Folk Tales: The High King Mortimer

Legend has it that long ago there reigned a High King Mortimer who failed to pay his royal biographer, Geoffrey Canterbury. Canterbury writes: 'No one liked Mortimer. Whenever a storm caused damage or some other natural catastrophe befell us, we all surmised that God was angry with Mortimer over something and taking it out on us. Mortimer passed a law forcing all brides to lie with him on the eve of their weddings. He did it just to infect all the brides in the land with plague and thus make them less attractive to their husbands. In battle Mortimer was a notorious coward. Against the Dragon of Doonsbury he behaved both as a fool and a knave. First he shed his armour when it proved to be itchy after being soaked in a magic potion to make it heat resistant, conjured by his wizard, to whom he also owed a princely sum. Then he let the Dragon chase him naked through the square, with only his hands over his bare bottom to protect it from his foe's fiery breath. He hid in a well until the dragon had had its way with all the maidens in the land and had eaten its fill of all the children in the land. His horse, Shadowbox, was also a coward and fled from any small, harmless creature popping out suddenly from the bogs. Mortimer did not die at the hands of his guards, who he insulted constantly, nor did he die at the hands of the angry mob of peasants who gathered to burn down his castle with him inside, for God got to Mortimer first, smiting the hated tyrant with a powerful lightning bolt. Mortimer miserably perished. Such was the end of this unhappy King.' Mortimer may not have been as bad as his biographer said, but he is certain to have had one weakness: illiteracy. He is not to be confused with the figure of Vortigurn, who is said to have reigned as High King in the roughly same period.
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© 2007, 2013. Scripts by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.