Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I

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Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Kingkiller Chronicle' Not Moving Forward At Showtime, Being Shopped By Lionsgate TV". Deadline . Retrieved 23 October 2019. However, one of the more glaring issues from a historian’s perspective is the issue of sources, and just which sources are used to build a particular historical narrative. While I must plead that I was rather ignorant of the historical execution of Charles I before reading this work, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the narrative, which pits the heroic, brave regicides against a villainous, bloodthirsty monarchy, might be a bit too simplistic. Accordingly, I have since done a bit of research into these events, comparing Spencer’s notes and bibliography to contemporary scholarship. On August 18, 1648, with no relief from the siege in sight, the royalist garrison holding Colchester Castle surrendered and Oliver Cromwell’s army firmly ended the rule of Charles I of England. To send a clear message to the fallen monarch, the rebels executed four of the senior officers captured at the castle. Yet still, the king refused to accept he had lost the war. As France and other allies mobilized in support of Charles, a tribunal was hastily gathered and a death sentence was passed. On January 30, 1649, the King of England was executed. This is the account of the fifty-nine regicides, the men who signed Charles I’s death warrant. Recounting a little-known corner of British history, Charles Spencer explores what happened when the Restoration arrived. From George Downing, the chief plotter, to Richard Ingoldsby, who claimed he was forced to sign his name by his cousin Oliver Cromwell, and from those who returned to the monarchist cause and betrayed their fellow regicides to those that fled the country in an attempt to escape their punishment, Spencer examines the long-lasting, far-reaching consequences not only for those who signed the warrant, but also for those who were present at the trial and for England itself. A powerful tale of revenge from the dark heart of England’s past, and a unique contribution to seventeenth-century history, Killers of the King tells the incredible story of the men who dared to assassinate a monarch. Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I by Charles Spencer – eBook Details Kroll, Justin (2018-01-29). "Sam Raimi to Direct 'Kingkiller Chronicle' for Lionsgate and Lin-Manuel Miranda (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety . Retrieved 2018-01-31.

Killers of the King by Charles Spencer | Waterstones

At the start of the book, we are brought in media res, just after the events of the English Civil War and the immense bloodshed that it wrought upon the fields of England. Spencer paints a picture of Charles I as a king who had a grandiose view of his authoritative powers, and after the fighting against the armies of Parliament, he began to be viewed increasingly as a tyrant. The narrative begins with the captivity and trial of King Charles I, as he repeatedly shows his contempt for Parliament and the courts, asserting that they have no right to try a king. Despite all of his protestations and sincere belief in his own divinely appointed authority, many of Charles’s judges were former soldiers, still bitter over the bloody events of the English Civil War. In a brief account, Spencer speeds through the execution of King Charles I in January of 1649 in the second chapter, which is followed by a brief account of the 10-year Interregnum (the republic Commonwealth government in England during the rule of Cromwell), as well as eventual restoration of the monarchy under Charles I’s son, King Charles II in 1660. Spencer has a gift for set-pieces such as the killing of Isaac Dorislaus, a Dutch lawyer who had taken part in the king’s trial and helped to send a number of royalists to their deaths. Sent as a diplomat to the Hague by the new regime, he took rooms at an inn with only a few bodyguards attending him. At the same time, a rumour was circulating that he had been one of the two masked men seen on the scaffold with Charles: one had swung the axe and the other had shown the king’s head to the crowd. Hearing that Dorislaus was nearby, a royalist colonel assembled a gang, stormed the inn and butchered the lawyer as he cowered underneath the chimney. High-octane sequences like these are where this book is at his best. Elsewhere, the difficulty of following a group of 80 very different individuals to their various fates is evident. The stories – even if they are of bloody ends and narrow escapes – can become repetitive. Nearly three years earlier, Cromwell had been interred with stately pomp. During the English Civil War he had commanded the victorious armies of Parliament against King Charles I. He had engineered the king’s public trial for treason and then his execution in 1649, eventually ruling all of Britain as Lord Protector. But this revolution did not survive his death, and in 1660 the monarchy was restored by the king’s eldest son, Charles II. Oliver Cromwell, once lionized by John Milton himself as “our chief of men,” was now the hated ringleader of the regicides. Siegel, Tatiana; Kit, Borys. "Comic-Con: Fantasy Novel 'Name of the Wind' Sparks Heated Bidding War (Exclusive)". Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved 25 November 2015.

