Blackadder Redivivus, Part One Chapter 1, a blackadder fanfic

In which Blackadder's origins and person are explored. Figuratively, not literally.

I do not own Blackadder or any of the characters contained herein. Please notice that, as Richard Curtis and the others involved in Blackadder saw fit to mangle history, I have taken the liberty to do so in my own small way. Well, and later in not-so-small ways . . .

Non sum qualis eram.
"I am not such as I was."
—Edmund Blackadder

Absit iniuria verbis.
"No offense meant."
—Amy Darian Fuller

The Beginning—1461-1499

In the beginning I was quite stupid and rather ignorant. Born into royalty, I was ignored by my father, upstaged by my older brother, and coddled by my mother. Neither handsome nor intelligent, I seemed fated to spend my entire life in virginal obscurity. Forever Prince Edmund—nephew of King Richard III and when he died, son of King Richard IV. Not in that life, I assure you, was I meant to be King of England. In my ignorance, however, that is exactly what I wanted.

When I say I was ignored by my father I am being kind, for the truth is one must acknowledge something before one can ignore it. More times than I can count, my father simply forgot I existed. Someone, usually Lord Chiswick, would have to remind him he had another son besides Harry.

"I do?" he'd say, then lean closer to Chiswick. "What's his name?"

"Edmund, your Majesty," Chiswick would answer—even after Father became King Richard IV of England, he couldn't be bothered to remember who I was.

That is somewhat ironic, when one considers it was my misfortunate action immediately following what came to be known as the Battle of Bosworth ﬁeld on August 21, 1485, that put him on the throne. I suppose I could be excused because I was young and inexperienced in the art of war. The sight of so many dead on the battleﬁeld had frightened me to the very marrow of my bones and I had tied my horse, Black Satin, to an oak and gone off to relieve myself. When I returned I found a knight in full armor untying Black Satin. I never thought to see whether it might have been a friend who had need of my horse. I simply struck off his head. I killed my great-uncle, King Richard III.

That evening, Father came to the castle full of himself (as he always was) and full of the victory over the Tudor army and their leader, Henry of the same name, only to discover his father had been killed in battle. When he had stiﬂed Harry's over-dramatic public mourning (for Harry knew this meant he was now next in line for the throne after his father), he said to the court, "And we all know who did this dreadful deed,"—then looked me in the eye—"Don't we?"

At that moment I knew that he knew and he knew I knew he knew. I was prepared to die. Really, I was. I knew I'd done a despicable, damnable thing. And then Father answered his own question: "Henry Tudor!" Father made what was in his eyes the only wise choice. In promoting further opprobrium against Henry Tudor, he ensured more support for himself by the court, and he spared his younger son. Although the wisdom of that second point could be argued. It did seem many times thereafter he regretted his decision.

It is difﬁcult to say now whether my behavior brought on the treatment meted out to me, or whether the treatment I endured encouraged my behavior. Certainly my mother loved me, but the attention she paid, though affectionate, was absentminded at best.

And what can I say about brother Harry, everyone's favorite? He was all I was not. Aside from being the ﬁrst-born, he was tall, straight, well-muscled, and deﬁnitely had been blessed far more than I in the brains department. On top of all that, he was good, especially when around anyone who mattered. He learned early on how to curry favor, how to kiss up to men of inﬂuence. Whereas I—I was ever clumsy when presented to anyone of higher rank than I. I couldn't walk without walking into something or someone, nor could I speak without shaming myself or someone else. I was, I am afraid, a constant embarrassment to my father.

Early on I decided if no-one else would care for me (excluding my mother's vacuous affections), I would have to care for myself. By the time I was in my early 20's, I had become the most self-serving, self-involved member of our family. If no-one would pay attention to me and love me for who I was then, I reasoned (with what little I had between my ears at the time), they would pay attention to me and love me when I became King. How little I knew!

As I say, Harry was better than I at almost everything—riding, ﬁghting, and courting. I could write a far better love poem than he, but my face usually stopped any love that might have developed. A young woman pushed me off the ramparts of the castle one night when she found it was I and not Harry who had sent her the love letter that had ignited her passions. Yes, my luck was that bad.

It wasn't until I was 31 that I was ﬁnally married, and that by arrangement, as most marriages were in those days. My father at ﬁrst tried to marry me to the Spanish Infanta Isabella, daughter of Isabella of Castile and Fernando of Aragon, in order to strengthen our alliance with Spain.

Isabella was twenty-two in 1492, when we were betrothed. I think it might have been the shortest betrothal ever; Father said at dinner the evening he received news from a courier that King Fernando had not even taken time from his negotiations with some fellow named Colón to approve the marriage. I was too ignorant at the time to understand what that boded for me, but I soon found out. Blessed with two Hapsburg lips, this woman had the mouth of a carp and the suction of a very large leech. I was truly frightened of her. It was one thing to write love notes to beautiful girls and meet them outside on the parapets; it was another entirely to ﬁnd oneself betrothed to a man-eating walrus.

