Forbidden History - The Tragic End of Arthur of Brittany

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we delve into the mysterious murder of Arthur of Brittany, the young heir whose death in 1203 raised questions of betrayal and political intrigue. Was it a power play by King John of England, or something more sinister? Cast List: Stephen Church: Historian & Expert on King John Ciaran O’Keefe: Criminal Psychologist Prof. Michael Green: Forensic Pathologist  Andrew Rose: Barrister & QC Richard Felix: Author & Historian  Lynn Picknett: Historian and researcher specialising in exposing historical conspiracies. She is also the co-author of several notable works Eric Meyers: Narrator  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. April 1203 in the Normandy City of Ruan. Arthur, Duke of Brittany, once first in line to the throne of England, is held captive on the orders of his uncle, King John. King John was a bad man.

There's no doubt about it. He had people murdered. He was excommunicated by the Pope. As far as John was concerned, as long as Arthur was alive, he was a threat to his reign. Arthur's body was never found. We don't know what happened to Arthur's body. There's some suggestion that it was found by a fisherman

floating in the river Sen, recognized, taken away, and buried in secret. But actually, we don't know what happened to Arthur's body, and nobody was telling. Some believe he was assassinated by William de Briosa, the king's notorious right-hand man. He made his mark by being less than squeamish when it came to carrying out the will of these enjvon kings. One didn't rise to the top in the way that William de Breaosa did without standing on a lot of people. While others think he was killed in a horrific act of cruelty,

It was kept in Follet's castle under the guardianship, custodianship of Hubert de Burr. And because of his claim on the throne, King John ordered that Hubert DeBur have Arthur blinded and castrated. And there are those who say that he was killed by the king himself. There are later tales told by people who were actually involved in the disappearance of Arthur of Brittany, tales which suggest that John, in a fit of madness, a fit of anger, actually decided to do away with Arthur in a drunken rage. Just what did happen to Arthur, Duke of Brittany? Towards the end of the 12th century, England was under the rule of Richard I.

Known as the absent king, he spent only a small amount of time in England, visiting the country only twice in his adult life. Richard's famous crusades in the Holy Land and wars in Europe meant that military affairs occupied most of his reign. But in March 1199, while besieging Chalice Castle in France, King Richard was fatally wounded by an arrow fired from a crossbow. On his deathbed, and with no legitimate son of his own, he pronounced his younger brother John as heir to the throne of England.

Other than blood ties, John had little in common with his brother Richard. He was a deeply flawed character who was prone to cruelty and violence. King John was a bad man. There's no doubt about it. He had people murdered. He was excommunicated by the Pope. He had 22 Welsh boys hanged from the ramparts of Nottingham Castle. But even though Richard had declared John as

his successor. His brother was not the only person with a claim to the throne of England. If history had gone differently, then there's no doubt that Arthur would have been, should have been, king of England. Arthur Duke of Brittany was the heir to the English throne. He was second in line to the throne. His grandfather was Henry II. His uncle was Richard Lionheart, and his other uncle was King.

King John, and therein lay all the problem. Arthur's claim to the throne was arguably stronger than John's. By rights, the crown should have gone to John's older brother, Geoffrey, who was Arthur's father. But Geoffrey had died before Arthur was born, meaning the crown should have passed to his son. Jeffrey was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aucatain. He had died in 1186 in a tournament accident in Paris. Jeffrey's wife was pregnant with Arthur, and Arthur was born the following spring, so the spring of 1187. Richard died 13 years after his younger brother, Jeffrey.

But Arthur was only 12 years old at the time of Richard's death, and the king probably thought the boy was simply too young to rule. The question was, who had the rightful claim to the kingdom of England? Was it Arthur as Geoffrey's son or was it John as Jeffrey's younger brother? And opinion was divided. Arthur may have had a stronger claim, but he was still a child, spoke only French, and had never been to England. By contrast, John was a grown man who could speak the language and was seen as a better fit by the English barons.

England chose John, but France didn't. Of course, we owned a lot of northern France in those days, and King Philip of France backed Arthur as King of England. King Philip IV of France refused to accept John as King of England. Instead, he gave his support to Arthur. Philip was keen for the French crown to regain the lands of Normandy and other areas that were under John's control. So, with King Philip's help, Arthur rose up against John in Normandy in 1202.

