Saturday Rave: the Great and the Unready.

Alfred and Catherine were great, weren't they? 

In fact, they were better than great, they were Great. I refer, of course, to Catherine the Great of Russia, and Alfred the Great of those bits of England that weren't currently over-run by someone else.

It does help to have a single word to stick onto people so you can put them in a slot in you mind. The English king Æthelred the Unready,* is an obvious example, as is poor Bloody Mary (it wasn't that she had an over-fondness for cocktails, it was that she killed a lot of Protestants).

Then there was Ivan the terrible (well, you know not to invite him to tea) and Vlad the Impaler (don't even open the door!).

And then there are the people you can't help pitying, like the Scots Earl of Douglas Archibald the Loser, for instance. (He died in battle, yes, but he was Earl for twenty four years and it can't all have been a complete disaster. Can it?) Then there are the French King Louis the Unavoidable (who was actually in prison or in exile for most of his reign, so he was actually very easily avoidable indeed until the Emperor Napoleon was thrown out); the Norwegian Haakon the Crazy (who was sane enough (for a king, anyway) but tended to go berserk in battle); and the Bulgarian Ivaylo the Cabbage (who, remarkably, led a successful peasants' revolt and became king for a year or so. He must have been quite a guy.).

These are all remarkable individuals, but as for today, as it's their birthdays, I dedicate this post to Ivan the Young (1458 - 1490), son of Ivan III of Russia; and Piero the Unfortunate, Italian ruler 1471 - 1503.

I'm just hope they never knew what their chief claim to fame was going to be, that's all.

Word To Use Today: nickname. This started off as an ekename, but then the n went AWOL. Eke means addition.

*Æthelred means well advised, and Unready comes from unræd, which means poorly advised. 

Yes, people have been making bad puns for a long time.