Medieval Assassinations

folks, we decided to talk about Medieval assassinations, mostly as a way to talk about the Hashashshin, the Order of Assassins, that existed in Syria and Iran from 1090-1275. we talk about some ancient assassinations that had a large impact on the Middle Ages before turning to a number of Medieval cases such as Thomas Beckett, Wenceslaus I, Pope John X, and a bunch of Byzantine guys. then, finally, we turn to the Order of Assassins and discuss their formation, their many targets, that time they killed Conrad of Montferrat for Richard the Lionheart, and then their demise at the hands of the Mongol Empire. enjoy!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
There, I go.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Okay. Look, a boyfriend of the podcast, Justin, had.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
Some feedback for us about last week's show, which is
that he didn't know what the Rapture was.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And I thought you were cultured, I know, you ignoraimus,
you uncultured swine. How dare you not know about stupid?
Like it's religious.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it
because it's clearly we're just so American, and like, you know,
just when you think you aren't, you are. And then
also I was like, this is a bad job as
a historian. We did not define our terms.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
I was like, you know, I guess we should. Yeah,
I guess we should have done that. So, yeah, if
you were listening to last week, The Rapture is a
millenarian religious interpretation of the Book of Revelation that interprets

(01:06):
it quite literally as a real thing that's going to happen,
and uh, the rapture will take place, in which case, uh,
the the the just, and the good who live on
earth will be raised into Heaven uh bodily. Uh. Their
their clothes will be left behind. They're driving the bus

(01:28):
or the car or whatever, and it just plows into
something because you know, they got taken et cetera, et cetera,
and the rest of us are in for varying amounts
of tribulation, years of tribulation, depending on, uh, which which
interpretation you go with. I mean, and that's basically, like,

(01:48):
I mean, there's clearly a lot more to it, but like, yeah,
it's it's just some bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Basically, it's a yeah, Like, I mean, that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I was like, I kind of don't want you to
know about this because you've led such a blessed life
up to this point in time. Yeah, and now I'm
gonna now I'm gonna be like, hey, what's up.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, Oh there's some bad vibes.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
I mean, yeah, I guess I guess we should have.
I guess we should have been like, Okay, this is
what it was. But I just don't, like, I don't
know why. I guess, you know, I guess it is
just seruvianism to assume that everybody knows what this is.
But I but like I also kind of thought that
like everybody would have gotten like the tailwinds of it
from like the movies or what. I don't know. It's fine.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
I mean I think that like some of that's also
like one of these things I think that a lot
of like the movies or whatever, like don't necessarily make
it out of the States.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It's just like and I guess we got we just
have to.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Consider that, you know, like these kirdos can make these
like cultural things and make all this money because they're
just that many people in America, like you can do it.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
You don't have to have an international audience for that ship.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah. If you if you listened last week and didn't
know what the rapture was, congratulations.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yes, yeah it does.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I mean, it's not like other than it's something to
laugh at. There's a uh, there's not a lot. It's
I mean yeah, even even as end times prophecies go,
it's pretty uh that's a pretty one. Yeah, it's pretty
met because like, yeah, it's just yeah, I don't know,

(03:34):
I find it fascinating, but like it's also one of
those things that like, uh, yeah, if you don't like,
if you don't.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Know, like anyway, I mean, the point is, no one
got no one got fucking raptured.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I think you'll you and I can both agree right now.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
It was one guy, one person got raptured. They were
in a room by themselves and will never figure it out. Yeah. Yeah,
I don't know. We're all still here, all still in
hell or perritory or whatever this is. But yeah, and
that's cool because uh we got work to do and

(04:11):
uh too.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
We do have work to do.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Oh mm hmmmnking to say the least. Oh God. Anyway, Yeah, no,
that uh that's pretty much it. I don't know. I
don't have h I don't have a ton.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
I spent the day I was like writing for my
personal Patreon about the reading list of that is in seven.
So I've just got like Dante on the brain. I've
got I'm all Dante adult.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Like once again.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
So like when you're like, yeah, we're all in hell,
I was like like immediately like, well, hell are purgatory,
because you know, are we on the mountain or are
we in the abyss?

Speaker 1 (05:06):
You're reading the booklist from seven.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Well, I was like interpreting it right, like, say, you know,
in seven, it's like he goes to the library.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Like Paradise Lost the Divine Comedy.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, but okay, so do you hold up.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
I'll bring it up, which seems which sounds kind of
like cheating because one of those is just riffing off
the other.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
But yeah, yeah, okay, so well, but even then, the
Divine Comedy, it doesn't really get to the Seven Deadly
Sins very much.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
It's mostly like, you know, the devil's doing whatever. So okay.

Speaker 3 (05:35):
So in the library, he writes down, you may want
to check the following books read the Seven Deadly Sins,
Dante's Purgatory, the Canterbury Tales, the Parsons Tale, and the
Dictionary of Catholicism.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Uh. And that Dictionary cathol doesn't exist. I think they
mean the Catholic Encyclopedia. But that's okay. And then later on.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
I know, right, it's like, you know, just grab that.
And then later on they're like, oh, the we need
to ask uh the FBI because uh uh, he says,
if you want to know who's reading Purgatory and Paradise
Lost and Helter Skelter, the FBI's computers will tell us.
So then we get to Paradise Lost, but also Helter Skelter, like,
what has Charles Manson got to do with this?

