward. A bell does not ring. It roars. It seems we tried to domesticate the word the same way the Church tried domesticating the thing. Noon, as in midday, comes directly from None, for ninth hour. Originally this was around 15h in the afternoon, the ninth hour after sunrise, but for a plethora of potential reasons it drifted earlier and earlier and became our lunchtime.

As the Church tried to structure society through time and domesticate its flock thusly, the human spirit reared its beautiful, artistic head. The importance of punctual prayer in medieval Europe is not to be understated. Some of you might still express your faith through routine prayer till this very day and understand what I mean. If you were out and about toiling in the fields and you missed two strikes of the bell, or was it three? You see, people needed to know when to start counting. Didn’t pay attention and you might well tick off God. So something named a quatrion (for Latin quaternionem, four times) was installed. A set of four distinct different bells that would ring before the hour, so everybody got a heads-up. All in the name of giving structure to society, music accidentally was born.

THE CARILLON

Bells, by their very nature, are beautiful. When they ring, our souls resonate. The quatrion evolved into what we today call a carillon. The original quatrion were four stationary bells, hung high up in the tower, struck by a mechanical hammer, triggered by the same mechanism that moved the clock hands. The clock told time, the bells announced it, and the four pitches together formed the quatrion.

Functional yay or nay, the sound was mesmerizing. Bell makers started fooling around with pitches. More bells were added. Still mechanical, still clock-driven, still automatic. But now the mechanism had a barrel, a large rotating cylinder studded with pins, each pin triggering a specific bell at a specific moment. The same principle as a music box, scaled up to the size of a tower room. You programmed the melody by repositioning the pins. The church tower had become, without anyone quite deciding this, a programmable instrument.

Then came the keyboard. The clavier. A manual console of wooden levers, each one connected by a wire to the clapper of a specific bell. Now a man sat inside the tower and played. Not with his fingers, the levers were too stiff and heavy for that, but with his fists and feet, striking the keys with the padded side of his hand, operating the largest bells with foot pedals below. The physical effort was considerable. The carillonneur did not sit at his instrument so much as wrestle with it.

By 1480, somewhere in Flanders, possibly Aalst or Antwerp, the carillon had grown to somewhere between twenty and thirty bells, spanning two octaves, enough range to play actual music. Recognisable melodies. Things people knew. The same tower that told you when to pray was now playing you music from the skies and heavens, quite literally.

Mechelen made it official in 1557, appointing the first municipal carillonneur. A civic employee. A musician on the city payroll. The instrument kept growing. A full modern carillon has anywhere from forty-seven to seventy-seven bells, spanning four to six octaves, the largest bells weighing several tonnes, the smallest the size of a teacup. The biggest bell in the Ghent carillon weighs over six thousand kilograms. You can hear it from eight kilometres away on a still day.

And now we know, God owns time and through it, gifted us rock and roll as well.

PHILIP THE GOOD AND HIS LUGGAGE

Kobi One frequenters might be familiar with the Burgundians already. In my first episode of Chronicle of Crowns, I unravel the mystery of who the Burgundians were and I mention Philip the Bold, often called the Brave by yours truly, and his obsession with time. I did more research and have to set the record straight. It was his grandson, Philip the Good, who was obsessed with time. Now, seeing as they are all named either Philip or Charles, I ask humbly for your forgiveness.

Philip the Good. Duke of Burgundy from 1419 to 1467, apparently put on a pair of embroidered scarlet leather slippers, hung his portable clock on the wall and went to sleep in a woollen nightcap. If he went out, he brought his clock with him. That clock would be the Burgunderuhr, the Duke of Burgundy clock, made around 1430. It is the oldest surviving spring-driven clock in the world. It is shaped like a Gothic cathedral, made for Philip the Good, and features the Burgundian lion coat of arms on two surmounting spires and the symbol of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

He was both extremely religious and absolutely captivated by the future. He kept with him at all times, together with the clock, his Book of Hours, a lavishly illuminated manuscript structured around the eight canonical hours, the same hourly divisions of our sleepless ones. Philip the Good carried God’s time in a book in one hand and his own mechanical time on the wall in the other. He was hedging. A man smart enough to keep one foot in the old world while building the new one.

His obsession with the future resulted in him and me sharing a fascination, one for automata. The party of the century was hosted in 1454, in modern day France, Lille, by none other than Philip the Good and his son, Charles the Bold.

The Feast of the Pheasant was one of the most spectacular banquets in medieval history, with automata, mechanical sculptures driven by hydraulic and mechanical systems, providing entertainment between courses. Moving mechanical figures at a dinner table in 1454. This man had the world’s first clock and robots? Go on, fact-check me by now.

Time moved from the towers of God into the hands of men. The corset of time that the Church was dressing civilisation in changed hands, seemingly overnight.

THE CORSET OF TIME

The aboriginals did not believe in time. A society built around the eternal now seems something beautiful, somehow. Yet I sincerely do not know how it would look. Time dictates our society. We live in a world where we can predict the arrival of a bus within actual minutes. The sheer cooperation and human predictability needed to achieve that amount of timing and accuracy is absolutely astounding. But all of that cooperation and effort is dictated by time. So who dictates time, dictates society. He who tailors the corset of time, can tailor society to their will.

And I am left to wonder if there could really be such a thing as man dictating time, controlling it, or if I just summarized mankind’s hubris and folly or potentially mine own? We went from the monks singing their eternal praise to smartphone algorithms nudging our behaviour as we nudge theirs and did we gain any real control in the process?

A moment or two these thoughts plague me and soon as they showed, they were defeated by a grander thought altogether.