Arthur raised a large army and laid siege to Mirrovo Castle, where John's mother, an 80-year-old woman was actually in situ. She sent a message to John, who was in France at the time, and he covered 80 miles from Lamont to Mirabot in 48 hours. took Arthur's army by surprise and Arthur was captured. So on the 1st of August 1202, Arthur was captured by John outside the castle of Mirabu. And that brought him very much under John's control. He was kept in Follet's castle under the custodianship of Hubert de Berne.

And because of his claim on the throne, King John ordered that Hubert de Burr have Arthur blinded and castrated, so he could be of no use and could beget no children, of course. Legend has it that Hubert de Burr did not carry out the orders, much to King John's disgust. And John then had Arthur moved to Ruan Castle under the custodial. of William de Brousse, and he languished there, as legend has it. There is absolutely no question that John is responsible for Arthur's disappearance, but we don't really know how that disappearance happened. It seems unlikely that he just vanished into thin air. But what exactly did happen to Arthur has been the subject of speculation and rumor for hundreds of years.

Even by medieval standards, one theory surrounding his disappearance stands alone for its brutality. It's been suggested that on the orders of his uncle, King John, Arthur was cruelly blinded and castrated. Author and historian Richard Felix recounts the gruesome tale that supposedly took place at Felaise Castle in Normandy. The new King John found his nephew. Arthur, Duke of Brittany, a real threat to his throne. So he had him captured and thrown into Follet's castle in Normandy. Arthur had a much better claim to the throne of England than his uncle, King John. And so John ordered his jailer, Hubert, the Burr, not to kill him, not just to leave him in prison,

not just to blind him, but have him castrated. This was no form of surgical operation in those days. It was nothing but a barbaric form of mutilation, which resulted usually in the person dying of shock or dying days later, probably of loss of blood. And legend has it that Prince Arthur died of the shock of castration. Could Arthur have been blinded? have been blinded, castrated, and left to die on the orders of King John.

It's a shocking story of true. Professor Michael Green is a former home office pathologist with a career spanning over 40 years. An awful lot of people were castrated, and until quite recently, have been castrated. There are societies who value eunuchs. Castration shouldn't be all that much bleeding, but of course, always the risk of infection. The eye, they used to literally poke the eyes out. They used to use a dagger.

The immediate effects of castration and of blinding, an awful lot of people survived them, but in those days with a dirty knife, infection following blinding, I would think, was well on the cards, infection following castration, even if you struck off the genitals completely. less likely but a possibility. It must be remembered that a living Arthur

was a permanent threat to John's reign. And as far as John was concerned, basically Arthur had to go. And because John was John and probably almost literally a psychopath, preferably go in a most hideous, barbaric way possible. Dr. Kieran O'Keefe specialises in forensic and criminal psychology. If King John ordered the murder or committed the murder of his nephew and in that it involved blinding him and castrating him, he would be sending a message out to people saying,

look, you know, the eyes of my nephew, I'm going to remove those, I'm going to damage those in such a way that should he survive, there'll be no way that he can use these anymore. that slow, painful death, that it's not an instant death. Then you add to that the castration, and he basically saying, look, again, even if he survives this, I'm showing you that I don't want his bloodline kept in any way. King John certainly had motive to want Arthur out of the picture. And it seems possible that if Arthur was blinded and castrated,

he could have died from his injuries. But with no corpse ever found and no eyewitness accounts, should we really accept this version of events? There were many occasions when King John had killed the people that stood in his way, and on those occasions there was one man who John could rely on to carry out his bidding. That man was William DeBriosa. Stephen Church is a biographer of King John

and a professor in medieval history. He believes that William DeBriosa, John's right-hand man, was almost certainly involved in Arthur's murder. There's no doubt at all that William DeBrioso was one of the hard men of the regime. He was an adherent of Richard the Lionheart, very much trusted by Richard the Lionheart. He was a friend of John's whilst Richard was still alive. We're told that he had a role to play in making

making sure that John succeeded to England and to Normandy. William de Briosa was greatly favored and trusted by King John. He'd fought many battles on the king's behalf, and his ruthlessness and appetite for violence gained him a fearsome reputation. William de Breoza was very handsomely rewarded by John. William de Breaosa was in John's company throughout 1201, 1202, 1203, Wherever we see John, we see William de Breaosa. So he's a really good source for what is likely to have happened to Arthur.

