International Best Seller Colin Falconer

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Tag: Historical Fiction (page 3 of 4)

9½ UGLY RUMOURS ABOUT RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK

September 15, 2013 / / 8 Comments

If you Google ‘world’s most evil men’, chances are that - after Osama bin Laden and Donald Trump - the name Rasputin will come up.

Rasputin was a Russian mystic who became a close adviser to the Romanovs.

It was said he subverted the government, used his position as a religious leader to seduce women and caused the Russian Revolution.

But the worst thing he ever did was … no we’ll save that for the end.

How much was rumor and how much was fact?

RUMOUR# 1: HE WAS A DEBAUCHED CHARLATAN ONLY INTERESTED IN GROOMING HIS FOLLOWERS FOR SEX

Rasputin with some of the women he saved

Rasputin was the Jimmy Swaggart of his day, a religious nut notorious for attracting scandal.

He was accused of drunkenness, sexual promiscuity and political corruption. He told his followers that sex and alcohol should not be resisted as once you had overindulged in both you had cause to repent - and repentance led to salvation.

It does have a kind of twisted logic to it.

The Czar himself suppressed investigations into reports of Rasputin’s outings to bathhouses and his violent sex with society women. It will probably never be known how much was true, what was slander and what was myth.

RUMOUR #2: HE CURED THE CZAR’S SON OF HEMOPHILIA

The czarevitch suffered terribly from hemophilia, a disease not uncommon among European royalty because of centuries of inbreeding. Rasputin was credited with relieving some of the agonizing symptoms

Hoping for a miraculous cure the royal family turned to the mystic, who had a reputation as a healer. He said he could cure him through prayer, though it is now thought he provided relief with the use of hypnosis.

He also took away his aspirin, at the time the ‘new wonder drug’ the doctors had prescribed for the boy’s pain. It’s an anticoagulant and would have been making his condition much worse.

RUMOUR #3: HE HAD A THIRTEEN INCH PENIS

Which was believed to have parted ways with its owner during his assassination. A maid found it at the crime scene and saved it. You never know when you’ll need a thirteen inch penis, right?

this is what a sea cucumber looks like

During the twenties a group of Russian women living in Paris acquired it and worshiped it as a holy relic, keeping it inside a wooden casket until Rasputin’s daughter, Marie, demanded it back.

After she died in California in 1977 it was found with some of her manuscripts at a lot sale.

It was then sold to an auction house who discovered it was actually a sea cucumber.

RUMOUR #4 HIS DAUGHTER LATER BECAME A VENTROLIQUIST AND TIGER TRAINER IN BUENOS AIRES

True.

RUMOUR #5 HE STARTED THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

No he didn’t, but his influence thoroughly discredited the Romanovs. The Czarina thought the man with the burning eyes and piquant body odor was a prophet sent to the royal family by God himself and so she made him her personal adviser and allowed him to fill governmental offices with his own handpicked candidates.

RUMOR #6 HE WAS SHOT, STABBED, STRANGLED, BEATEN, POISONED AND CASTRATED BUT DIED OF DROWNING WHEN THEY THREW HIM IN THE RIVER

By 1916 Rasputin had become such a pernicious influence with the royal family that several noblemen- Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitiri Pavlovich and politician Vladimir Purishkevich - decided it was time for him to go.

They lured him to Yusupovs’ Moika Palace and served him poisoned cakes and wine, laced with enough cyanide to kill five men.

When that didn’t work they shot him; but that only annoyed him and he tried to strangle Yusupov. So they shot him three more times. He was still alive so they clubbed him into submission, wrapped him in a carpet and threw him in the icy river where he finally drowned.

In fact, photographs of his corpse show a bullet hole in the forehead that would have killed him instantly. However the official report of his autopsy disappeared during the Stalin era, as did several research assistants who had seen it.

RUMOUR #7 HE WAS A HARD MAN TO KILL

True.

While visiting his wife and children in Pokrovskoye in 1914 a rival mystic’s disciple had stabbed him in the stomach, eviscerating him.

She then yelled: “I have killed the Antichrist.’

Nearly, but not quite.

The Tsar sent his own physician to operate on him and after several weeks in hospital he recovered from what in most men would have certainly been a mortal wound.

RUMOUR #8 WHEN THEY DUG HIM UP HE CAME BACK TO LIFE

After the revolution his remains were exhumed and burned by Members of the Downtrodden Masses. As the flames took hold his corpse sat up in the fire, zombie-like, sending the proletariat screaming for their mothers. In fact this story is very likely true, as the heat from the fire would have shrunk the tendons and forced the body to bend at the waist.

RUMOUR #9 HE WAS A MEMBER OF AN ORGIASTIC SECT

Before he left Siberia to become rich and famous, he joined a group of Christian flagellants, the Khlsty.

They were a little like the dervishes, they sang and prayed and became ecstatic through spinning.

It was also claimed that they indulged in orgiastic sex as part of their religious rites.

As well as self flagellation critics also accused them of bestiality and necrophilia, but I think they were flogging a dead horse.