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Then the FBI's list has the Divine Comedy, the History
of Catholicism doesn't exist. Murderers and bad men doesn't exist.
Modern homicide investigation doesn't exist. In Cold Blood of Human Bondage,
the Marquis de Sade, which what which Marquis de Sade?
And the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas which again like

(06:41):
is that.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
In Cold Blood by Truman Capodi.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
The other Truman Coponi book like the first ever true
crime book, or like like on human Bondage that's like
the Summerset mom thinly veiled autobiography like about like being
a dude who fucks too much, Like.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
I think they just put that in to make a
body sure.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, oh, I mean yeah, you'd already had like well
at some point if you have the bondage fetish like
of h yeah yeah. The knife with the knife Dick.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, we all remember the knife Dick.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
The guy, the guy who plays that, the guy who
does that. He's a character actor. I don't remember his name,
but his like thing in there, his delivery is so
perfect because he's just like he is, like he's just
freaking's like I don't know, I don't know, he just
came up.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I don't know. Yeah, he's so.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Fucking anyway, that's a good movie it's a.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Really good movie. Dude, like that stands up, stands Up.
Rewatched it, but then overthought it because that's who I'm
as a person. So yeah, that's what I've been doing
all day. I wrote twenty hundred words all that what
is wrong with Me?

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Wrong with Me? I like it? Oh is good?

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah is good. That could be one for book club,
even though it's not medieval.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
But I yeah, yeah, I like there's something in like
in Paradise Lost, and I mean, I know you can
interpret it different ways, but like to me, it's like
Milton reckoning with like his belief in the Almighty, while

(08:22):
at the same time like trying to come to terms
with the fact that, like the world sucks, bad things
happen to nice people, Like there's no rhyme or reason
to like the Christian nations don't win wars against the
nations of other religions all the time, so like you
can't make heads or tails of that. And he's a guy,

(08:43):
and he's like standing on the precipice of this thing
that Like it's an idea that I think has been
It's probably been around for a very long time. You know,
people have been mad at their gods since we invented
gods or you know, God's created us or whatever. But
he is like standing on the precipice, and it's just like,
you know what, everything, the entire history of the world

(09:06):
and everything is pulling, pulling, trying to pull him back
from this and like being like, no, don't do like,
don't do this. You're going to open up a can
of worms. This is insane. But then he can't help it,
and he makes the devil sympathetic, and he makes the
devil into an anti hero and God into your dad

(09:31):
who's just a dick, and like maybe he's maybe he
loves you, you know something like that. He probably does,
but like at the same time, like how could you
know for sure because he's treating you like that. And
it's just like he's standing on the edge of this
thing that has not been put into popular into the

(09:54):
popular mille to this point, like there aren't a ton
of like, hey, maybe you know, maybe Satan was you know, uh, maybe.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Maybe he had, maybe he was maybe some points.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
Maybe yeah, maybe God has bad vibes and it is
unpleasant to be around. Uh, And it just it feels
to me like there's something so profound about it because
he's so terrified of it and he has to write
it and he does, and I mean, like I really do,
Like I think it's one of those things where like
sometimes books just capture, capture something, and maybe it happens

(10:29):
at way after they're written or whatever, but they capture
this thing, and he captures this moment where like overall religion,
like overarching religion that spans like you know, entire regions
and everything like that, like it was in the Middle
Ages and especially pre thirty Years War, is like really

(10:50):
going away, like it's it's finally falling away, and he
has to contend with that, and he and ah, god,
I love it. It's so good. Yeah, yeah, that was
a lot. Oh yeah, brother on Paradise. I just think
it's so lovely.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
I think, like, yeah, it's a really great piece of work,
you know.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
And I and I have and like, look, I don't
like Luther, but I do have a perverse respect for
people who stand on the precipice of something like that
and they do take the step. They do say fuck it,
like they like, uh, jan Hu's the same way, like
you stand up there and you say fuck you, fuck this.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
I do this.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
God is bullshit. I do not believe in this. Let's
go and then yeah, and I mean you never, the
consequences are never going to be anything that you could
possibly imagine. You It's it's dealing with forces beyond our kid,
and yeah, it's great. I love it. It's fun.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Why, that's why religion is interesting, Like it is interesting thing.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, Like I think that we have to we simply
have to hand it to the people who have the
wherewithal to Like, sorry, I'm sitting in the living room
today because I just like couldn't handle being in the dark.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
So, yeah, there's a motorcyclist.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
I don't know, I don't know, but yeah, like I
think that it's really interesting to watch that kind of
the watch that development happened, that the humanizing of you know,
the devils and things, and you know, indeed, like I
think that it's always possible to see.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Them more as human, like more as you know.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Pertaining to us than you know it is with God,
because like the entire point of God is that he's
always better than you, right, and Milton, And it's an
interesting take for someone who will end up in like
Oliver Cromwell's actual factual fucking government.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
But you know, we'll take it.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
I do always forget that.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
That's funny, isn't it right?

Speaker 3 (13:01):
It is?

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Oh man, all right, let's we should probably do the
actual show the thing I can't Yeah, I can't do.
I can't do. I can't riff on Paradix Loss right
now for another forty minutes. I haven't read it. It's
been I read it. That was like, yeah, that was
like five years ago. It's like, what's time? I don't

(13:24):
remember time anyway. Hello, welcome back to You're Not So Different,

(14:02):
a podcast about how I'm gonna get misty eyed about
someone being being being the little redded atheist of their time. Yeah, today, folks,
we are talking about assassins, medieval assassinations and things such
as that. But before we do, we have a couple questions.

(14:24):
First from West Bank robbery. I would like to know
what Yield mfrs thought about apes and monkeys.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
It's think they're quite funny.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Yeah, pretty. First of all, it looks like people.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
It's like, yeah, like so they have the similar monkey
thing that that we've got. There is like rather a
lot of enjoying.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
The monkeness of them and using them as like sort
of you know, kind of humorous stand ins and things
like that, so like, h.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
You know, there is that kind of same like he
he he, Like we enjoy the.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Monkey, right, Like, but I went and I have pulled
up the Aberdeen Bestiaries Monkey on apes and it says
uh so they say, uh.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
Where sorry, this is this is great.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
So they've got like, you know, a couple of monkeys
that they show up the top and they basically showed
the monkeys carrying their babies around and they are so
they're like really in the text kind of like talking
about the family of them. So they say that like
the female monkey gives birth the twins, loving one and