Whilst the Church and the dukes were seeking to control time and prayer, the builders out there, the creatives out there, were doing what mankind does best: fool around until something cool happens.

The Church installs bells to ring out God’s time, medieval engineers come up with the idea for the quatrions so everybody can actually follow. The artisans start building an instrument out of it. Man tries to tame time, reinvents music and loses control of both time and music in the process.

Time and time again, man tries to steer the world. And we usually succeed too. We just never end up where we thought we would.

THE ESCAPE

The bells of God ring out and strike a chord in the hearts of men. So too, the hearts of men and women in taverns, where the bells start finding the hurdy gurdy and the lute to accompany them. People’s emotional response to the sounds resonating within their souls finds a way to their legs and arms and we rejoice. Song and dance, rediscovered and reinvented once more. And so God’s voice escapes the compound and resounds distorted through medieval rock and roll. This was no longer God’s work. A new player enters the game. God’s music released becomes uncontrollable, ungovernable, chaos released, the Devil takes control.

To punish the harbingers of doom, an apt description of musicians, Hieronymus Bosch puts every musician in hell in his masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights, aka De Tuin der Lusten. I will refrain from entering his awesome hellscape during this article though one detail stands out, the butt music. Marks painted on a sinner’s backside in the hell panel, transcribed in 2014 and posted online as the 500-Year-Old Butt Song from Hell. It went viral. Scholars confirmed Bosch never intended the marks to be readable music. It is the appearance of notation, not actual notation. The internet decided it was real anyway.

Time made its sweet escape from the church into people’s pockets and with it, convinced music to escape into people’s hearts. The door through which they departed was left as an open invitation to the Devil himself.

Let’s find out what he has to say on the matter,

in the next Strange Origins.

See you there.

This subscribe button is so ticklish wooh.

I'm getting awfully good at these immaculate goodbyes

I wanna dance on that sunlight, sliding across Lisboa I wanna chance upon a daydream think myself into a coma Forget about that world so transparent to my eyes with the sun as the great painter removing my poems from the skies the night still leaves it's mark but it's life is now a lie

I'm getting awfully good at these immaculate goodbyes

He opens the shutters, the morning sun blinds him for some seconds. Then, terror sets in. On the wooden post in the centre of De Markt, the main square of Bruges, he sees his friend, his confidant, his sheriff, Pieter Lanchals.

The guilds of Bruges were having the sheriff tortured right there, on the square in front of this newfound prison, to send a bloody message. The message was clear. The guilds were reclaiming power from Habsburg control. And here he was, stuck in the Craenenburg House, watching idly by in helpless terror as his friend was bled dry in his name over the same post where they, together, did the very same to many others before.

Those of you that were there for part 1 of this series might have surmised who this man is, watching his friend being tortured in public, imprisoned in Bruges. His name, Maximilian of Habsburg. And he is not feeling too great at the moment. But he will have his day of revenge, the echoes of which still reverberate in Bruges, hundreds of years later.

Before we get that far however, we take a couple of steps back, back into the far-flung past of the Habsburg dynasty. We go, to Switzerland! Better dress appropriately, it will be cold up in the mountains.

ACT ONE — WHO WERE THE HABSBURGS?

It’s around 1025 AD, we are in the Swiss cantons at a height of 505 meters and through the foggy mist of time we close in on a keep. Looking down from the walls of this perfectly situated and grand tollhouse you could see the beautiful river Aar carving out its legacy in stone through these cantons for thousands of years already. And with it come merchants from high and low.

And here they were, Count Radbot of Klettgau and his brother-in-law Werner, Bishop of Strasbourg, the brothers of the Habichtsburg, ready to tax the ever living daylights out of all who passed.

The castle sat on the hill above the Aar River and the road that ran alongside it. Both the river and the road were major trade routes connecting the Alpine passes to the Rhine and onward to the North Sea markets; wool, grain, salt, silver, wine, all moving through this corridor constantly. Anyone who wanted to use the ford or the road paid.

The count’s men would be stationed at the crossing point below the castle. You couldn’t cross the river or pass through without going through the checkpoint. The castle above was both the administrative centre and the visible threat. You want to pass? You pay. And you get a good look at what’s coming for you if you don’t. Military intimidation itself wasn’t the only power wielded, however.

The bishop of Strasbourg, Radbot’s brother-in-law who co-founded the castle, gave the whole operation a religious legitimacy. Church involvement in toll collection was quite commonplace and very useful. You didn’t mess with God and if you did, man would be ready to defend God’s honour. Read: steal your money.

The rivers were particularly valuable because boats carried much larger loads than carts. A toll on river traffic at a controlled crossing point was passive income at scale. You built the castle once and the trade routes did the work for you indefinitely. Which is exactly what the Habsburgs did. Build once, collect forever. The same logic they later applied to marriage; acquire the asset and let it generate returns.

This worked well for quite some time, until the Swiss did what they would do to Charles The Bold of Burgundy 60 years later, push them out of the cantons. In fact, those that remember from the previous episode, our Charles the Bold’s defeat was threefold, three battles lost. Though less dramatic and much slower, the Habsburgs, here in their infancy as a dynasty, lose their grip on the cantons in a threefold defeat as well.

First two battles occurred, be they 71 years apart, Morgarten 1315 and Sempach 1386. These were the first two blows. The nail in the coffin for the version 1.0 of the Habsburg-Swiss edition, came in 1415 with the loss of Aargau. Duke Frederick IV, nicknamed the Duke of Empty Pockets because of the glaring hole therein, supported the wrong side during a Church council dispute. That was all it took. The perfect excuse for the perfect storm. The Swiss Confederacy, called upon by the Holy Roman Emperor, reclaimed Aargau and the Habichtsburg with it. The Habsburgs were driven towards Austria.