It is said that King John imprisoned Arthur at Rueen Castle in Normandy, an area that at the time was controlled by the English crown. He kept him under the watchful eye of DeBriosa, but Arthur was never heard from again. You've got the senior people in John's administration who were actually there at Ruan at the point that the decision is made to get rid of Arthur. One didn't rise to the top in the way that William de Breaosa did without standing on a lot of people. And William de Breaosa stood on an awful lot of people.

He made a lot of enemies. William DeBriosa was no stranger to killing royalty. He was given the name, the ogre of Abergavenny, for his part in the murder. of three Welsh princes in 1175. This has led many to believe that Arthur suffered the same fate. DeBriosa had been known to use hanging and strangulation as means of dispatching his prisoners. Could he have used this method to kill Arthur? Death by strangulation is one of the biggest problems I think that a forensic pathologist has to face.

Classically, if it's manual strangulation with the hands, you'll get fingertip bruises, you'll almost certainly get fingernail marks even if the strangler has got short, well-trimmed fingernails, and you will get the little hemorrhages around the eyes, so-called patee, a generally congested face and so on. That's if it takes about two to three hours to die. But in a significant minority of compressions of the neck, there is some very important nerves run down inside the neck called the vagus nerves. And if you tickle those up, the heart can stop at any minute.

And this is called vaguely inhibition. And there have been numerous cases described over the years, where there's been a struggle outside a pub, and the bloke's neck has been grabbed to restrain him more or less. And to the surprise of the chap grabbing the neck, the grabby goes limp and buckles at the knees and is very dead. So you can get very rapid death from strangulation

with no external signs at all. When you come to do a post-mortem examination, in these cases of vaguely inhibition, you find almost certainly little hemorrhages on the sheath covering the vagus nerve which is enough to give you a clue as to what's happened. So there are a range of means of dying after you've had your neck compressed.

Some of them will be obvious externally. Some of them will be obvious only after a very careful, detailed dissection of the neck by a very skilled dissector of necks. King John's right-hand man who killed, you know, was ordered to kill and killed many, many. People, as I understand it, without question and without thought. That sort of person, they could be a psychopath, but ultimately he's not really achieving anything.

He's not getting into a position of power necessarily. I would describe him as a hedonistic killer. And by that, I mean, we look at different types of killers, and he's a hedonistically driven killer. So he's cold calculating. He potentially sees it as a job, but as a job that he loves. So he's killing purely for the pleasure of killing. With such a dark and violent past, it seems reasonable to assume that DeBriosa murdered Arthur at Ruehant Castle. But there is one more theory about what happened to Arthur, as there's evidence to suggest

that he may have been killed by King John himself. The annals of Margham were written accounts kept by the monks of Margum Abbey in Wales during the 13th century. In the annals, the monks recorded the important events of the time. In one entry, they wrote about the disappearance of Arthur, and they claim that Arthur was murdered by King John. John's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the eight-year-old, told John that it was time that he actually settled the score with Arthur. they met in Ruin.

John being John, being his usual nasty self, was drunk. The story is that King John murdered Arthur with his own hands and threw his body into the River Seine. The body was later found and is buried, apparently somewhere in France. And there is evidence to prove that that happened because William de Brous's wife moored a few years later, actually accused King John of the murder.

And the only way she would have known that was because she was obviously at Ruan Castle with her husband at the time. After Maude de Brioza made public accusations against the king, she, along with her son, were quickly arrested and imprisoned in the dungeons of Corfe Castle in Dorset. The murder of Matilda de Brzeauze

is a very interesting case because she is clearly starved starved to death, starved to death in one of John's prisons, starved to death as a result of John's order. And it obviously calls a great deal of shock throughout England. Not only do chroniclers notice it, but the king himself is forced to write an open letter in which he explains why he's moved against the Breaosa clan. People are clearly shocked by this by the way that Matilda de Breaosa is a true. treated. And they found the body of Maud and her son. She was actually lying part on top of her son, and she'd eaten part of his face. He obviously died first, and she tried to say alive by eating

her own son. And this was all due to the wicked King John. a cruel and terrible end for a mother and her child. But while John was clearly comfortable with ordering the deaths of men, women and children, was he really capable of committing a murder himself, especially when the victim was his own nephew? Arthur Duke of Brittany is allegedly beaten to death by King John. Arthur is a 16-year-old teenager. We assume that he's a reasonably healthy teenager.