(15:46):
hating the other. When hunted, she carries the loved ones
in her arms while the other clings to her back.
Eventually she tires, drops the favorite baby and the other
one is saved.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
The ape does not have a tail, so that's the
ape as opposed to the monkey does not have a
a does not have a tail. So like there's this
whole thing about like them being.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Like, you know, they've got these this so they're kind
of like here a standard for like the best laid plans,
if that makes sense. The best Eeries will tell you
about animals. Yeah, but like they they usually serve a
moral purpose, and so it's like essentially you're you've got

(16:35):
to understand them as like a way of talking about humans.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
They're kind of like humans. You might like feel differently
about your kids.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
You might try to do certain things, but then you
just kind of like get fucked up one way or another.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
And then so I think this is.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Also where we get the term like monkey on your
back to a certain extent, because it's like the ones
on the back is like the one that you don't like,
but because it's doing it under its own volition, it
it it it's able to kind of like stick around,
if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only thing I'll add is that, uh,
the so the gorilla is first described in history, in
written history anyway, as UH in five around five hundred
BC by UH by a guy named a Carthaginian guy
named Hanno the Navigator, who UH sailed at least part

(17:34):
way around the West African coast, uh, you know, down
towards Sierra Leone and all that, and UH is quote
from his UH from his journal.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
They they encountered quote savage people the greater part of
whom were women whose bodies were harry and whom our
interpreters called gorilla end quote. And so basically it goes
on for longer. But basically they thought these they originally
did think these were people of some kind, like very hairy,

(18:10):
primitive kind of people. They tried to bring some of
them back to like teach them stuff, and the gorillas
were kind of like, yeah, no, no thanks, We're not
going to do that, and so they killed I think
three of them and skinned them and took their hides
back to Carthage and they stayed there until Room destroyed
the city. Anyway, Yeah, basically, in the ancient world, at

(18:38):
least in Carthage, gorilla became synonymous for a tribe of
hairy women. So there you go. That is that is
what some year old m efforts thought about them.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
I've got I've got also one because I'm going there
on Friday for the Hartleypool Folk Festival to talk about
wall sailing. But I'm going to Hartleypool and a colloquial
term that you can use to talk about people from
Hartleypool as you can call him a monkey hangar.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Oh Jesus, because.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Okay, let's say it's an apocryphal story, it's not real.
And the idea is that during the Napoleonic Wars a
there's a wreck of a French chas off the shore
and the only survivor of the wreck is a monkey
that had The guys in the army had dressed up

(19:37):
in a French army uniform because they thought it would
be funny. So the monkey swims to shore, gets found
on the beach wearing wearing this like French army uniform,
and they put it on trial and the like the
joke is they've never seen a French person before or
a monkey, and so they decide that it is like
a French spy and they hang the monkey. This is

(20:03):
not a real story, but apparently if you go to
Hartlepool there are like monkey statues all over the place
and that's fantastic.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
There you go, there you go.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
That is much better than I thought. Well, I knew
you weren't going to say something like that and be
like anyway, but but I was like.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
To cut the mic, the beep beep.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
I need to get a soundboard so I can.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Simpson's technical difficulties one with the drunk cameraman.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, West Bank robbery, Thank you for the question.
Next week, it went from Gaffzie, what are domesticated animals
or pets that were more common in the Middle Ages
but that would be considered odd nowadays. Squirrels fucking insane
every time about it? Every time you come, Like, how
the fuck did you get near a squirrel to catch it?

(21:03):
What did you do?

Speaker 2 (21:04):
You'll put the nuts out, homie, put the knights run.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
They're maybe maybe okay, no, I'm sorry, let me take
that back. Squirrels nowadays running probably for good reason. I
assumed they'd always been like that, but maybe it was
different back when they didn't have to dodge fucking cars
and shit.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, I mean we're talking about the red squirrels anyway. Yeah,
who are like.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
The cutious, little cuty cute cutes, but they're super timid
now and like I mean also endangered because like some
Victoria's they are so timid. Yeah, and well some Victorian
idiot brought gray squirrels over from America because they're like
that'll be neat, and like they gave the red squirrels
a bunch of diseases and then also like interbred with
them and like the gray squirrel jeans are like mad dominant.

(21:48):
So no, we just don't have very many red squirrels anymore.
But you can see them someplaces, so they're just like
truly truly wild when you do see them. But they
are fucking adorable. But you know, if you just leave
out in a nuts for long enough, and if you
also like have them born in captivity, then that'll help.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
And then the other the other big one to consider
is of course pigeons, like our good friends the sky puppies.
You know, the reason that every city is fucking full
of pigeons is because everybody loved pigeons until like five
minutes ago when we decided we didn't like pigeons anymore
and just abandon.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
These get them out of here.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh they're pretty Look I saw a chick uh women
after my own Heart the other day who'd made a
pair of booty shorts that said humans domesticated pigeons then
abandoned them.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
It's like, I was like, that's good, this is a
good bit.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
And also see I could see that as like you know,
the one of the Evangelica on title card screens. You know,
it's like humans, humans domesticated pigeons. And then abandoned them,
and you're like, what the fuck is this episode? And
of course it's about changing is dead or what, but
you're just like always a, yeah, it's all about Shania's

(23:03):
Jed or his mom. Everybody loves his mom, the woman
that no one can have or touch. Yep, yeah, well
definitely nothing weird there. Nope, No, I'm just kid folks.
We love it. I'm not saying it's not problematic sometimes,
but we do love it. But yeahs on.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
The show, who doesn't like like a Italian we we're
pro pro mac.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Here I am.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
Yeah, anyway, yeah, I got we we domesticated pigeons and
uh then uh and then abandon them. Rude, very rude,
very rude. Anyway, Gassie, thank you very much for the question.
If you would like to ask us questions like these,
we answered the top every show and then during our

(24:00):
monthly mail back episodes, and please do subscribe at patreon
dot com, slash w NSD pod you it's five bucks
a month. You get all the episodes that for you.
You get a bunch of bonus episodes. We just released
episode ninety five. Bonus episode ninety five on UH the

