Ill-fortune clusters in our gentle monarch's family home. An old castle. A dark history. A castle so unlucky, it must be cursed.
Home of the British Monarchy
WINDSOR CASTLE stands sentinel above the river Thames 24 or so miles west of London. Constructed of pale stone, one ward houses the royal apartments, the other features Saint George’s Chapel, a place of worship haunted by a royal ghost, according to folklore.
King Charles III and his family often stay here but long periods in this castle’s history were empty of royal residents. Its massive walls, towers and halls costly to maintain. Not all monarchs thought such expenditure worthwhile.
Others adored this castle. Favoured home of Queen Victoria until beloved Albert caught a fever here and died. George III loved the building; Charles II brought Baroque to the old medieval ruin, in which his father’s head was reunited with body.
Henry VIII is buried here too, beside beloved Queen Jane Seymour; and many people believe Henry has not yet left the building.
Various guards also claim a ghost is sometimes seen staring from the castle windows, a be-wigged figure that looks like His Majesty George III.
Windsor Castle is also home of the Garter and once upon a time, quite literally, the heart of Saint George.
Location Notes: King of the Castle. A Brief History
A fortress has stood on this hill since the Conquest. Norman engineers saw this as an ideal defensive position to protect the western route along the river Thames into London.
A mound 15 metres high was raised on the summit and two quadrangles surrounded by ramparts, ditches and a palisade to form a crown of wooden spikes upon the hill.
Henry I built the first royal hall on the summit and held court here. In 1180 Henry II ordered half a mile of stone wall and construction of a huge stone keep atop the mound.
Nine years later its defences were tested when Archbishop of Rouen and the Bishop of Salisbury attacked Prince John sheltering behind his father’s walls. John’s guards panicked, opened up the gates and ran off into the forest where they were treated unkindly with extreme prejudice.
Did Bad King John Start the Curse?
Among the many very bad things for which King John is remembered, was the imprisonment in Windsor of the wife and son of his former friend William de Briouze.
He ordered them indefinitely detained in irons in a dungeon with only a sheaf of wheat and a piece of raw bacon. When eventually he unlocked the door, months later the King of England was unpleasantly delighted to see the unexpected outcome.
Cursologists wonder if the run of malign fate suffered by the royal family in Windsor castle, is a consequential chain that originates from this cruel injustice.
Such gruesome memory is mostly forgotten in the long history since, and those who visit Windsor Castle admire its vast solidity, its tall stately buildings, its right angles and tall arched windows.
It is a huge updated medieval English castle complete with red-coated guards who stamp boots and shoulder arms.
And sometimes see its ghosts.
The Madness of King George
George III, in the 1790s chose to make Windsor the family residence. By 1804 he moved his family into Windsor Castle.
Frustrated by how little he could achieve on renovating the main castle building, since it had fallen into disrepair, George set about restoring the old chapel of Saint George. He ordered his workmen to refurbish the noble home of the Knights of the Garter.
King George’s illness while living in the castle is well documented, but he was not the first to suffer, or the last.
Of course bad things inevitably will occur in any old building sooner or later as centuries pass but Windsor Castle does seem to experience more misfortune than probability’s fair share.
A Curious Cluster of Catastrophe
Tragedy strikes the monarch and his or her family more on Windsor Hill than in any other royal residence.
Not forgotten to historians is the madness of King Edward III, first of the Windsors born on the hill.
Unlucky kings Henry V and Richard II maybe thought there wasn't a problem before their own catastrophic end. Prince Albert might have called the castle cursed. Queen Victoria responded and moved far away, to the Isle of Wight.
Princess Diana said worse about her old home on Windsor Hill.
Data doesn't lie. Royals too close to Windsor Castle are lost more often to cruel ill-fortune.
But why?
Curse & Coincidence?
Has Lady de Briouze’s desperation over her son in a cold damp cell, beset by ravenous hunger, caused such a chain of consequence? Before her last breath did she curse King John, his castle and the hill upon which it stood.
And all those to follow?
Or maybe she is not to blame, and to attribute to her the curse of the castle is to heap further punishment upon a lady who suffered more than she deserved.
The curse may be older even than the castle walls.
No facts or figures are available on Windsor hill’s pre-historic residents. Earliest information dates to Saxon times; archaeological teams unearthed evidence Saxon communities built their main settlement downriver, away from the hill.
'Didn’t need hilltop security' is probably the more acceptable explanation than sinister ‘bad vibes’.
Could Windsor Hill be a cursed?
‘Superstitious nonsense’ probably is a more acceptable answer.
And maybe that’s correct. Misfortune is simply coincidence. Notions such as curses are coincidence combined in the mind of the superstitious.
The run of cruel fate visited upon all those who have lived in and loved this castle may be merely that.
But it is a surprisingly dark cluster.
