A quiz question · medium
True or false: Edward II of England was killed in 1327 by a red-hot poker.
False — almost certainly. The red-hot-poker story first appears in the Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, written around 1355, about thirty years after Edward's death at Berkeley Castle. Contemporary sources from 1327 say only that he died of natural causes; sources from the 1330s say he was suffocated. The poker detail was a later elaboration intended to fit a theological judgment about his sexuality. Modern historians regard it as invention.
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The King Murdered in a Castle Basement (Maybe) Edward II of England was forced to abdicate, locked in a Gloucestershire castle, and died there in September 1327. Or did he escape and live another fourteen years?
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