(24:21):
Uh it's the eighth in our book club series on
the Cameron. So yeah, check that out if you want to.
It's lots of fun.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Gosh, that's a lot of fucking episodes, mate, that's a
lot of bang for your butt.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
We're almost yeah, we're almost up to one hundred. Yeah soon. Uh,
you got right now. I think you got three. You
got three hundred and forty total backlog of episodes on
there have last you a while. It will last you
a while in case you have to, like while away
a trip, like a long car ride, like like if

(24:56):
you choose a fucking car ride from like in circling
the globe.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Yeah, Jesus Christ, Okay, all right, yeah, we're cooking.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
We're cooking.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Let's go. All right, So onto the main show. For
absolutely no reason at all, we have decided to talk
a little bit about ancient and medieval assassinations topically we've
touched on before.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
No reason at all, I see, no reasons, no reasons.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Uh, it's topical we've touched on before with all the
political history we discussed on the show, but we've never
focused on it, and that is to our detriment. Given
the rich history we have to draw from the history
of assassination appears to be about as old as human
civilization itself thanks to stories, and the first verifiable instance
dates back to the Egyptian Old Kingdom. I think it

(25:45):
was around like twenty three hundred BC, so yeah, BCE whatever.
It was such a well known tool in the ancient
world that Sunsu, the famed Chinese general, military strategist and author,
wrote of its political merits as far back as five
hundred BCE, and a couple of centuries later in the
foundational Indian political TREATI Treatise arthah Astra arthas Astra, which

(26:13):
was used by Chantra Gupta to found the Marian Empire.
It was a tool used readily against a Kinemid Persian rulers,
seven of whom died to assassins in a two hundred
and fifty year period, a similar fate which would befall
several Roman emperors, most famously the assassination of Julius Caesar
at the end of the Roman Republic era, an event

(26:35):
that had a special significance to the Roman obsessed medieval Europeans,
despite lacking the same victim name recognition as the ancient
or modern eras the Middle Ages themselves were rife with assassinations.
This includes, most prominently the infamous hashashin the a medieval

(26:56):
Shia Islamic state slash order of assassins, from whom our
modern words assassin and assassination are probably derived via the
travelogues of Marco Polo. Despite what you may have heard,
they were in fact a real group that regularly committed
targeted murder of political and religious opponents. So we will

(27:18):
talk about their attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, and dig
into their rich history. But there's also the case of
England's Henry the Second asking openly, won't somebody rid me
of this troublesome Thomas Beckett. The early Byzantine emperors absolutely
loved to get assassinated, often for the most petty reasons possible,

(27:38):
and even some attempt at assassinations were massive, such as
the attempt on Chinshi Wangdi that drove him deeper into
paranoia before he became China's first emperor, and repeated attempts
on Saladin's life by the Order of Assassins. Folks, there's
a lot to get to it, Eleanor before we dive
deep into the history, and let's exclude Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln,

(28:03):
and JFK. Which assassination or attempt assassination do you find
the most interesting to study or think about. Not that
they're good, they're all, of course very bad, very very bad,
but very bad interesting to study in things.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
I didn't say it was good, I said it was interesting.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yes, I guess the one that I think about a
lot is the assassination slash martyrdom of Saint Ludmila. She
doesn't get talked about as much as Saint Wunchislaus. She
is Saint Wencheslaus's grandma, and she's the first official martyr

(28:42):
of the Bohemian Church, so this is kind of like
that Snatter story. She's a conference to Catholicism blah blah
blah blah blah. She then gets killed because she's basically
taken Saint Michislaus under his wing after his father dies,
and she's making him a little to Catholic for his
mother's taste.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
His mother, Drajo Mirah, is.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
A pagan and trying to raise her boy's pagan so
Joomira thinks she has undue power over the kid and
decides she's going to asassinate him. Now, what's interesting about
this particular assassination of a Ludimilla is these three Nights
get sent after Ludmilla.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
To kill her.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
And she's like, hell, yeah, brother, can't wait to get
murdered by some pagans, like I've been trading for this
my whole life. Fuck yeah, I can't wait to get martyred.
And she's like, cut my head off, let's fucking go.
And they're like no, because I know how your Christians
are and you like to use blood as a relic,

(29:43):
and so they do this specific thing of strangling her
to death in order to avoid creating blood as a relic.
And you know, this may be in entirely a pocryphal
story one way or another. We do think she probably
got killed, but I think it's interesting to write about
it in this particularized manner where you're, as a part

(30:06):
of the assassination thinking about the Christian ideas of a
martyrdom and b relics. And I think that's really cool.
So yeah, I think about that one a lot. That's
my personal Roman Empire of assassinations.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
What about you? You got any I cannot hear you?

Speaker 1 (30:31):
God damn it. No, that's Okay, I muted myself that
time instead of the thing doing it.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Oh good, okay, good.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Yeah. So yeah, for me, it is Castro because Castro is.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
Send as many FBI agents as you want. He's just
gonna fuck him, same with things with salad and really.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, he's just gonna fuck him and kill him. It's like, oh, oh, oh,
you're an American spy. Oh that's so awful. Please look
at my raw animal career. And they're like, uh huh
uh no, but for real, uh cia Uh. Various organizations
tried to assassinate him.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
They've admitted I believe they've admitted to at least twelve attempts.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
His sauceless, juiceless, juiceless motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
And you not, how can you not kill a guy
that lives that close? Like how like if you if
you're going to assassinate him, They're like, it's yeah, a
thing that his personal bodyguard.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
Uh, and and.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Others say it was closer to like six hundred and
thirty eight times if they failed. I don't really know.
Six hundred and thirty eight is a way funnier. So
that's the one I go with. But I mean, like,
and this is the stuff we were talking about, like
they tried to do the exploding cigar thing. That is real.
That did that. That is the thing that they tried.
And it's just like, I I don't. I don't understand

(32:00):
how you failed twelve times. I don't understand how you
could fail more than one hundred times. I just don't.
Like it's so fast, it's so so fascinating to me.
He's just like, yeah, no, I'm good like you guys.
You know, like I'm going out like he he you know,
walking out with like a without like a bulletproof vest

(32:21):
on or whatever, like yeah, come on, Like it's just
like I mean like you could, like you could have
a sniper do this, Like it's not like yeah, I don't.
I don't. I don't understand, Like because if you're because
like why do you everybody knows you want him dead.
Why do you care if sniper takes him out? And

(32:45):
then like you you hang the sniper out to dry
and be like, oh, he's a lone wolf or whatever,
and then you're like, oh, well, anyway time to invade.
Like I don't, I don't. It's baffling. It's it's just
baffling to me.