Before we dutifully follow them there, I find of note, the two different ways of writing the original name of this tollhouse, this keep on the Aar; the Habichtsburg or the oldest recorded version, Havichsberch.

Number one would be the keep of the hawk, after a hawk that once sat perched on the castle walls, which seems to be trying too hard. Number two then, the oldest version, would refer to the castle at the crossing, which seems to do all the work and none of the effort. Named after a tollhouse would be very fitting. Scholars and historians went with number one, I am neither.

ACT TWO — THE AUSTRIAN HABSBURGS

I mention in part 1 how there is a difference between old Rome and Julius Caesar and the Roman-Catholic empire of the middle ages. To understand where the Habsburgs came from, we have to understand this difference better.

Old Rome, the Roman Empire

This is the empire that Julius Caesar and Augustus built. At its height it controlled everything from Britain to Mesopotamia. It split into Western and Eastern halves in 285 AD. The Western Roman Empire collapsed in slow motion forever and ever and some people stipulate it just moved to Great Britain and afterwards America. Either way, the official date of death for Rome is pinpointed at 476 AD, when the last emperor was deposed by a Germanic chieftain. Also that is quite the statement seeing as the Eastern half, with Constantinople already being the capital of the empire, continued as the Byzantine Empire for a long time after. That Rome that is so heavily romanticised — pun intended — the legions, the senate, the emperors in togas, that was officially out the door.

I will make a podcast episode on both Julius Caesar and his business with the old Belgians, the Belgae, and how the collapse of the Western Roman Empire wasn’t a collapse but a slow dance between the old Romans and the Germanic tribes such as the Franks and the Burgundians. Both these stories deserve their telling in full.

The Holy Roman Empire, the confusing one

In 800 AD the Pope crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great, as Emperor of the Romans in an attempt to revive the idea of a unified Christian empire in the West. It had nothing to do with the original Rome geographically or institutionally. It was a Germanic-based collection of kingdoms, duchies and city states in central Europe held together loosely by the idea of Christian unity and the authority of the emperor. It was a power move.

Voltaire famously said it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor even an empire. Here, he finds a friend in me.

The Habsburgs moved to Austria and continued building their riches in the same way as before, build once, collect forever. They built, and paid for, monasteries all throughout Europe. Then they offered them protection in return for a percentage on whatever they made.

The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the Habsburgs got quite close and when he died, terminating a 30 year stretch, the Holy Roman Empire collapsed like an unlucky crème brûlée. After changing emperors like a merry-go-round, an emperor was decided upon. There existed in this Roman-Catholic order no hereditary passing of the crown. This is how Rudolf of Habsburg became the Holy Roman Emperor many years after Charlemagne, in 1273. He was but a minor Swiss count, his family previously driven out by the Swiss Confederacy on behalf of the — yes — Holy Roman Emperor, with no long standing ties or deep-seated roots in these regions. He seemed like a perfect candidate to become that very Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected by seven Prince-Electors, who hoped this fragile and weak looking man would be easily steered, easily controlled.

They were wrong.

The world mistook his physical frailty for him being easily manipulated, malleable. Rudolf was however very wealthy, shrewd and quite ruthless. Through diplomacy and marriage, he expanded his family’s holdings significantly. His daughters ventured out into every single powerful dynasty available. Within a single generation, the tentacles of the Habsburg Hydra had spread and attached itself to all of Austria and were worming their way through half of Europe. The marriage machine was put on extra time. The Prince-Electors knew by now what they had wrought and did what they had done before. Soon as Rudolf died, they opted out of Habsburg control and went with Adolf of Nassau.

Rudolf’s son Albrecht, the One-Eyed, had set his heart on the crown however and had orchestrated a battle in which he defeats and kills Adolf of Nassau in 1298 and steals back from him the crown he so desired. The Dutch royals of today are still far-flung family members of this now deceased Adolf of Nassau.

The now One-Eyed emperor Albrecht himself was brutally murdered by his own nephew, Johan, but a decade later, in 1308. Not happy with the way the emperor, his uncle, handled his inheritance, by not giving any of it to him directly, he and his accomplices awaited him at a bridge and cleaved his head right in twain. Revenge was swift and brutal. Albrecht’s children decapitated Johan’s entire family and court, they left not a man woman or child alive. This did not help the Habsburg desire for the crown however. It would take the dynasty 132 years to reclaim it for themselves. Do not however for a second think they sat idly by.

The grandson of mister one-eye, yet another Rudolf — yeah, not great when it comes to creativity, but very good at recycling, very avant-garde — would forge a document known as the Privilegium Maius. In this document many wondrous claims are made, such as the Habsburgs being actually descended from Julius Caesar himself, amongst others. All hogwash and poppycock to be sure. Oh by the way, poppycock isn’t nearly as posh as it sounds. It stems from Dutch pappe kak, which means diarrhoea. Rudolf the howevermanieth even invented a new title of Archduke. If he couldn’t be emperor he was still damn well going to be more duke than all the other dukes. Sadly enough for him, the documents were provably falsified and the world kind of told him to get arch-duked.

