On a Famous Swede and Looks in General.

In furtherance of my current interest in Sweden, Swedes and all things Swedish, I decided last night to find out a bit about King Gustavus Adolphus (or Adolph the Great as he is officially known, not to be confused with Adolph the Infamous about whom the less said the better.) Most of it boiled down to two inescapable facts:

 

1. He was a military genius.

2. He wasn’t the best looking bloke, and probably had difficulty getting even a Swedish woman to share a sauna with him.

What interested me most, however, was the fact that he was killed in battle in 1632. This is surprising to an Englishman because by 1632 English kings had long ceased to put their bodies on the line when there were nasty sharp things and destructive heavy things flying around. As far as I’m aware, the last English king to die in battle was Richard III in 1485. Take King Charles I, for example, a more-or-less contemporary of Gustavus. His method was to sit on a speedy horse on a hill with a good view of the playing field so he could hightail it back to Oxford (or even Scotland) if the day failed to go well. And so he did after the Battle of Naseby in 1645.

But maybe the matter of looks has to be taken into account here. Being not the best looking bloke on the block, Gustave probably didn’t think it mattered too much if he came to a sticky end with things sticking into him which shouldn’t have been there (although I was much saddened to learn that his horse also got injured in the affair, and he was probably very good looking as all horses are. I met one today which proves it.) Charles I, on the other hand, was rather more favoured in that regard and so probably thought that it mattered a very great deal.

But nemesis is full of little tricks, and so it proved with poor old Charles. Less than four years after escaping the mob at Naseby, his much favoured features (along with the rest of his head) were severed from the rest of him in the only judicial execution of an English king. And who should have been the main mover in this dastardly act? Why, none other than Oliver Cromwell Esq who was even uglier than Gustavus Adolphus. This is one of history’s great ironies, or so it seems to me.

Two connected notes:

1. Watching Crystelle Pereira on the TV this evening brought into sharp focus something I’ve known for a long time: It isn’t so much the physical features which make a face attractive, it’s how the incumbent uses it.

2. The local squirrels have taught me that:

• They are probably unique in the world of wild animals in having an instinctive understanding of right and wrong.
• They much prefer to do wrong than right, and are capable of running away at lightning speed when caught in the act.

Squirrels actually have a number of unsavoury and destructive characteristics, but everybody likes them anyway because they’re so good looking. Have I made my point yet?