Speaker 3 (32:57):
I mean, his charisma simply bends time and space. It does,
and bullets can't hurt him. I'm imagining this is also
what went down with Saladin, which we'll get to you later.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
But uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, So all right, so let's
go back. Let's look at some uh pre medieval assassinations.
I mean, I think the biggest, the biggest ones for

(33:29):
the medieval, especially medieval Europeans. Uh. The first is Philip
the Second of Macedon.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
He was the father of Alexander the Great and he
was now he was killed by a jilted lover who
is taking revenge. H you know, because the jilted lover
had been sexually assaulted by one of Phillip's allies, and
so he was kind of taking revenge. But a lot

(33:58):
of people think it was an assassination, and in the
Middle Ages they likely would have thought that as well.
And then far far more important Julius Caesar in forty
four BCE, I mean, probably the most famous and infamous
assassination in history, immortalized by countless artists, writers and historians.

(34:19):
You know, you know the deal. Twenty three stab wounds,
only one of which was fatal. Twenty two people were
just writing their name on the project at the end
after someone else did the work. Fair enough, fair enough, yeah, eleanor.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
You know, he.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Caesar gets assassinated by his fellow senators because they fear
his power and they thought that they could just get
things to they could brute force history into the way
they wanted it to, but then found that was not
the case. And then, of course, in the aftermath the
Empire was formed by Augustus said, you know, the rest

(34:57):
of Western history follows a So, like, what kind of
place did this assassination have in the medieval mind? I mean,
given that at the time, Caesar would have been like,
I don't know, the fourth most famous person to have
ever lived or something like that.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah, you're meant to understand that this is very bad.
This is very bad.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Dante lamenting it, He's like, oh, worst thing, the worst
thing that ever happened.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Julius Caesar would have loved me personally. We would have
been a homies.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
Oh God, why, et cetera. I mean, yeah, basically, so,
which is cute. They they love a bit of that,
don't they. So, you know, obviously living in the world
that they do, which aggrandizes Rome and has it played
such an incredibly central role, not that we would know
anything about that now, no, like no, we never do

(35:50):
that sort of thing. But also, you know, living in
an expressly monarchical world, you know, this is seen as
like this great betrayal of.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
Kingship. And even though it's like emperorship here, so uh,
you know, this is.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Meant to be like the very very bad stuff really
and this is why you know, you see certain people
in Hell in the things, you know.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
So, but Caesar was in the top level. He was
in the top level.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, he's worthy.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
Yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
You there's a reason why Dante also has like the
violent levels of hell as down lower. So it's like
by the time you like get involved with these things,
then you're you're worst person, right, So this is kind
of seen as this destabilizing event, even if it isn't
really you know, the history here doesn't really matter. It's

(36:47):
about the perception. And you know, the I think even
now everyone is like, oh, poor Julius Caesar, and it's like,
I don't know, man, kind.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Of fuck that guy.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
But yah, so I don't.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
I think it's you probably shouldn't stab people forty four times.
I'm not saying his exact.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
But his assassination is funny because of like literally only
one person guy did a deep enough stab wound to
kill him. The rest of them were like like surface
nicks and like and cuts, and it's like if that
one guy didn't get deep enough, like you basically just
have twenty three senators who came up to him with

(37:29):
like like sharply edged paper and gave him paper cuts
and then like and then just are like, oh, he
survived because I nicked him with a shaving razor. Whoops,
yeahs back on me. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
I think that's kind of like what we're seeing at
play here is that it's like it's all good in theory,
but if you actually have to go up and stab someone,
it's kind of tricky, you know.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, And I mean like you can tell like this
like this is this is an utter betrayal of Rome
and of the glory and majesty of the Roman Empire,
because you know, Brutus is considered a trader on nearly
on the level of Judas Iscariot by many people. I mean,

(38:18):
obviously Dante did that, but that was not an uncommon
idea and still isn't to be honest.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
But and.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
His his is also funny because like the Roman Empire
that these people are worshiping and they want to get back,
that doesn't come back until or that doesn't come about.
Caesar has to die for that to happen. Like the
thing that he was in charge of when he was
alive was just like it was like the shoddy end

(38:52):
of the republic, and he became like the dictator of it,
and it's just like okay, cool, like all right, fine,
it's it's just one of those things like he in
order for like medieval Europe to take the shape that
it does, Caesar has to die or like something like that,
because it's gonna look way different if you don't have Augustus,

(39:16):
you know, ruling declaring the empire in like fifteen BCE
and then ruling it for whatever it was, like forty
odd years.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, yeah, you know, so like.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Basically, these guys all have a heart on for the
Roman Empire, so of course they're going to be sad
when you kill.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Julius whatever, you know.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, anyway, Yeah, that's that's enough of Julius Caesar. We've
got we've got bigger and better things to move on to. Uh.
I mean, of course, the tradition of Roman emperors being
assassinated is uh. It is is a is a story
when a Caligula was killed by praetorians. Claudius was killed
by someone. He died by poison. Possibly was it his

(40:00):
mom or his stepmom, So I don't fucking know. Domitian
was killed by his court admins, Galba VI praetorians, Getta
by his brother and co emperor Maximinius Thrax, by his
own soldiers, Severus Alexander, by legion mutiny, and many more.
We'd love to see it.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
We'd love to see it, guys.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Keep up around.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
And then the Jewish assassination society, the SIKARII Uh. They
were formed uh circus six CE in response to Roman
territorial advancement and aggression, especially in the run up to
the First Jewish Roman War. So yeah, moving into the
Middle Ages, We're going to talk about a few before