During this period the dynasty came very close to its end for no male heirs were forthcoming until Cymburgis of Mazovia, wife of Archduke Ernst of Austria, popped out a boy. I use the term popped rather loosely because Cymburgis is chronicled to be an insanely energetic woman known to crack nuts with her fingers whilst whistling and hammer nails into wood with her fists. Though Cymburgis was clearly first in line whilst God was handing out energy levels and strength, her son seemed to have missed the queue altogether. Frederick III, Cymburgis’ son, would be chosen as emperor in the year 1440. Enough time had passed and the Prince-Electors had forgotten that appearances might well lead you astray.

Frederick III had inherited none of his mother’s energy and all of her looks. He was a chubby, introverted boy with a big and very long nose and already plagued by the now infamous Habsburg jaw. He would pale easily at the prospect of any real physical exercise and preferred gardening. He appeared so sleepy he earned himself the nickname of Heiligen Römischen Reiches ErzSchlafmütze, The Holy Roman Archsleepyhead. They thought, now here is a malleable son of a gun. History does not repeat, man indeed does.

To make the irony all the more sweet, Frederick III was crowned by papal decree, by the big man himself, Pope Nicholas V. Crowned and cloaked with Charlemagne’s swag, it was now official. The Habsburgs now had the made-up title of Archduke, the actual title of Holy Roman Emperor — which was then again totally made up 600 years earlier, but I digress — and had officialised the entirely fabricated Privilegium Maius, which embedded the dynasty with a right to rule that would plague the world for centuries to come.

And this, my friends, is where we find our protagonist of part 1, Charles the Bold and his meet-up in Trier with none other than mister Archsleepyhead himself, Frederick III and his son, Maximilian of Austria. Here we are back at the meeting that leads directly to the demise of the Burgundian era. The fall of Burgundy was, for the Habsburgs, accompanied by the sound of victorious trumpets for they scored the marriage of the century because of it.

Mary of Burgundy marries Maximilian of Austria after the death of her father to keep the French talons from gripping into Burgundian flesh and it actually worked. The French were kept at bay and Ghent rejoices, flowers greet Maximilian when he first arrives in Ghent. Maximilian had never seen Mary before this day, nor had he ever set foot in the palace of Ghent, Hof ter Walle, before. If he hadn’t realised just yet the unimaginable wealth he had married into, the sight of this palace would have set him straight. It counted a good 300 rooms, 28 chimneys, a private zoo containing amongst others a bear and lions, and had within the palace grounds its very own lake, which in turn had its own island, reachable only by boat. Wealthy did not quite cut it.

In part 1 we touched upon the proxy marriage, so it would be fitting to include here a detail of the actual wedding ceremony.

Love was in the air it seems, when they met at the gates of Hof ter Walle. Though Max had that distinct Habsburg jaw, he was, unlike his father, blessed with his grandmother’s energy and strong physique. Mary only spoke French and Max only spoke German so their first conversation was probably not of note, but the total bungling of the wedding ceremony by Maximilian’s unpractised hands is. Mary had hidden in her corset a carnation and Max was supposed to liberate it from Mary’s hidden corners. He had been duly briefed by Mary’s handmaidens on the general whereabouts thereof but seemed unable to locate it at all. Luckily the Bishop of Trier jumped in to assist the bumbling Max. He asked of Mary to open her corset a bit more and out came the flower.

The relationship would be chronicled to be quite amorous and they seemed genuinely keen on each other but alas, Mary falls from a horse during the hunt, breaks her neck and dies. When the Flemish cities found out about the last-minute clause that she had added very shortly before her death, they went into an uproar. The cities had been persuaded to allow Mary and Max to exercise an equal amount of power, to rule together equally, and for their Ghent-born children to be next in line. At Mary’s death, they would normally elect a steward and regent for Ghent until Philip the Handsome came of age. But Mary had apparently signed over regency of Ghent to Max in the event of her death. So now Ghent, and with it all other major Flemish cities, were ruled over by an Austrian Habsburg who had no interest whatsoever in the welfare of the cities and their inhabitants but a great deal of interest in all the money they were generating. The fire was lit, the pressure cooker was almost exploding and then...

POP

ACT THREE — THE REBELLION

We are back in Bruges in the year 1488. Ghent had started yet another rebellion against the Habsburgs and Maximilian had assembled the Staten-Generaal (the prelude to the Belgian form of government) to discuss the Ghentian rebellion and what to do to stop it. The people of Bruges were also fed up with being lorded over by a foreigner. Who did this Austrian man think he was anyway, waving his chin around these parts? The people of Bruges hounded Maximilian into the Craenenburg House on De Markt of Bruges — a house you can visit to this day — and Max refused negotiations. This is how we get to the wooden post. Or almost.

First, it is important to state that Bruges, Ghent and Ypres were three of the biggest cities in all of Europe during this period. When, in the 14th century, Amsterdam counted but 3,000 inhabitants, Ghent stood tall at 65,000 inhabitants, only to be surpassed by Paris at 80,000. Ypres, a city remembered by few today, was as big as London in those days. And between the cities there was serious cooperation. The people of Bruges and Ghent had, in the 12th century, connected the seaport of Bruges all the way to the heart of the Ghentian grain harbour through a manmade canal that was 45 kilometres long, dug entirely by hand. That is 17 years of digging, 17 years of sweating together. The people of Bruges, and all the other major Flemish cities, sided with Ghent. All but Antwerp. This is of note for our story.

As Maximilian sat in the same house he and his now deceased wife had so often frequented and stayed at, he refused to cave to the cities’ and the guilds’ demands. He put his foot down and that was where it stayed. No negotiating with terrorists. For three long months he watched his friends and men being taken to the wooden post and tortured and eventually, after a lot of anguish and pain, killed. And now it was his dear friend Pieter Lanchals who was screaming out in pain. When his head was taken, all strength and will had left Maximilian and he finally caved to all the demands made by the cities.

