What is the grossest/most horrifying royal assassination you have ever read about?

Question

I guess mine would have to be the death of Mary Queen of Scots. It took the fool-axeman three chops to get it right--the first one hit her in the shoulder and made her scream, the second one carved halfway through her neck, and the final blow finished the job (her dog, which she had brought with her to the block beneath her petticoats, was so injured by her writhing trunk that it died the same day). When the axeman picked up her head to show it to the gallery, he seems to have accidentally pulled off its wig to reveal the mats of gray beneath it. What horror.

Answer 1

Nicholas II of Russia and his family.

Answer 2

Many of the Roman Emporers had a fairly horrific exit .. but in royalty I would consider the Romanovs suffered the worst fate

Answer 3

For me, the most horrifying would be Edward II of England. It's only a rumor, but apparently he was killed with a red-hot poker inserted in his nether regions. But this cannot be substantiated.

Answer 4

The House of Romanov where Nicholas II of Russia (19 May1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland. He ruled from 1894 until his forced abdication in 1917. Nicholas proved unable to manage a country in political turmoil and command its army in World War I. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which he and his family were shot by Bolsheviks.

The family was imprisoned and was executed on July 17, 1918 in the cellar room of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. The family was told to get up and get dressed in the middle of the night because they were going to be moved. Nicholas II carried Alexei to the cellar room. His mother asked for chairs to be brought so that she and Alexei could sit down. When the family and their servants were settled, Yurovsky announced that they were to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only "What?" and turn to his family before he was assassinated with a bullet to the head. The Tsaritsa and her daughter Olga tried to make the sign of the cross, but were killed in the initial volley of bullets fired by the executioners, both suffering gunshot wounds to the head.

The firing squad killed Nicholas, the Tsarina, and two of the servants first. Alexei remained sitting in the chair, "terrified," before the assassins turned on him and shot. The boy remained alive and the killers tried to stab him multiple times with bayonets. Unbeknownst to the killing squad, the tsarevich's torso was protected by a shirt wrapped in precious gems that he wore beneath his tunic. Finally Yurovsky shot the boy again and he fell silent.

The bodies of Nicholas and his family, after being soaked in acid and burned, were long believed to have been disposed of down a mineshaft at a site called the Four Brothers. All of their bones were found except for those that belonged to Alexei and Anastasia.

The royal murdered vicitims included the emperor, empress and their five children:

Nicholas II of Russia

Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna of Russia

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaievna of Russia

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia

Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia

Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov (Heir, Tsarevich and Grand Duke)

Answer 5

Edward II of England died a brutal and horrible death.

September 1327: it was a dark night.  Edward was being held prisoner in Berkeley Castle.  Suddenly the inhabitants of the castle and the villagers heard the most unearthly screams issuing into the air.

The Brut Chronicles tell us that

"when that night the king had gone to bed and was asleep, the traitors, against their homage and their fealty, went quietly into his chamber and laid a large table on his stomach and with other men's help pressed him down. At this he woke and in fear of his life, turned himself upside down. The tyrants, false traitors, then took a horn and put it into his fundament [backside] as deep as they could, and took a pit [rod] of burning copper, and put it through the horn into his body, and oftentimes rolled therewith his bowels, and so they killed their lord and nothing was perceived."

This is the origin of the story that Edward II died from having a red hot poker inserted into his r****m and that he was killed in this manner in order that "no appearance of any wound or hurt outwardly might be once perceived".

There is another theory that the king was just suffocated, but the above story may have been made up because Edward had male favourites - a fitting death?

To this day, it is said, the screams can still be heard from Berkeley Castle.

Another horrific death, though not of a monarch, is that of the Countess of Salisbury.  According to some accounts, the countess, who was 67 years old, frail and ill, was dragged to the block, but refused to lay her head on it, having to be forced down. As she struggled, the inexperienced executioner's first blow made a gash in her shoulder rather than her neck. Several additional blows were required to complete the execution. A less reputable account states that Margaret leapt from the block after the first clumsy blow and ran, pursued by the executioner, being struck eleven times before she died.  Whatever the account, it is agreed that she died a hard death.

She, too is said to haunt the Tower of London on the anniversary of her execution.

Incidentally, while Mary's head was on the block, she was repeating, "In manuas tuas, Domine", and after the fatal blow her lips continued to move for another fifteen minutes.

http://www.tudorhistory.org/primary/exma...

Fotheringhay Castle is now a ruin.  A part of the staircase was moved to an inn at Oundle, and occasionally a ghostly sad lady is still seen there.