(40:44):
we get to the assassins, and then we'll spend the
rest of the episode with them.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
So uh.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
You know, as we said, Byzantine emperors they loved to
get assassinated, not as much as they love to get
like overthrown in like city coups and exile, but at
least seven Byzantine emperors were assassinated, uh including Justinian the Second,
who was you know, the who came after Justinian the

(41:11):
big one, Alexios Comninos, the son of Alexis Comninos the Second,
the son of the more famous Alexios, and uh Nicophorio
Nikophoros the second Foca, who was another guy who's trying
to do well and got wrecked for his trouble. Pope

(41:32):
John the tenth was assassinated by Gee of Tuscany and
others in nine twenty eight CE. So it wasn't just
political leaders. Sometimes the pope got got got.

Speaker 3 (41:46):
Proven me right about how popes aren't important for a
really long time.

Speaker 2 (41:50):
You just killed them.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
You just killed you just killed You just assassinated a
pope and well got to get a new vicar of Christ.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
I guess assassinating Byzantine emperors that's just proving their Roman right,
Like that's all that is pope's it's it's proven that
they suck and that nobody cares.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Not at this point anyway. Yeah, it's is LUs the
first of Bohemia possibly possibly assassinated. I believe the historical
consensus is still out on that he died Eleanor do
you I mean, do you think he was?

Speaker 2 (42:26):
I do think it's I do think his brother killed him.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Okay, Okay, yeah, like I said, I thought you the
story is, you know, the story is like the big
hagiography one is that he gets killed in front of
a church by his brother and some pals, his brother
being Bullislaus the First the Cruel, and I think that
he did probably kill him because they are going around

(42:50):
calling him Bullslas the Cruel.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
So it's like, is coming to kill me? What Rul?
What's up?

Speaker 3 (43:00):
And he's like, oh yeah, So like I think, you know,
he gets the name fairly early on. And also just
kind of like the way that he treats his brother's
corpse and things kind of like indicates that he knows
he's like done something politically datd you know, like he does.
He does a lot to just be like, uh, my
brothers a saint, you know, which is kind of like, well,

(43:21):
who killed him?

Speaker 2 (43:22):
So yeah, I think he did get assassinated?

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Yeah, And uh then there is Thomas Beckett when somebody
rid me of this troublesome priest Eleanor you.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Know who London boy down London.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Why did he get got what?

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Ocause he's just kind of.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Him.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
So first, he and Henry this second are on really
good terms right like when he's just kind of coming
up and he's not as high up in the church.
He and Henry are absolute homeboys. But you got to
understand that Thomas is from London, like he is from
more of a middle class background, so kind of like

(44:05):
more of the like wealthy city boy.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
He's not from the noble classes.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
And so eventually Henry is like, well, I want this
guy to be archbishop because I will have a lot
of control over him. Because a first of all, he's
my homie. We're always on like hunting trips, we hang
out all the time, we're doing all of these specific
things together. But also since he is just like some
guild member's son from London and he doesn't have noble backing,

(44:37):
he's going to owe his position to me, so he'll
always do whatever the fuck I say. Basically, Thomas then
celebrates by immediately being like, yeah, fuck you.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
I actually love the.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Pope and I want to suck his dick and that's
what I want to do. He spends a lot of
time like not in England because the situation is so volatile.
I don't think There's two things that I don't think.
I don't think that who will rid me of this
medicine priest story is literally accurate. I also don't think

(45:12):
that Henry the second was stupid enough to think that
Henry Henry Beckett should be killed. Well, sorry, Thomas Becket
should be killed. He's not that stupid, right, He's a
he's a really clever ruler. He's one of the he's
one of the best kings England ever has, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
So you don't think he literally pointed at the Archbishop
of Cannonburium was like kill that he kill that motherfucker.
You don't think that.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
Now, No, But I do think that people around him
were like, why don't we just kill this motherfucker. It's
not like popes haven't been killed before or whatever, you know,
and we'll.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Like go to it.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
So anyway, what I mean, one way or another, those
three nights go down there. But the thing about it
is Thomas almost certainly knew he was gonna get got,
you know, like when he gets killed that you know,
like one of the things where they're like, oh, he's
definitely a sight now. He's like he he like could
have kind of hidden and he's like, no, I won't.
And then they kill him and it's like oh, loh

(46:06):
and behold he was wearing a hair shirt underneath his clothes. Wow,
like crazy, you know, it was yeah, And it's like
this guy who clearly loved the fucking high life up
to this point in time, you know, like he he
was just gunning for it and he got it, so
like good for him, but yeah, yeah, uh.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
He got got some knights killed him.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Exactly how this plays out I don't know, but it
ended up being a good thing for England in the
long run because they basically get like a cult of
a saint and people start showing up to visit more often.
So it's really funny, like what like Dover Castle, which
is absolutely fucking huge, Like Henry spends all this money
enlarging and fancying up Dover Castle because everyone's like, oh,
I'd love to go to Canterbury and go on pilgrimage

(46:50):
to the place where like.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Your homies murdered your bishop. And he's like, oh, yeah,
well you could stay here when you land.