During all of this, while Maximilian sat imprisoned, Ghent was in the throes of a siege. Maximilian’s father, Archduke sleepyhead, had rallied an army of mercenaries. When he called out for help, none of the Flemish cities came to his aid except for Antwerp. The Austrians and the Antwerpians laid siege to Ghent from what we today call Wondelgem. If you were to follow the route the old canal made from the old seaport of Bruges via Damme towards Ghent, you would cross Wondelgem just before arriving at the walls of the city, about 2 to 3 kilometres from the walls. This was an excellent place for a siege, thought Frederick III. Cut them off from the most important trade route they have, starve the city financially and threaten the city militarily. But the Austrian had not studied up on his etymology. The Ghentians are Flemish, which can trace its name back to mean the people of the flooded land. We know a thing or two about water.

The canal they were now blockading had been dug as a cooperative effort between Ghent and Bruges. To get from one place to the other, they had to dig through hills and such. The water level was far from even, so waterlocks were installed. Primitive, single-gated waterlocks. Built into the main walls of the city, 2 to 3 kilometres removed from where the Austrians and their mercenaries now sat, stood a massive wooden waterlock. Whilst being besieged, the Ghentians opened their lock and left it open, letting water gush out to an epic extent. All of a sudden the Austrians found themselves laying siege in a swamp. Cut off from fresh supplies, the water getting to what food they had, the moisture becoming a breeding ground for disease, and then the secret army of female spies destroyed from within.

Eighty women, paid the same wage as their male colleagues, infiltrated the Austrian mercenary camps, carried intelligence between the cities, sowed confusion and discord from inside the enemy lines. One of them, Josine Hellebout from Ypres, carried out eleven separate missions between June 1488 and October 1489 alone. The siege lasted but 40 days and was abandoned.

Max caved. The siege failed. The cities took the upper hand once again. But Pope Innocent VIII excommunicated the rebels, chose in favour of Max and repudiated all the concessions that had been wrested from him under duress. Everything Maximilian had promised and admitted under the pressure of captivity was now officially void.

And then, the curse.

After his release Maximilian’s soldiers plundered Bruges and tore down its fortified walls. In memory of Pieter Lanchals, Long Neck, the swan on his coat of arms, Maximilian decreed that the people of Bruges must keep 100 white swans on the canals of the city for all eternity. If the number dropped below 100, Bruges would fall to ruin and never recover. Approximately 250 swans roam the canals of Bruges to this day. The municipality takes the curse seriously and actively maintains the population.

But Maximilian’s revenge on Bruges went further than swans and soldiers. In 1488, infuriated by his conflicts with Bruges, Maximilian ordered all foreign merchants to move fifty miles east to Antwerp. Bruges was already suffering from the silting of the Zwin, the tidal channel that gave it access to the sea, whereas Antwerp’s deep river docks were easily accessible on the tide.

The Zwin, the Golden Inlet, was the channel that had made Bruges the richest city in northern Europe. A storm in 1134 had created it, opening a natural channel that stretched to Damme, which became the commercial outpost for Bruges. For three centuries it was the economic artery of the city and became nicknamed the warehouse of Europe. Large ships stopped at Damme and transferred their cargo to smaller boats that could reach Bruges through the locks. The 45 kilometre canal that the people of Bruges and Ghent had dug together by hand ran through this same system.

The Zwin had been silting up for decades. Money and maintenance could have slowed it, but Maximilian conducted a kind of economic warfare against the rebellious towns of Flanders. He ordered foreign merchants to leave Bruges in favour of Antwerp. His blockade of Sluis, the port town of Bruges, continued until October 1492. The city that had imprisoned him lost its merchants by imperial decree. The city that had stayed loyal, Antwerp, inherited them.

The sea today sits approximately 20 kilometres from Damme. The Zwin is a nature reserve for birds. The canal connecting Bruges and Ghent barely exists. The seaport that made Bruges the Venice of the North disappeared because one man had gotten his feelings hurt.

In 1480 Antwerp had 33,000 inhabitants. By 1526 it had almost doubled in numbers to a staggering 55,000. Within forty years of Maximilian’s decree, Antwerp had become the largest city in the world. The water giveth, and the water taketh. Control the waterways, control the world, classic Habsburg.

And as you might know from the first instalment of Strange Origins, this is by far not the end of the Habsburg tale. In fact, from my perspective, this is where it all really sets off. The Spanish have finally warded off the Moors and got unified. The king and queen of the two respective halves make a deal with the marriage machine devil and wed their daughter, in succession to the crown of Spain, to a Habsburg known as Philip the Handsome. And here the political dance of chairs becomes almost comical in nature and so over the top dramatic, almost as if scripted from a tragic Greek epic.

The marriage between Philip the Handsome and Juanita la Loca, Joanna the Mad, and all the madness that would ensue would become food for many a play, book or in this case podcast. But that podcast will be in a next edition of the Kobi One podcast, A Chronicle of Crowns, part 3.

Thank you and see you then.

SONG @ THE CURSE =>

PYREX - THE CURSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNI-EGQBfL4&list=RDHNI-EGQBfL4&start_radio=1

All other music either not copyrighted or my own;

https://open.spotify.com/album/5szDxctMvey8k3K6EBZTp1?si=nGxu5QKDSWmwlSWXF9hKqg

BUY ME A COFFEE BABY!!

buymeacoffee.com/kobecooman3

READ MORE @ https://substack.com/@kobione

When I have struck a match between the now and then,in that darkness that time casts upon our imagination,will you defeat the odds, or simply perish?Will I bridge the gap and extend my soul as to link two hearts together?Will time forever cease or will it, eventually, take its toll upon my in romance drenched heart?