Reviews

McNally, Victoria (July 19, 2013). "Rothfuss Fans, Your Time Has Come: The Kingkiller Chronicle Optioned for TV Series". Geekosystem.

Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I

The Kingkiller Chronicle is intended to be a trilogy. The books are set in a fictional world referred to as the Four Corners in-universe; [3] the world's official name, Temerant, was revealed in 2014. [4] The series centers on a man named Kvothe, an infamous adventurer and musician telling his life story to a scribe. The book is told in a " story-within-a-story" format: a frame narrative relates the present day in which Kvothe runs an inn under an assumed name and is told in omniscient third person. The main plot, making up the majority of the books and concerning the actual details of Kvothe's life, is told in the first person. The series also contains metafictional stories within stories from varying perspectives that tie to the main plot in various ways.

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First of all, this book is written in a highly readable narrative style. At it’s best moments, it can be a gripping read. Spencer has a gift for bringing certain scenes to life in vivid detail, taking a complicated and complex period of religious and political strife and turning it into a highly engaging and readable account. Without getting too lost in the weeds, Spencer does a commendable job in describing the basic political and religious climate of the era, including the apocalyptic worldviews of the Fifth Monarchists, who were an extreme Puritan sect that believed Christ would return in the year 1666. Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Kingkiller Chronicles' Series Set At Showtime". Deadline . Retrieved 27 October 2017. The Doors of Stone is unreleased as of 2023, [15] a point of contention online. [16] Rothfuss has said that the book would "conclude Kvothe's story", closing off the current arc, [17] but that further stories in the world of Temerant would be forthcoming. [18] He also said that the book presented challenges different from The Wise Man's Fear 's. [19] In 2020, Rothfuss's publisher and editor Elizabeth Wollheim expressed frustration with the delay, stating she had not read "a word" of the book nine years on. [20]

Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I

The series is a secondary world fantasy; the setting is named Temerant. It has its own magic system, mixing alchemy, sympathetic magic, sygaldry (a form of runic magic combined with medieval engineering), and naming (a type of magic that allows the user to command the classical elements and objects), plus others. r/KingkillerChronicle - Pat on how much he cares about finishing Book 3: "If I didn't care about the book, you would have it by now". , retrieved 2021-07-31 The Narrow Road Between Desires, is a novella centered around the character of Bast and is slated to be published November 14, 2023. [25] The series is framed as the transcription of his three-day-long oral autobiography, where he "trouped, traveled, loved, lost, trusted and was betrayed". Present-day "interludes" concern his life as an innkeeper, with each present day depicted in a separate book. Spencer is particularly adept at describing settings and narrative events in a cinematic way. Whether relaying the covert assisination of Isaac Dorislaus, describing the gruesome death of Thomas Harrison at the first public execution, or taking us through the harrowing, narrow escapes of Goffe and Whalley, Spencer has a keen eye for detail and storytelling. Short, particularized scenes such as these are where this book truly shines. Spencer also includes a collection of full-colored images and portraits in the center of the volume, which helps to put faces to the many names of the regicides that arise throughout the work.The Lightning Tree, a novella, was published in Rogues (2014), edited by George R. R. Martin& Gardner Dozois. The Lightning Tree takes place in the frame setting of The Kingkiller Chronicle, and includes characters from the trilogy. In 2002, Rothfuss entered and won a Writers of the Future contest, which led him to a workshop with author Tim Powers. [8] This eventually led him to meeting his agent, who helped Rothfuss revise the first third of the story—now entitled The Name of the Wind—and sold it to DAW, [9] which published the book in March 2007. The Slow Regard of Silent Things (2014, ISBN 978-0756410438), a novella focusing on a secondary character that appears in The Kingkiller Chronicle 's main plot.