RUMOUR 9½ THE WORST THING HE EVER DID WAS INSPIRE A SONG BY BONEY M

True. For this he is condemned by history. Damn you, Rasputin! Here’s the proof:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yTVWXYctoY&w=420&h=315]

And here is what happened to the Romanovs at the end:

If you are fascinated with the Romanov story, here is my novel of Anastasia:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCRols2A1NY&w=560&h=315]

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Holy Week, Easter, Spain

COLIN FALCONER

GENGHIS KHAN BUT YOU CAN’T

September 12, 2013 / / 10 Comments

There is a one in two hundred chance you are related to Genghis Khan.

It doesn’t matter that your surname is not Khan. His DNA may be in you somewhere.

This is one of the delightful snippets I found when researching Silk Road.

I could never use it in the book. Genghis’s sex life had to go in my trash bin.

But what a guy.

Here was the man who made Alexander the Great look like Alexander the Underachiever.

His empire was twice the size of Rome’s and included large parts of modern day China, Mongolia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, South Korea, North Korea and Kuwait. All the Stans and then some.

Genghis Khan’s empire at the time of his death. Kill as many as you like, there’s still lots left.

His real name was Temujin; Genghis Khan is an honorific meaning ‘Universal Ruler’ and he took that on when he united the fractious Mongolian tribes at his coronation in 1206.

Other titles included Lord of the Four Colors and Five Tongues, Lord of Life and Emperor of all Men.

He was also known as Mighty Manslayer and Scourge of God.

And that was on a good day.

And I quote: “The greatest pleasure in life is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”

A sensitive new age guy, then.

For twenty years he led his pony-mounted armies on a whirlwind of rape and slaughter unmatched before or since.

By some estimates he killed 35 million people.

Over two decades, that’s one person killed every twenty seconds.

He hardly had time for lunch.

Northern China is thought to have lost about three- quarters of its population.

Some historians estimate he massacred so many Persians that Iran’s population did not reach its pre-Mongol levels again until the mid-20th century.

His army was the most efficient war machine ever assembled at that time, a juggernaut that swept all before it.

Merv in Persia was regarded as the greatest seat of learning in all Asia. Genghis razed it to the ground, overseeing one of the greatest genocides in history.

It took the survivors two weeks just to count the bodies.

‘ Oh God sergeant - not raping detail again!’

In Russia he conquered an army four times the size of his own. Their leader, Prince Romanovitch of Kiev, along with his generals, were tied up and laid flat; he then built a wooden platform on top of them for himself and his officers to sit on while they divided the spoils.

The Prince and his officers were crushed to death underneath them.

He once even diverted a river to erase a rival emperor’s birthplace from the map.

No act of spite or sadism was too much trouble.

But Genghis wasn’t all bad; he was just drawn that way.

He is also credited with bringing the Silk Road under one political administration which allowed trade as well as cultural exchange between the East and West. He was tolerant of all religions. He instituted a system of meritocracy in his government at a time when the West was still largely feudal.

He was a lover as well as a fighter.

the last of the red hot lovers

In 2007 researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences analyzed tissue samples from people living in those areas approximating Genghis’ ancient empire.

They found an identical Y-chromosomal lineage is present in about 8% of the men. (That’s half of one per cent of the world’s population!)

Apparently this spread is inconsistent with the theory of genetic drift, and the most likely scenario is that all these people are male line descendants of the Manslayer.

In Mongolia alone as many as 200,000 of the country’s 2 million people could be mini Manslayers.

It is calculated that Genghis Khan now has around 16 million male descendants across Asia and the Middle East. In fact it could be argued that he almost made genocide a self sustainable industry.

For every two people he killed, he created one.

His seduction technique was, however, suspect.

photograph: chwalker01

At the victory feasts he and his commanders would sit in their tent and tear at lumps of raw and bloody horsemeat with their teeth while captive beauties were paraded in front of them.

Genghis had a rating system: he kept the nines and tens and anything with a lower rating went to his officers.

He had a personal harem of two to three thousand women – plus girlfriends I suppose – and his sons had comparably sized harems, but 16 million male descendants is still impressive, especially with the pressure of having to kill someone every twenty seconds.

‘Hurry up, we haven’t killed anyone for almost 3 minutes!’

Genghis died in 1227, while campaigning in north-western China. It is reported that he fell from his horse, exhausted.

However a legend persists that he was actually killed by a captured Chinese princess, a perfect ten, who herself rated Genghis a perfect 0 and castrated him with a concealed knife before running off into the dark.

No disrespect; but you’d like to think so.

SILK ROAD available in the US for the first time. Click on the picture for more details

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Holy Week, Easter, SpainCOLIN FALCONER

IS THERE AN EXPLANATION FOR THE STIGMATA?

August 27, 2013 / / 11 Comments

What are the stigmata - and how can they be explained?

There is no recorded instance of the stigmata - wounds imitating Christ’s from the crucifixion - before the thirteenth century, when artistic depictions of the crucifixion in religious art first appeared.

Stigmatics display all or some of the five so-called ‘holy wounds’ from the crucifixion piercings to bleeding from the forehead similar to that caused by the crown of thorns.