Questions fill my lungs and a breath I deeply takeI exhale, and the moment comes to life.Stripped of its uncertainty it is as plain as it is holy. Wholly insignificant yet, all there really is.Stripped bare of our illusions there lies the eternal knowledge, forever lost in translation as our senses distort the now.

But where does that leave me?Me, amongst this chaotic shrapnel of the explosion we call lifeAm I lostor simply all of it?

And where does that leave you?Where I have always believed you to be?In my heart and mind?

As I dream the world, I so dream you in it. And as I stare into the abyss that is me I realize that here wait the stars.And so I realize that you are nothing but me myself,you are the embodiment of the discrepancy that exists between me and myself.

And as you are meI am you too

Therefore

I cannot wait to meet myself again

The man getting ready to fight in the snow, he will be dead shortly hereafter. His name is Charles, Duke of Burgundy, nicknamed the Bold. He was once one of the richest and most powerful men in all of Europe, and here, at the gates of Nancy, France, he will meet his end. But let’s first discover together where the story of the Burgundians starts, before we get to their end.

To get close to anything resembling an answer, we need to go back. Way back. Further back than Charles. Further back than the dukes of Burgundy or the French kings who invented them. We need to go back to an island in the Baltic Sea, and a tribe that no longer exists, and the name they left behind.

ACT 1 — WHO WERE THE BURGUNDIANS?

The island was called Burgundarholm. Today we call it Bornholm and it belongs to Denmark, located in the Baltic Sea. The tribe who lived there are today known as the Burgundians. They were East Germanic, not really Celtic, definitely not French, not anything the word Burgundy would later come to suggest, really. They were Baltic migrants who spent centuries moving around, being pushed by pressure from the east on one hand, and pulled by the collapsing edges of the Roman Empire on the other.

By the early 5th century they had settled along the Rhine in what is now western Germany. They had built themselves a proper kingdom, king and all! But it wasn’t to last.

In 437 the Huns destroyed the Burgundian kingdom on the Rhine. King Gundahar died. The kingdom collapsed. This cataclysmic event was so catastrophic it became legend, compressed into the Nibelungenlied, the great Germanic epic of betrayal, fire and the fall of kings.

The Burgundians that made it out alive marched into Roman Gaul. As the western Roman Empire stood slowly crumbling, the Roman and Germanic tribes mixed. The Burgundians were welcomed as tasty Germanic meat for the grinder, to help oppose the Huns and their own assorted tribes. Edged on by the promise of revenge on the Huns, the Burgundians ventured deeper and further. An uneasy silence, the type of silence that hits you just before a once in a lifetime storm, settled over the land. This silence too, wasn’t to last. Written in the stars, already brewing in the air for decades, the battle that would decide the fate of Europe for years to come finally erupted like a volcano, whose molten lava would devour the European continent wholesale and change it forever.

It’s 451 AD. We’re at the Catalaunian Plains, near Châlons in northeastern France.

Attila had just crossed the Rhine with an army and they were simply burning everything between him and the Atlantic. Cologne. Mainz. Strasbourg. Worms. Trier. City after city fell. The Roman general Flavius Aetius built an alliance of enemies to keep at bay the tidal wave of Huns; Romans, Visigoths, Alans, Franks, Burgundians, all of them standing together against the Huns.

This would be the Burgundians’ golden hour! Their moment of bloody revenge! The Burgundians had lost everything, including their own identity to the Huns. Gundahar had fallen! But now revenge would be theirs!

But alas, here comes the anti-climax. The battle was over before it began in earnest. Attila had been hit and fell to the floor. By the time he rose, his army was defeated and retreating. The Burgundians never even got a taste of Hun blood before Flavius Aetius had already let the fleeing Huns go. The Roman general was thinking two steps ahead. He most likely allowed the Huns to retreat so he could keep the threat of their return as a get-out-of-jail-free card. It would keep this Frankenstein’s monster of a team glued together for just a while longer. It worked. Attila died just two years later and his empire crumbled with him.

The Burgundians settled into a valley of their own. Their kingdom lasted until the Franks absorbed them in the 6th century. By the 8th century they had ceased to exist as a distinct people. They left nothing behind but a place name.

Bourgogne. Burgundy. France.

And here our record skips a beat. A 700 year beat.

ACT 2 — SO WHO THEN ARE THE DUKES OF BURGUNDY?

We arrive in France of 1363. The King of France rewards his firstborn with the duchy over the Flemish regions in return for his prowess in a battle of the French versus the English. He was but 14 years of age and stood strong to protect his father, the King, against the coming onslaught. Though they were eventually both wounded and taken hostage by the Black Prince, he had officially earned his nickname of Philippe le Hardi, which in English is, very wrongly me thinks, translated as the Bold. Our man from the introduction was nicknamed le Téméraire, which is rightly translated as the Bold, as soon we will discover. More fitting for his great-grandfather would surely be the Brave.

The French King, Jean II, installed his son as duke of these regions to maintain control over them whilst still giving a semblance of independence. There was no uniting nation state, kingdom or empire here, only separate city states with some mutual goals and some agreements. To keep them under French control via Philip without absorbing them completely, was to keep them out of reach of the English. Somewhat wrongly, his family line would be named after the Germanic islanders that once built a kingdom around these same regions, almost a millennium ago. Flanders became kingdom in all but name, named after a kingdom long ago destroyed by the Huns.