I did everything I could think of to get out of the marriage. And when Baldrick pointed out that if the Infanta were not a virgin the betrothal would be void, I jumped at the chance. I sent Baldrick to seduce her in my place. He survived the deed with only bruises and two black eyes, but even his heroic sacriﬁce was not enough to spare me.

We had to go forward with the wedding. Father, always planning war, urged us on as he moved his men around on the mock battleﬁeld. I had no choice. We said our I do's and the priest was just about to pronounce us man and wife when I was suddenly, miraculously, spared.

Just as politics and the need to gain an ally in Europe had caused the betrothal, so they saved me from having to marry the Infanta. Something about the Swiss, the French and Spain, if I remember correctly. In the time it took for Father to guess what had happened that had changed our fortunes so drastically, my circumstances were extremely—and happily—changed. Father asked if there were any princesses from Hungary in the castle. There was one, Princess Leia, who had been on Harry's list. Immediately we were wed. So I take it back; this was the shortest betrothal in the history of our family.

If it had been anyone other than Leia, that marriage probably would have fallen through as well. She was but ten when we were wed, and I was like a father to her. The marriage was successful only in that it provided an alliance between the Plantagenets of England and the ruling family of Hungary—the Kossuths? I'm not sure now.

In autumn of that same year, the Infanta married Alfonzo of Portugal while he was yet Crown Prince. He died the following year (one can only speculate, but I suspect he may have simply been devoured) and in the autumn of 1493, she was married to Manuel I of Portugal. I heard of these things in passing at court, and I did not know of her death in 1498 until long after the Plantagenet dynasty had ceased to exist.

Three years after I was wed, in autumn of 1495, the plague crossed the Channel from Europe once again. Father was ill and delusional for days. The rest of us were spared, but the peasants in the town below the castle were not so blessed. As often happened in the midst of plague, panic set in and people began looking for a scapegoat. They sent for a Witchsmeller.

I have been and done many things; I have never been involved in the occult. But all one had to do in those days to be called a witch was own a cat, or have a better garden than one's neighbor, or any number of small things that might give one's neighbor reason to no good reason at all and several bad ones, I was charged with being a witch. Baldrick and Lord Percy, in trying to defend me, ended up sharing my fate. We were to be burned alive, and it was evident nothing could be done to prevent it. Father appeared to be extremely satisﬁed with the results of my trial; Harry did not care so long as he was spared.

I don't think Leia, dear child, had any idea what was really going on. At least she said good-bye when Mother brought her to see me in jail the night before we were to be burned. Mother seemed to be indifferent to my plight. The only evidence to the contrary was the strange little doll she had given Leia to give me. I had to call out to Mother to get a fare-thee-well. It saddened me a great deal that at the end the one person who had ever really meant anything to me and who, so far as I knew, ever really cared about me, had turned and was walking away without a word.

She gave an absent-minded good-bye and then I was left with Percy and Baldrick. The Witchsmeller had even killed my horse, Black Satin. I had never been more alone until that night.

The following morning we were taken out and tied to stakes over bundles of sticks piled high. I held onto the doll. It was all that remained to me of Mother and Leia, and when they stripped us of our clothes and tied us to the stakes I refused to let go of it. The ﬁre was lit, and all too soon the heat caused me to drop the doll into the ﬂames below us. The next thing we knew, the Witchsmeller himself was burning just as his poor victims had done, the ﬁre beneath us was reduced to embers, and we were free.

Father recovered from the plague and for the next couple of years, the family remained somewhat subdued. I think the shock of what had almost happened affected us all. Even Father was considerably less hostile than he had been, and once or twice I caught him looking at me with a thoughtful expression on his face.

Small minds often paint others with their own brush, and at the time I thought he was wondering how he could rid himself of me for good. That is what I was wondering about him, after all. I began to plot how to get what I thought I really wanted out of life. I didn't want much—just the throne.

If I had been more intelligent I might have developed different goals. As it was I got myself and my only two friends in the world (if I had but recognized them as friends) into more trouble than we could possibly manage.

In the end, my scheming was the death of me.

I spent a great deal of time walking the ramparts of the castle mumbling to myself. Percy and Baldrick were still my faithful friends, but their attempts to brighten my days became excruciatingly irritating. It was while I was in this mood that the event which was to forever change my life ﬁnally caught up to me.

It was not long after Easter of 1497. My father had reigned as Richard IV for 13 years and we had known peace, if keeping the Tudors from storming the castle and usurping the throne could be called peace. On St. Juniper's Day it was the custom for the King to give gifts to his family. Father, to please Thomas Lord Hastings, gave him my duchy of Edinburgh. I know there was no real Duke of anything in Scotland at the time, but we liked to pretend. My honors and titles were reduced to one, Lord Warden of the Royal Privies. At the age of 36 I had been humiliated more than I could bear. Big brother Harry looked to be a shoe-in for next King of England, and I was the keeper of toilets. It really was too much!