We don't think he had consumption or anything like that. King John is middle-aged. It's fairly hard to beat somebody to death. You know, if you've got a group of people in a brawl, that's another thing. On the whole, I would suggest that this is a story to damage the good name of King John, not that he ever had one,

but a beating of a 16-year-old. He's going to die in hospital. two days later rather than down the spot. But was John so threatened by Arthur's claim to the English crown that he would have taken matters into his own hands? People in positions of power, of course, have temptations to do all sorts of things because of their very fact of their power. And there's no question, I would think, that people who have great power

can often misuse it and seek to cow and to terrify subordinates. And, of course, in extreme cases, sometimes, kill people that they don't want to have around. It's not impossible that John could have physically attacked his nephew. It very much depends, of course, on what we know about his psychological background and how he behaved in respect of other matters, but these are violent times. It's perfectly possible, although a clever king would presumably ensure that somebody else did the data work for him, rather than getting good hands involved in the crime

But does John fit the profile of someone capable of committing murder? He has been exposed to violence. Also, there is this paranoia going on. And I'm reminded of a particular model that we have called the trauma control model. And this particular model says to understand the point at which somebody can actually kill, they need to have three things. So there needs to be a genetic predisposition. So they need to have inherited it some way or some issue with the brain.

There needs to be a psychological aspect to it, a psychological predisposition in a way, and there needs to be a kind of an environmental one. Now, with King John, we might be dealing with a genetic predisposition. Certainly he came from a line within his family where there are others who are being violent. The psychological element would be the paranoia. Also, he may have been exposed to violence as a youngster. and certainly if he'd had any training at all as a youngster in terms of killing techniques and that sort of thing, that would have fueled the psychological element. The last one in terms of environment, I would guess the primary thing when we think about environment is family dysfunction. So what was going on at a family level at a very, very early age?

And I wouldn't be surprised with King John if we saw some very early separation. John's childhood was not a happy one. the youngest son of King Henry II, who gave John the nickname Lackland because he joked that there was no land left to give him. He grew up in the shadows of his older brothers, and evidence suggests that he was often bullied and beaten. His father never thought he possessed the qualities of a leader, and as a young boy, sent him away to train for a life in the church. Because of the way royalty dealt with their children at the time, there would have been separation and all of these things would have fed into him becoming a killer or becoming violent.

Then he met alcohol, then it's no surprise that in a fit of rage he committed murder. Absolutely no surprise at all. Could John himself have killed Arthur? He certainly seemed to possess the character traits of a man capable of murder. But is this story a true account or just a rumor circulate? by his enemies. All experts agree that Arthur did not simply vanish into thin air, and was almost certainly a victim of foul play.

But how he died, and under what circumstances, has been debated for hundreds of years? Did he die from his injuries after being blinded and castrated, as some people think? Or could he have been killed by John's right-hand man, William de Briosa, as punishment for trying to claim the English crown. Or did the king, in a drunken rage, kill his nephew in cold blood and throw the body into the River Seine? When all the evidence is weighed up, is there any conclusive proof of what happened

to Arthur? These were brutal times, and it seems that John was more than willing to turn to murder as a means of solving his problems. King John had been under constant threat and there had been rumors of his assassination and he could have been building up a paranoia. The paranoia could have fueled revenge fantasies. And certainly if King John was feeling as though people around him wanted to kill him, he may have felt humiliated by that idea. Now, King John would have been exposed to violence on a regular basis and was involved in many, many battles and wars.

So it wouldn't have been a surprise that he would say, well, the only way I can see to resolve this is to show people that I cannot be killed. It's to show people that I can be equally violent, you know, and they need to be scared of me. And so it makes sense to me that he would have reacted that way and been extremely violent just on the basis of hearing these rumors about his assassination. William DeBriosa was a man with a dark past and a hunger for violence. There seems to be little doubt that he was involved in Arthur's disappearance. But did he carry out the killing himself?

