Charles the Third has become the King of England, which is pretty good work if you can get it. King of England is like how jobs at the power company were in the 1980s - they only come open when somebody dies. I confess, as a red-blooded patriot proud of our win in the revolution the way Nebraska football fans cling to old victories, I am not as up to date on all the inner workings concerning the transfer of power of the monarchy. I figured Game of Thrones settled all that. Much of my confusion comes from how many medals Charles wears. His chest is covered in medals like a banana republic dictator in an early 80s action film about to be single-handedly overthrown by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Trying to educate myself on the matter, I turned to Wikipedia. Searching for “Charles III,” I found the eighth-century French monarch also named Charles III, who was hilariously known as “Charles the Simple.”
Charles the Simple? Like, you are king, man, hire a better public relations team. Or send your current one to the guillotine. He was the son of, and I swear it says this, the even worse-named Louis the Stammerer. I imagine poor Louis stumbled over his words one day in elementary school and his mother said, “Don’t worry, the other kids will forget it by tomorrow,” and a thousand years later he’s still Louis the Stammerer.
His father was - and I know this sounds like I’m making this up - Charles the Bald. Charles II, or Charles the Bald, was the grandson of Charlemagne but did not have the same brand awareness. The Bald did have a son known as, and this is my favorite, Lothar the Lame. Now, you cannot tell me poor Lothar didn’t get that nickname on a playground somewhere. Obviously, what with the black plague and getting married at 13 they weren’t as concerned with bullying back then. I mean, Lothar was a prince!
Lothar, I’m assuming to escape the shame, lived a great deal of his life in a monastery. Perhaps that’s where the moniker came from: Lothar the Lame does sound like the title of an unpopular youth pastor.
Kings and royalty seem more like fantasy to a small-town boy like me. It should not be so surprising, then, that all this talk of fantasy-land royal succession is happening during the most important time of imagining the impossible … fantasy football season.
Every year I host a fantasy football auction draft with such high stakes some participants put more research into the draft than they did their last automobile purchase. Of course, fantasy football is not the same as acquiring a means to transport your family safely to school, doctors, and church - fantasy football is about sticking it to your friends which is way more important.
The draft itself is an event with so much food and drink it reminds me of an ironically-named general assembly of the states of the former Holy Roman Empire, which I learned in my royal internet “research” was called a diet. That is true at our modern diet, instead of choosing a ridiculously-named man king, we choose to live and die following the exploits of a guy named Cooper Kupp.
Fantasy is about imagining the impossible, whether in royalty or the National Football League.
This leads me back to ol’ Charles the Simple. You see, the Simple was often overshadowed by his cousin, also named Charles, who was the Holy Roman Emperor until he was deposed at the Diet of Tribur in 887. Cousin Charles was better known as Charles the Fat. Yes, the Fat lost at a diet.
You can’t make that up, not in your wildest fantasies.