Then and there I determined to seize the throne. I could not do it alone; I would need help, but not the help already available to me. I dismissed Lord Percy and the squire Baldrick from my service and set about ﬁnding the most wicked men in the kingdom. They would be my army, help me take the throne, and with the riches that would be at my disposal I would reward them handsomely. It wasn't easily done, but by December I had gotten six men to aid me in my quest. Following all the way on his absurdly fast donkey was the old man I had met and allowed to accompany me from just outside the gates of the castle. I established that I would go back to the castle and when the time was ripe, I would send the six a sign—the Black Seal—and they should come to the castle and we would take it together and I would ﬁnally get what I believed I should have gotten all along. I was full of self-satisfaction as I rode home.

That night while the old man and I were camped by the side of the road, I had the most unpleasant surprise. The old man was no old man but an old enemy, Phillip of Burgundy, who called himself the Hawk. (We had been deadly rivals since childhood, when he had styled himself the Thrush). And like everyone else around me, he too had grown tall and strong—well able, now more than ever, to bully me and leave me cowering in my boots.

He held grudges, believe me. I suppose he had good reason to. I was directly responsible for his exile to France in 1482. Fifteen years he'd been living among the French; surely that was more than enough to break even the strongest man. But here he was, back in England!

He knocked me senseless and when I awoke I was in a dungeon. My fate, according to Phillip, was to be slowly eaten to death by snails. While poetic, it was hardly realistic. I would go mad long before the snails ever began to nibble. If it weren't for Mad Gerald, who had been in that same prison cell for twenty years and who had chosen to go mad rather than be nibbled to death by snails, I never would have escaped. It was a full year before he revealed to me he had fashioned a key from his own teeth.

"You mustn't be rude about Mr. Rat, he's my friend. Well, there's him—" He pointed at the rat. "—and then there's Mr. Key."

I was stunned. "What?"

Mad Gerald pulled an object from his tunic. "Mr. Key. I made him from my own teeth. Good morning, Mr. Key."

It took no more than a second for me to pass from "I can hardly believe my fortune" to "I'm getting the arse out of here." I grabbed the key and was out and away from the prison in no time.

The trap was ﬁnally sprung, and the evil men I had enlisted came from the four corners of the kingdom to the castle. We were all together in a stock room getting ready to do our dastardly deed, when in amongst us sprang the Hawk. And this is where, I think, I made my fatal mistake. I told these wicked men how horrible the Hawk was. Surely if they knew how bad he was they would rather follow me because, as I thought at the time, I was good and he was not. I didn't stop to think that being evil, they would far rather follow a man more wicked than I. In less time than it takes to draw breath, my six deadly acquaintances had changed their allegiance and turned their weapons on me. The Hawk laughed like a maniac.

He had prepared a room for me, with the only throne I would take in that lifetime. It was of iron, and it was the most horrible thing I believe I have seen before or since. There was a set of shears on either side of my head that would cut off my ears. There were two very heavy and very sharp axes above each wrist that would chop off my hands. And there was a spike and a grindy thing that would spike my nethers and grind my codlings, as we called them in those days. I won't even tell you about the feathers.

I was strapped and chained into it . . . I woke to a shout and a warmth I had never known ﬁlled my heart. I had heard my father call me by my right name! I opened my eyes to ﬁnd my whole family gathered around me. My mother, my father, Harry, Leia (now a delightfully ripening sixteen years of age) and most of the Lords of the court were there.

"He lives!" my father bellowed. Everyone was cheering, though my mother looked particularly sad. I realize now that, though she had managed to save me and my friends Baldrick and Lord Percy from being burned to death, she couldn't keep me from dying from the horrible wounds I had been given.

"Father," I said. "You called me Edmund."

And Father in his usual way said "Oh. Sorry, Edgar. How are you?" Looking at this from such a distance of time, I would like to think perhaps at last he was more tenderly disposed toward me, but such was his habit of forgetting my name he couldn't help it.

"Not so well," I answered. Truth be told, I felt numb and ill, as though I were coming down with ﬂu. "Harry, what do you think my chances are?"

"Oh, good, good," lied Harry.

Mother then grasped at hope. "He'll live?"

"Oh, no," he said to her. Then to me, "Sorry, I thought you meant your chances of going to heaven."

Heaven? I had never thought about going to heaven; I had never considered the possibility that I would die. The only time I addressed God was when I wanted him to get me out of some scrape or other. Suddenly God was a lot closer and I saw myself falling into the same pit as all the other members of the Black Seal.

"My lords," Father said, holding a goblet. "I give you Edgar."

Well, if I was dying I wasn't going out without being really toasted. I tapped Father's leg with my arm and he bent down to hear me.

"Could you toast me as the Black Adder?" I asked. He straightened and lifted his goblet.

"The Black Dagger!"

Poor man, he could never get it right. Perhaps he was hard of hearing.

They all drank my honor with wine from the same vat Percy had poisoned. I'd like to think it was my being half-dead that dulled my mind, that I wasn't really so incredibly thick that I would taste wine that had just killed my family and the court. But as I have said, in the beginning I was quite stupid.

It was only a small sip.

I was King Edmund III of England for, oh, about thirty seconds.

And then I died.

This is the first chapter of my first fanfic posted here. Reviews are welcome! And thanks for reading. :-)

As I said, just background for those who might have forgotten or those who are not familiar with Blackadder's beginnings. From here, I do tend to deviate from script a considerable bit! Please review, and thank you again.