History
has corners of relative obscurity where the lesser-known relatives of famous
historical figures carve their own nooks and crannies in the passageway that is
our journey towards our destiny. Very often these characters had a more
profound influence than that for which they are generally given credit. There
follows a history of some of them.
Vlad
the Improver
Vlad
was a helpful child and as he matured his helpfulness blossomed. He saw it as
his role to make things better despite the obstacles put in his way, often by
those whom he was attempting to aid. His firm conviction that he possessed the
gift of seeing things the way that they were meant to be ensured that he was
always busy. He would roll up at someone or other’s dwelling – the dwelling
could be anything from a rude hut to a carefully crafted castle, the someone
(or other) could be a close friend, a casual acquaintance or just some chosen
person whose home he happened to be passing. Without the awkward business of
waiting to be asked he would set about rearranging the furniture, changing the décor,
moving doors and windows, re-styling clothes and so on. The projects could last
anything from a few hours to months at a time. “No rest for the gifted” he
would quip, quite regularly, and no one was allowed to rest until perfection
had been achieved. Strangely people were not always pleased to receive his
help. Luckily for them the concept of psychoanalysis had not yet been
discovered – had it been, then Vlad would have felt compelled to improve the
character of people as well as their environment. As it was, however,
increasing numbers of people were driven from their homes, often destroying
them completely before leaving. They would travel as far away as possible,
often so deranged by fear of a visit that they would volunteer to be impaled by
Vlad’s hitherto easy-going cousin.
Attila
the Hungry
In
the dark ages, the folk of central and southern Europe had a pretty hard time
of it. It was dark for one thing and central and southern Europe for another.
Like most young people, Attila had an appetite that exceeded his corporeal
needs. Sadly, he had no culinary skills and was too lethargic from overeating
to find or buy food for himself. He therefore adopted the habit of fetching up
at someone or other’s house (a different someone or other than those visited by
Vlad; these people did not all live in the same age) at mealtime in the hope of
being invited to join in. Such was his patience that in most cases the
residents would ask him if he would care to share their food. Within minutes he
would be outside about ninety percent of the comestibles in the house and be
asleep in front of the fire, his corpulence often resulting in preventing the
heat from reaching other parts of the house. It is reckoned that during his
journeys across the steppes and Europe, as many as four in five people died of
starvation combined with fatigue.
Ginseng
Khan
“You
want to rub a little bit of dianthus oil on that” was typical of the sort of
advice disseminated by young Khan. We assume that until very recently the
skills of doctors and apothecaries were primitive, bound up in myth, and
ineffective. This view is not without some justification, but there have always
been those with gifts of healing and folklore has quite regularly built up a
valuable collection of remedies and treatments. Young Khan was blessed with the
conviction that nature had a cure for everything. He had unguents for ulcers,
balms for blisters, soups for syphilis all carefully prepared from flora and
fungi that he had collected and distilled himself. Scholars estimate that
upwards of three and three-quarter million people died from his cures. Many
times that number were driven insane by mushroom-induced hallucinations. When Genghis Khan
started to have itchy feet and felt like spending winter in Venice, he found
that his march through civilisation went largely unchallenged because no bugger
was well enough to stop him.
Alexander
the Grout
“Yes
– I’ll be there next Tuesday to finish it off” – householders from Skopje to
Surat were told the same thing. You could scarcely visit a settlement on that
route that had not been bodged by young Al. His most famous projects included
the Tat Mahal, the Hanging baskets of Babylon (“OK – my guy says that the
compost will be with you soon, problem with the supplier, mate – nothing I can
do”), the statues of Zeus (“Only one Zeus? You better ask Monty Python about
that”) and the Lighthouse of Alexandria (“Not my fault, pal, I didn’t do the
wiring, have you tried finding a sparks in ante-Christian Egypt?”). When his
nephew set off on his adventures he was greeted in delight by the inhabitants
who only discovered too late that he was not head of the party of Eastern European
craftsmen that they had sent for at very reasonable rates.
