Here's Clarissa's very own memory poem, see how much you can remember...
King Offa
Wore orante crowns but sat on a sofa
Instead of a throne, because he thought the idea of eating eggs and anachronistic tins of Heinz beans on a throne was ludicrous.
King Egbert controverted this, and thought that eggs had every right to be seen on the throne
And in 838 in Cornwall at Hingstone
He proved the worth of the Eg as king
pulverising the Vikings.
The House of Wessex was the first royal house to start recycling.
It was a fetish that started with bottles of ethanol.
And then they started reusing the name Aethel.
We had Aethelwulf, Aethalbald, Aethelbert and Aethelred.
Aethelwulf was quiet solipsistic and said
He didn’t like the idea of his sons nicking his name
So he came up with nicknames
for them, and Baldly, Berty and Readybreck was what they were called.
The inanity of naming everyone Aethel stopped with Alfred. Alfred
the smart Aleck
whos books were sold at Ol’ ye Waterstones
was the wisest king on the throne.
Edward the elder
Liked elderflowers and was as white as their pale
Petals. But tanorexia was everywhere in Britain during the 920’s and legend has it that it was king Aetheltan who first to develop the condition after being revolted by tales Edwards whiteness.
There is a cartoon called Ed, Edd, and Eddy
Serendipity has it that our next kings were called Ed, Edd and Edwee.
Edmound the Magnificent, Edred and Edwig.
Edred liked red heads
Whereas Edwig also known as Edwee liked to do a lot of wees,
Which in turn, was a turn off for the women who were told by a Bishop he was incontinent.
Caring on with the Ed and Aethel tradition we have Ed, Edd and Aethelred.
Edgar liked smoking cigars,
Edward became a martyr,
And Aethelred only came to the throne because of his nefarious mother.
The house of Denmark was made of Danish pastries and our first king is Sweyn Forkbeard.
Sweyn tried eating some of these gaudy sweets with a fork, he somehow managed to get them stuck to his beard.
Edmound II was called Ironside,
He came to be known as such because he was killed by an iron sword up his backside.
King Canute, cantered about on a Canoe not a
Horse. And then we have Harold Harefoot,
Who had a garishly hariy foot.
Harold,
some say stole, the throne from a king in Denmark.
This king came back on half a canoe
His name was Harthacanute and he took back the crown.
Edward the Confessor, confessed
That he was actually from the House of Wessex. And
Harold II had hairless feet and was described as having no socks on.
Sadly he was the last of the Wessex’s and the last Anglo Saxon.
Harold
liked to roll, blithely
in the haysacks.
And at the battle of Hastings,
he was killed by a man pretending to be a billy goat who threw a conker at him.
This man was none other than William the Conqueror.
Our next king is William II Rufus
Who made a right fuss
when he was murdered by the friend of our next king. Who was
Henry I, the first king to die of an addiction.
And like the rest of the kings the House of Normandy he had a different diction
From everyone in England. And
if dictionaries would have existed they would have been written in French.
Stephen,
Is the next king, but lost the throne to
the royal house of Angevin.
Henry II is one that starts, Angevin
The next king should have been in the film brave heart,
Or on Richard and Judy because he is none other than Richard the Lionheart.
Next we have John, the John Travolta of kings. It would have been nice if so far there had been a dancing queen, but sadly that would have been unheard
Of. Henry the third
Was a not a nerd
but founded prestigious and nerdy
oxford university.
And now it is a return to the Ed, Edd, and Eddie style of naming.
With Edward the first, Edward the second
And Edward the third.
And now that we are practically half way through this flamboyant history, we shall shop.
Because memory is like a city and Rome wasn’t built in a day.