existence. Each case points gradually a moral tragedy. Nero became, beyond doubt, the prey of homicidal mania. That same madness is latent in the blood of the erratic Wittelsbachs, just as are their intensely artistic enthusiasms.
England.
William Rufus of England seems homosexual, by natural temperament and habits. The mystery of the death of William, in New Forest, can easily have had some uranistic cause, though historians have ever differed as to whether William may not have been slain by accident. Guillaume de Nangis, Eadmer and other early chroniclers state that the sons of William the Conqueror were "man-loving men"; and the course of life of William II of England was much in consonance with such an idea. In fact, the great Conqueror, William I, was himself not clearly only dionistic. His relations, marital or other, with women had little accord with his natural sexual temperament.
Edward II.
The uranianism of the gentle—but femininely obstinate—Edward II of England was the ruin of his career. Only a homosexual prince would make so much of worthless male favourites. Edward's indiscretion, doggedness and evasiveness on their behalf were so extreme that we do not wonder at the social scandals and bloody political dramas that were part of his reign, ending in his own assassination. The king's idolatry for the handsome Piers Gaveston, on whom he conferred dignities never more unluckily bestowed, has often been told in history and romance; including that striking English drama which German critics still assign to Shakespeare—not to Marlowe. Hardly less vehement and equally homosexual in the relationship was Edward's passion for Hugh Ledespenser, or De Spenser, who became Gaveston's successor sentimentally, after the latter had met his fate.
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