To install his son as Duke of Burgundy, his son was to be wed to Margaret of Male, daughter of Lodewijk van Male, Count of Flanders, in the year of our Lord 1369. It took Lodewijk’s mother the threat of cutting off her own breasts in front of her son to persuade the proud Count to yield his daughter to the French, but happen the wedding did.

And it was done in style, the type of style that would soon become the staple for the Burgundians; beer and wine flowing richly, food and games for all. Margaret is known to have planted a large rose garden at her château and having the petals sent to Flanders to be used to make rosewater. It is also noted that Philip himself bathed in rosewater just before his public appearance. We are left to wonder if they were indeed one and the same.

When Philip comes to stage, it’s all handshakes and smiles, sharing of Boon wine, his typical grape that he would have planted soon all over, and making friends. This was a political marriage after all. Margaret brought him Flanders, Artois, Brabant, the Free County of Burgundy. Riches and titles alike. I have much more to say about Philip the Brave and for instance his obsession with time, but for the sake of not accidentally stumbling askew from the main narrative, we leave Philip and Margaret to their wedding and we jump the generations as though ropeskipping.

The Burgundian state grew and it grew. With each succeeding generation, more territory was added. And with each generation, the gap between the Burgundians and their original family line, the French royals, grew larger. The original intended play was to install family, blood relatives, to rule over Flanders and thus keep the English out. Yet the Burgundians kept trying, and succeeding, mind, to eat away at the kingdoms in their periphery, including the French. All while more and more comradery between Flanders and England blossomed, in part because of the wool.

Philip the Bold died in 1404. His son John the Fearless succeeded him. John himself was assassinated on a bridge at Montereau in 1419, by the French.

He had actually been informed of plans to assassinate him but when the Dauphin (yes, literally Dolphin, the heir to the throne of France was called a Dolphin) of France invited him for a meeting, he went anyway.

He walked into the enclosure on the bridge, the doors closed behind him, and Tanneguy du Chastel drove an axe into his skull while he was kneeling before the Dauphin.

The Dauphin watched it happen.

That same Dauphin would grow up to be Charles VII of France, soon to be crowned King of France with Joan of Arc standing beside him.

The axe had fractured John’s skull and it was kept and used as a political tool. Through the hole in this skull, the English entered France. His death drove Burgundy into the English alliance and dictated the tunes to which the Hundred Years War would rage. We will return to the Hundred Years War in another piece, yet another meandering arm of this river of time trying to lead us astray.

John’s son Philip the Good consolidated the empire. Under him, Burgundy reached its greatest extent. He was followed by his son Charles.

Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 1467 to 1477. The last of the four dukes of Burgundy. His aspirations were exactly what the French King had been trying to prevent four generations earlier. Charles wanted to create a sovereign kingdom from down by the North Sea all the way up to the Alps. The French ended up creating their own worst enemy. On the other side there was also trouble afoot. The relationship with the English also started to sour. The English Chancellor insulted Charles, the way only the English can, tongue in cheek jabs woven into la politesse. In 1468 he described him as the mightiest prince in the world, be it without a crown. The jab landed. Charles was furious. He now wanted the crown more than ever.

Five years later, it seemed his dreams of the Burgundian kingdom would become reality. It’s 1473, and the Holy Roman Emperor (not old Rome, I know, confusing) Frederick III meets up with Charles in Trier to discuss the creation of this very kingdom as a stronghold between his empire and the French. Charles arrives in what he hoped would be style, but history remembers as quite over the top. He had brought with him a corps-de-garde of 250 soldiers, an army of 6000 men and 400 wagons filled to the brim with vases and tapestries and carpets and furniture. The robe he was wearing had been braided with 1400 big pearls and 23 great Persian rubies.

The Holy Roman Emperor and his son, Maximilian, had actually borrowed money for the trip and were presumably at the least somewhat jealous to witness this Duke arrive in more splendour than they could hope to amass. Yet here they now stood, having in hand the power to gift this man the kingdom he so dearly desired. The negotiations commenced.

And lasted.

And lasted some more.

For a month and a half.

Until one morning the sun rose over an encampment half abandoned. The Emperor felt the negotiations leading nowhere and packed his bags before dayrise. No excuse. No explanation. No crown. The beginning of the end for Burgundy. Charles was left boiling in a stew of his own rage and anger.

He would carve out his name in blood over these regions with his sword, crown or no crown. The world hadn’t seen the last of him. To arms!

Three wars he would fight. None of which he would win. That’s why they called him Charles the Bold, not Charles the Bright.

In Flemish we have a saying for his three wars: In Grandson verloor hij zijn goed, in Morat verloor hij zijn moed, en in Nancy verloor hij zijn bloed. At Grandson he lost his goods, at Morat he lost his courage, and at Nancy he lost his blood.

He ventured out to the Swiss cantons, thinking them to be the threat to eliminate first. He started the campaign at Grandson with 20,000 men. He had promised the first Swiss garrison their freedom and lives in return for their surrender. He had them all hanged or drowned in Lake Neuchâtel regardless. The execution lasted four hours. The bodies were still hanging from the trees when the Swiss relief army of 18,000 arrived. They found their countrymen hanging from the trees like gutted pigs. They went hunting for the Burgundians and when they found them, they kicked Charles’ Burgundian army clean off the field. Charles ran. They walked into the abandoned Burgundian camp and found the greatest treasure in Europe sitting unguarded in a tent; carpets belonging to Alexander the Great, the 55-carat Sancy diamond, the Three Brothers jewel, his silver bath, his ducal seal. Swiss farmers and militia men melted most of it down. They had no idea what it was worth. What wasn’t melted down, you can visit to this day in different museums throughout Switzerland.