There is no doubt that William de Breaosa played his part in Arthur's death. Whether he actually wielded the knife himself or threw Arthur into the Sen himself, I doubt. These sorts of things tend to be done by lesser individuals. But he was certainly one of the group of men who made the decision, made the political decision to get rid of Arthur of Brittany. If King John was involved in Arthur's disappearance, could he have been brought to justice? At the time of King John, of course,

I mean, the king was there by divine right. It wasn't until poor old Charles I first his head chopped off that some people thought they could actually try a king, and so he wouldn't be liable for trial. On the other hand, of course, he would have to accept that there might be consequences with the church, which was a very powerful force in those days. The person who's responsible is John.

It's very clear, and that's certainly the view that the French court took. Once they knew for certain that Arthur was dead, and they must have known in 1210 that Arthur was dead, because William de Breoza was in exile at the French King's Court, once they had that piece of information, then it was only a matter of time before they could use that against John. And the thing about the murder of Arthur of Brittany is it really does dog John throughout the remainder of his.

of his reign. In 1216, when Philip's son Louis has invaded England, one of his claims is that John has been condemned at the French court for the murder of Arthur of Brittany. Now, whether John actually performed the act or not himself is irrelevant. He was the person who ordered it. He was the person at the top of the regime. And like any modern war criminal, he has to take responsibility for any act that's done under his name. So there's no doubt at all that John is the guilty person. Most experts agree that Arthur, Duke of Brittany, was murdered.

These were turbulent and dangerous times. Kingdoms could rise or fall depending on their ruler. Arthur was a young boy who became involved in a deadly game, perhaps unaware of the consequences of losing. It's a gruesome tale. But experts tend to agree that while Arthur could have died from being blinded and castrated.

It seems to be an unnecessarily complicated form of punishment, especially when there were simpler ways of making people disappear. It seems as though this rumor was put about some time after his disappearance. I've never really seen a convincing death from shock, apart from electric shock. I could imagine him collapsing with the pain and the general. and pleasantness, but he would almost certainly have revived. There's no doubting that William DeBriosa would have been more than capable of committing Arthur's murder. He had been involved in many killings in the past, but there's no real evidence to support the theory

that DeBriosa committed the act himself. The consensus is that he probably did at least know what happened to Arthur Arthur, and may have somehow been involved in organizing his disappearance. Did William de Breaosa actually do the act? We can't say. King John was certainly reported to have had a violent temper. And it's not inconceivable that he may have killed Arthur in a drunken rage. But John was still a king, and kings knew better than to involve themselves in the murder of family members.

It's more probable that John would have had people to carry out his dirty work for him. So it seems we may never know the real identity of Arthur's killer, or the exact method that was used to kill him. But experts agree that one thing is for certain, and that there is one person who remains solely responsible for Arthur's disappearance. That person is King John. what became of those supposedly involved in Arthur's death? Soon afterwards, William DeBriosa fell from the king's favor.

No one knows the exact reason, but John had cited that he was owed money by Debrosa and ordered that he be hunted down and his estate seized. Debrosa fled to France, where he died in exile a year later. This was a turning point of John's reign. After seeing his cruel treatment of not only his nephew, but his closest advisor, the English barons realized John's capacity for tyranny and plagued him with uprisings for the next decade. King John would see no peace for the remainder of his life, and he died in 1216. To this day, Arthur's resting place is unknown, possibly an unmarked shallow grave in Normandy,

or maybe somewhere at the bottom of the River Seine. A tragic end for the boy who was nearly the king of England. Unexplored catacombs buried beneath the city, a crumbling castle perched on a mountain peak, a top-secret government bunker, a cursed mansion cloaked in legend. I'm Sasha Auerbach. Join me in Tom Ward every Wednesday and Sunday

as we reveal the mysteries and histories behind these abandoned places and ask, where did everyone go? We'll hear from Sasha, who knows the history the best. In fact, there's a very famous book by a chap named Marcus Rediker called The Many Headed Hydra, and he talks about pirate ships as an experiment in radical democracy. And me, who knows nothing, erinautical scientists can't quite explain it. They say, we don't actually know how it gets up there. How it stays up?

You're just not good at a science. No, there are explanations? There are explanations. It's just plain physics. Brought to you by LycaShod, makers of forbidden history. Search for Where Did Everyone Go on your favorite podcast platform.