Speaker 1 (46:55):
It's really funny, Yeah, it'll be it'll be a pilgrimage
you can get you can get some time off in
hell for like that's.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Just yeah, it's good.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
It's good stuff, you know, in purgatory. Yeah, yeah, all right,
let's get to what we came here to get to
the hashashin aka the order of Assassins who are around
from about ten ninety to about twelve seventy five CE.
So I mean, as you all you know, me and

(47:24):
Eleanor of course know this, and we're sure all of
you do. But for the people who don't, you know,
the Fatomid Caliphate was having issues by the ten nineties,
and there was a succession struggle between the proclaimed Air
Nizar and two others, al Mustan Syr and al Afdhal. Eventually,

(47:45):
al Afdal led a palace coup against al Mustan Sir,
who was killed and Nazar fled into the mountains in
ten ninety four. He was later captured and executed by
al Afdal following a battle into ninety five. Uh Nazari
Nazari Ismaili adherents of Shia Islam then broke off and

(48:10):
formed their own sect, believing that Nazzar was a psion
of the prophet Muhammad's true successor, and uh one that
he had one that he had ali ibn Abi Talib,

(48:32):
who they believed have been declared the successor, and that
his line had passed through Nazar and uh, yeah Nazari
Ismaili are still around today. They think, Uh, the current
aga Khan Agakhon the fifth uh is the spiritual leader
and I'm mom of the Nazzari's. So yeah, that's a

(48:52):
bit of background on that. So like eleanor you know,
that's all well and good, but like why did they they?
You know, who is this group to capture the Alement
castle in present day Iran in about ten ninety and
how do you how do you go from like just

(49:14):
a group of marauders who captures a castle to being like, well,
time to farm the entire state out as an assassin's guild.
Like that's a fan Like that's a fantasy novel thing.
You if you had this state in a fantasy novel,
I'd be like, all right, guys, this is a little
on the nose.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah, I mean, I guess the first is that they've
got this specific brand of Islam that they are following,
which is Ismilism, right, and so with that, that means
you're specifically like following this one mom, and if what
you're doing is you're like, yeah, our deal is that

(49:54):
is like this one guy, it's really a lot easier
to get into the kind of like let's say, a
high control situation.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
The thing I think that we could we could say
about it. They also appear to be very high on
hash yep, that'll help you know.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah. The story goes that they they would bring in
new recruits into the gardens in their castles and into
their nicest gardens in their castles, and they would essentially
just smoke them up with hashi used. Whether that was

(50:36):
marijuana or keieth or him whatever, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
It had THC in it.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
It had THC in it, and it got them high,
or supposedly did. And they as they were high, they
walked them through these gardens and they were like, you know,
you can have all this if you just uh you know,
follow us and and do what we say. And you know,
then they would just you know, keep giving him a
supply of hashish, and uh there you go. It's where

(51:04):
we get the word for assassins and where we get
the word uh hashish. So yeah, just a panoply of
historical consequence.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, it's like a dude's like, what are you gonna do?
It's it's the Middle Ages. How are you gonna keep
him down on the farm? Once they've got really really
high in a palace garden, right, they're like, yeah, shit,
I don't know, man, like I'll fucking.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
I'll kill someone. Yeah, I mean like like yeah, it's uh,
you know, I think anybody who's ever like gotten extremely
high on like really high grade weed or something like that,
or even bad weed, you know, like you're just like,
you know, you could probably be uh be talked into
things a lot easier. And so like if someone like

(51:45):
gets you high and then brings you into this garden
where there's like a couple of like women who are
dancing and kind of writhing around, you're like, oh, yeah, sure,
yeah kill some guy. I don't even like yeah, well
yeah cool, but I mean yeah, it's so that seems
to be that that's the uh, that's the story of
like how they bring people in and like their connection

(52:08):
to hashish this this dues. Even though that sounds like
a fan again, another fantastical, insane kind of thing that
does seem to be backed up by various historical sources
Marco Polo, uh several uh uh, several Islamic scholars and historians.
So you know, like, uh, I guess like you. So

(52:32):
you're starting out and and let's say you're the Order
of Assassins. You got a nice little castle. Uh, you
got you got the Alumut Castle. Later you're gonna take
mysiaf down in Syria, and you're like, okay, so who
who are we setting our sights on first? And I

(52:52):
should note that the list of I'll go ahead, I'll
bring it up the second go ahead.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Well, no, I mean the thing that I think is
quite interesting is how they like basically franchise out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
They were like we need yeah, we got to get
more coverage over in Syria. They got a lot of
potential down there, Like we don't have a there's not
another McDonald's for miles. We just put one down there.
It'll get all the interstate traffic, it'll be great. And
people in Syria are like, fucking yeah, sounds good. Let's

(53:24):
let's fucking do it.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
I just think that it is interesting that people are like, yeah,
this is a really good idea. Yeah, Like I think
that kind of tells you a lot about how political
violence works. At the time, were like, yeah, dude, this
is great. Yeah, so yeah, like they so they they
They're like, we're gonna send down al Jakim al Munagium.

(53:51):
And he's a physician astrologer. But let I want to
make it so clear, he did not take the hypocritical
at least he's like, dude, that only that's only while
I'm at work, you know, this is more of a
pastime for me. But basically, they kick off their first
assassination in eleven oh three by killing the Emir of

(54:14):
Holmes uh and he was the he was the enemy
of the Emir of Aleppo. So like they're going they're
going pretty high up already, like I mean, but by
the time you can get to the fucking emrror, like
you're like, this is a group of guys who knows
what's going on?

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Right, So basically, like he shows up to the Great.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
Mosque in Holmes and like just gets fucking gut immediately,
and you know, so that seemed to work out pretty
well for all involved, I guess, yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, So like there's like a list of like of
life victims of assassins. And now all of these can't
be conclusively proven to be to be the work of
the Hashashim. But like this list is, there's like eighty
something names on this and like I mean, now, granted,

(55:17):
like you know, most states killed more than eighty people
in a year, but most states aren't like advertising that
their raison debt is assassination. So there's you know, eighty,
you know, eighty murders here, and I mean they these

(55:37):
range from like people that they didn't like, to like
people that, you know, religious enemies who had offended their
sector Shia or you know, just people who had offended
the leaders of their government or whatever. And it's like

(55:57):
you get and but then they're also like, okay, uh,
you know, they they took out a Fatimid caliph named
al Amir by akam Uh. Two Abbasid caliphs, al Mustarshied
and al Rashid were both killed. But they but the

(56:19):
thing is they didn't just stop with Muslims or other
people in the Levant or or Iran. They they they
were fine going after those fucking asshole crusader states in crusaders,

(56:39):
and they successfully killed Brahman the second the account of Tripoli.
And then I think probably most famous to Europeans and
the Western world was that they killed a man named
Conrad of Montferrat in UH during the I think it

(57:03):
was the Third Crusade. Eleanor who who is Conrad of Montferrat?
What was he doing there? And who supposedly ordered this assassination?

