February 8th

On this day.... execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1587.

History is rife with messy execution stories. (Henry VIII's wives alone take up an hour of spooky fireside conversation, or, in the modern day, that pesky hour of programming after dinner but before American Idol). The deposed, middle-aged queen of Scotland's story is a prime example of the genre. It took three and a half axe swings to remove the poor woman's head - she was conscious for at least the first two.

When I was very small, I saw a show on the History Channel about the French Revolution. The story goes that, after Marie Antoinette was executed, her head was held up for the crowd to laugh at. She blushed. This image has stayed with me doggedly through the years - which may explain why I now associate Kirsten Dunst with decapitation.

I hear in the Tower of London there's a very snazzy waxwork of Queen Mary's head, and a full body model at Madame Tussaud's. Cool? Undobtedly. Worth it? I'm not sure. I'm going to England in the spring, and I'm trying to map out where to go... I don't want to be stuck in tourist traps the whole time. I worry that European tourist traps, like most things in Europe, will be better dressed than the American kind, and may catch me unawares. Sneaky buggers. Not to mention the prodigious amount of gift-buying involved. I have a friend who's requested something, anything, Victorian, as long as it's something weird no one uses anymore. Well, that's a much broader topic than I imagined. From post-mortem photography to pleasure gardens to tear vials... my head's spinning (sorry, Queen Mary. Bad pun).

That last invention's my favorite, by the by - the idea being that you present loved ones with your tears at funerals, christenings, weddings, etc. to show them how emotional it made you. Just imagine the family drama that sprung out of that:

Girl: "Mama, Uncle Bertram's being stingy. Aunt Alice cried at least twice as much about my birthday!"

Uncle Bertram: "I have small tear ducts."

Aunt Alice: "Liar. You cried a vial and a half when that crumpet from your office broke her ankle. Why did I even marry you?"

Uncle Bertram: "We live in a chronically repressed society that allows upper class women only the smallest modicum of involvement in the choice of their marriage partners, creating a two-faced society in which great personal pain is endured on physical and psychological levels in order to maintain a veneer of outward respectability, though it rots our souls slowly from within after the fashion of a cankerous tooth."

Aunt Alice: "...."

Uncle Bertram: "And I keep you in laudanum."

Aunt Alice: *weeps*

Cheers!