These wounds are not painless. The suffering a Stigmatic endures is extraordinary.

Most of these wounds do not clot, neither do they suppurate, and the blood is said to have a perfumed odor, known as the ‘Odor of Sanctity.’

Stigmatics usually receive these marks during an ‘ecstasy’ when they are overwhelmed with religious fervor. Continue reading

ETERNAL LIFE, MAN-EATING ANTS, STRINGY NOODLES - HOLD THE TOMATOES

August 22, 2013 / / 9 Comments

Somehow western culture has equated the word Mongol with ‘barbarian’.

There is no doubt the Golden Horde that invaded Europe during the thirteenth century was savage, but that overlooks the comparable excesses of western armies at the time; think the Albigensian Crusade and the sacking of Constantinople.

In fact in the Orient they referred to Christians as ‘barbarians’.

It’s a word that all cultures apply to anyone who thinks differently to them.

When my Dominican monk, William, and his Templar bodyguard, Josseran Sarrazini, set out from the Kingdom of Jerusalem on their great journey eastwards they, too, thought they were going to a land of savages.

“Some say that in the land of Cathay there are creatures with heads like dogs who bark and speak at the same time. Others say there are ants as big as cattle. They burrow in the earth for gold and tear anyone who comes across them to pieces with their pincers.’ Continue reading

FROM AUNTY IVY TO KHUBILAI KHAN

April 29, 2013 / / 6 Comments

My primary school teacher’s name was Mrs Boyne.

She once told my mother at a parent interview: “Your son is a complete dreamer. He’ll never amount to anything in this life.”

I still think that was a pretty harsh judgment on a seven year old. But she was right, of course, I was a dreamer.

It was my greatest asset.

It was about the time I first read Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff. To get my hands on it, I had to endure a slobbery wet kiss from my Aunty Ivy, but I considered it well worth it.

By the end of that first afternoon, I was hooked on classic literature. Continue reading

IF YOU WRITE THAT, I’LL KILL YOU

March 17, 2013 / / 6 Comments

So, religion. Is it about God or is it about women’s rights?

source: Sherry Jones

Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood recently spoke out against a UN declaration on women’s rights, saying it could “destroy society” by allowing a woman to travel, work and use contraception without her husband’s approval.

They want their country to reject and condemn the declaration.

Egypt has joined Iran, Russia and the Vatican (!!) in what some diplomats have dubbed ‘an unholy alliance.’ (And for all the euphoria about the new Pope, who seems like a nice bloke, remember - he is a staunch conservative on women’s issues.)

Is this religion? Continue reading

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FAILURE AND HEADY, UNDREAMED-OF SUCCESS?

March 13, 2013 / / 19 Comments

Between washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant and treading the red carpet at the Oscars?

Not very much.

Ask Michael Blake.

Through the late seventies, he turned out one unproduced screenplay after another. But in 1981 a friend of his from film school, Jim Wilson, asked him to script a movie he was directing, called Stacey’s Knights. It was to star an unknown actor called Kevin Costner.

Both Michael and Kevin thought it was their big break.

They were both wrong. Continue reading

WHAT IF YOUR PARENTS HAD MURDERED YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER?

January 17, 2013 / / 6 Comments

Some time past your thirtieth birthday you discover that your godfather arrested and possibly tortured and murdered your mother.

You also find out that your parents are not your parents at all, that they have hidden your real identity from you.

How do you feel?

photo: Roblespepe

It was the nightmare facing Cesar Castillo, the son of humble parents in Buenos Aires. He had long harbored suspicions - he just didn’t look much like his mother and father - and finally he went to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and had a DNA test. It confirmed his worst fears. Continue reading

WAS THIS HISTORY’S WICKEDEST WOMAN?

December 26, 2012 / / 17 Comments

the wickedest woman in history?

When people think of bad, bad women they perhaps think of Isabella the First - the woman who commissioned Torquemada - or Bloody Queen Mary, the scourge of Protestant England.

Few people have heard of Hürrem Haseki Sultan, or Roxelana, as she is better known in Europe.

Yet she made Anne Boleyn, one of her contemporaries, look like an underachiever.

Anne, after all, fell out of favour with her king and ended up with her head on the block.

Roxelana married the Sultan of the Ottomans, had him throw out his entire harem, and kept him in her thrall the rest of her life. Continue reading

ARMAGEDDON: GET IT FRESH RIGHT HERE

November 19, 2012 / / 2 Comments

photograph: Soman

Bethlehem, Israel

The letters “PLO”, are sprayed in Arabic script on the rusted shutters of a shop, using aerosol paint. Underneath, scrawled in English for the benefit of the tourists: “FUCK ISRAEL”.

In September of 1992, when I wrote FURY, the intefadeh had fallen into a lull; Rabin was talking to Assad, and the newspapers, at least, were speculating that peace might break out. This was a remarkable horizon in a land that has been almost constantly at war with its neighbors since the state was proclaimed.

Fast forward twenty years. For five days now Hamas have been firing rockets into Israel and Israeli jets have been pounding Gaza. They’re still saying Fuck Israel; and Israel is still saying Fuck You right back. Continue reading

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