Three months later at Morat, on the other side of the very same lake, he had rebuilt to somewhere between 12,000 and 25,000 men. An estimated 10,000 Burgundians died when the Swiss found them. The Swiss themselves had less than 600 casualties. The Confederates massacred Burgundians found hiding in ovens, in barns, in chestnut trees. Charles’ army was decimated. He would never again command an army that large.

At Nancy in January 1477 he managed to scrape together five thousand frozen, exhausted, demoralised, unpaid men and faced an enemy four times his size, many of them veterans of Grandson and Morat. All around him snow was raging, the wind whistling fear into the hearts of his men. The situation was grim.

He refused to retreat.

Here we find ourselves again in the blood covered snow, the smell of death thick and heavy in the air and Charles, unwavering.

It’s January 5, 1477. A Swiss halberdier swings at Charles’ head and splits his skull.

His body is found three days later. Naked and frozen in a ditch, stripped by looters, face eaten off by wolves. Eventually he was identified by his battle scars, his long fingernails, an ingrown toenail on his left foot and the absence of upper incisors lost in a hunting accident years before. It took a considerable amount of time however before his identity was confirmed and before news of his death managed to travel to his only daughter, the last of the family, Mary of Burgundy. This is important because four generations earlier, the French King gave his son the duchy of Burgundy, and now that there was no duke, Burgundy automatically reverted back to France, officially and legally, much to the dismay of the Flemish. Mary had to marry, and fast.

ACT 3 — MARY AND THE STRANGER

Charles left no male heir. His only child, Mary, was nineteen years of age. She inherited an empty treasury, a destroyed army, and a state already being invaded by France within weeks of her father’s death. The most sought-after unmarried woman in Europe, because whoever married her got what was left of Burgundy.

She had one week to negotiate with the Flemish cities before they would support her. They would take advantage of this disaster to reclaim their independence as city states, a powergrab then.

On February 11 1477 she signed the Great Privilege, dismantled her father’s centralising reforms, restored the cities’ autonomy, guaranteed the right of the Estates to approve taxation and declarations of war. The cities of Flanders had been waiting years for this moment and before the news of Charles’ death had even been verified, way before any dust could have settled, the cities plotted, and they pounced.

Now, she needed a husband with an army. It would keep at bay the French and it would restore some of her power within her regions.

Maximilian of Habsburg, son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, eighteen years old, was chosen. All scuffles between their fathers forgotten. He sends Mary the world’s first diamond engagement ring on record. Small oblong diamonds arranged in the shape of the letter M, for Mary, set on a plain gold band. He was so broke, in fact, that as he travelled through his native land, villagers pressed upon him gifts of gold and silver that enabled him to secure the diamonds. It is said that with this gift, the Archduke dealt a severe blow to the already troubled family finances. The ring still exists. It is currently housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Vienna. A trendsetter, our Max.

In Austria he is known still as the Last Knight. He was so much of a knight and mostly so very broke, that instead of marrying Mary himself, he sends some envoys.

On April 19, 1477, his envoys arrived in Ghent and two days later the proxy marriage took place. A real knight stood in for him and married Mary by the glove in Max’s name. That night a sword was placed betwixt them both to symbolise purity preserved. Four knights stood guard with bow, arrow and a lit candle to make sure the purity did not run off in the middle of the night.

When Maximilian finally arrived, the Ghentians covered the city streets in flowers for him. He was heralded as a hero. Triumphal arches everywhere. Tapestries hung from every balcony. One banner read: whatever you tell us to do, we will do it.

He rode in on a white horse, clad in white over silver and gold armour, eighteen years old, blond, speaking seven languages. One chronicler wrote he appeared like an angel descending from heaven. Their marriage reads like a fantasy romance novel set in the middle ages. She taught him to ice skate. They read romances together. They went hunting. They had children. Their firstborn you might know from my first edition of Strange Origins; Philip the Handsome.

Mary died in 1482, aged twenty-five, falling from a horse during the hunt. Maximilian, the Habsburg, the Austrian foreigner, became regent of Ghent. Mary, and Ghent through her, went through all of this to keep Ghent Ghentian and now it belonged to Maxiboy. The city that had welcomed him with flowers in 1477 began to turn. He imposed heavy taxes to fund wars against France. He brought in German administrators who plundered the countryside. He ignored the Great Privilege Mary had signed. The flowers had wilted.

Ghent revolted in 1487, at their head Jan van Coppenhole, a sock maker, and two men referred to as Rijm and Ondrede; Rhyme and Unreason. He led the lower class weavers’ guilds against the Habsburg administration. A crack and the city split along class lines. Ghent fell.

Bruges followed. January 31 1488. The guilds of Bruges imprisoned Maximilian. Hounded him into a house for three months all the while executing his men in front of him, one by one. How does Max escape this dire situation? How do the Habsburgs end up claiming Ghent? Find out in the next edition.

Thank you for reading.

Don’t miss a sunday edition! Come on, do the thing!

twists and turns

I long, I yearn

I long, I yearn

But learn I shall

And with a YELL!

abolish spells

from whence they came

They will rise again

with different names

always different

always the same

Yet I propose

the path is clear

through thorny bushes

we must pluck a rose

and with it, friend

lend fragrance to fear

I lay awake

counting the stars in my head

just drifting along

to the tides of time

who,

ever so gently,

envelope me

and caress me into a slumber

of timelessness

ssss

it goes

and me,

I stay

awake

in its

wake