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Oh God, bless Conrad. Like here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (57:21):
Listen, listen to me, Like, here is the thing about
white boys in the middle Sometimes you get so quirked up,
you know, you're all like a halalikum friends, and it
just doesn't it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Really come off. But so this white boy is pretty
much the king of Jerusalem. He's got there through marriage.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
You know, you will you will notice that we're not
calling him Conrad of Jerusalem, right, So yeah, So he
basically he doesn't last particularly long. He marries Isabella the
First of Rusalem in eleven ninety, and then he has
to get elected because it's technically an elective kingship. Remember

(58:08):
we talked about this in UH, Welcome to the Crusades,
when like they're trying to decide who's going to control it, right,
so everyone has dot com yep, that's what Welcome to
the Crusades dot com. Yeah, so basically he finally gets
elected in eleven ninety two and then immediately skilled and

(58:29):
like I don't even joking, I'm not even joking.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
He's like, it's like a matter of days until he
is he is killed.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
Right. So he is from the Piedmont, so you know,
kind of like the area that sometimes from sometimes Italy.
You know, so he's a Holy Roman imperial subject. We
don't really know that much about him, but we do
know that his family was allied with the Byzantines, which
is how he kind of like comes to be understood

(58:59):
as like the possible sort of dude that you could
marry off into Jerusalem. And also he kind of gets
put forward in this way because the Byzantines are like, yeah,
that'd be great for us if like someone who is
our friend is kind of on the throne. He had
been also around in the shop kind of sort of

(59:20):
like helping to defend hire places like that, but yeah,
you know, he doesn't. It's a real struggle for him
to even get to the throne in the first place.
And then we've got we've got a source from it
that I looked up, which is quite funny. And they
say that he rode home through the city, flanked by

(59:43):
a pair of guards, and as he turned down a
narrow street, he saw two men sitting on either side
of the road. As Conrad approached, they stood up and
walked to meet him. One of them was holding a letter.
Conrad was intrigued, but did not dismount. Rather, he stretched
down from his horse and reached out to take the letter.
As he did so, the man holding the letter drew
knife and stabbed upwards, plunging the blade deep into Conrad's body.

(01:00:05):
At the same time, leapt onto the back of Conrad's
horse and stabbed him.

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
In his side.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Not yeah, so yeah, he survives a little while longer,
but we're not sure. Some people say he died at
the scene of his attack. Some people say he got
dragged into a church and died there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Uh yeah, yeah, so yeah, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Yeah yeah, and uh you know that, uh, that murder
was definitely not ordered by Richard the first Richard the
King of England, because he and Montferrat were having the

(01:00:51):
quarrel of some kind. It definitely wasn't that it was,
And that's the thing say for sure. It may traditionally,
and the coolest story is Richard the Lionheart, but it
could have been I go with that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
I think that that's that's what I think. Yeah, so
because I think that, like you know, because the things
that you tend to see now is they're like, oh,
well he was killed by the assassins, so they were
in league with they were in league with Seliden, and
I'm like, were they.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Yeah, that's not like a thing of okay. First of all,
they tried, uh, there was one confirmed attempted assassination that
they tried on Saladin because he kept moving, he kept
pushing them back like he wanted them out of Syria,
he wanted them out of the Massioff castle and he

(01:01:42):
so he went after them like that. And then they
supposedly tried another attempt at assassination. That was a plot
that was full before there was even like an actual
attempt made. But he I cannot see him doing that,
especially since he had his own army and an entire

(01:02:02):
state under him by that point. If he wanted to,
if he wanted Conrad of Montferat quietly killed, he had
plenty of people who could do it, who weren't who
hadn't previously tried to kill him.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
Mmmm. It's like to me, it just very much seems
as though certain piece of shit English kings paid good
money for this to happen, right like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
And they yeah, and and this was and this was
was a was a known thing at the time because
part of the reason that Richard the Lionheart is going
to be kidnapped by the Holy Roman Empire on the
way back from the Crusade is because of it. They
were going to cite Conrad's death. So like, this is

(01:02:48):
this is not something that like historians came up with recently,
Like this was like Conrad died in eleven ninety two
and Richard was getting arrested for this like a year
and a half half later, so like yeah, it's yeah,
yeah they And when we were talking earlier, we should
have talked like that. We should have mentioned there is

(01:03:10):
this thing called the Old Man of the Mountain, who
is supposed which is what like the word that are
the phrase that Marco Polo used to refer to, Like
the leader he was referring to is the Grand Master
of the Order of Assassins, who during his time was

(01:03:31):
a Hassan e Sabah And so like there's like this
whole like myth around like the old man in the
mountain and that, and part of like what they what
they're doing with the Hashish ceremonies is like taking them
to meet the supposed the old man in the mountain
and talking to him. And if you read stuff on this,

(01:03:52):
European chroniclers, because of Marco Polo, will refer to this
man almost exclusively as like as just the old man
in the mountain. So that's, yeah, that's something we missed earlier.
But the assassins they went on like this. There were
reprisals and counter reprisals, and they tried to get they
tried to you know, I mean, they they had success,

(01:04:13):
but like you can't really it's hard to like build
like a firm state out of all of this because
like do you have like peasants that are like you know,
we're the peasants who do the farming for like the
assss Like, like it's not it's not a stable basis

(01:04:34):
even to form even a medieval state. It's just not
a thing. So it's gonna have trouble like having like
real staying power over time. But they also got way
out over their Skis because towards the end in the
twelve fifties, they tried to assassinate Manka kan who was

(01:05:01):
one of the grandchildren of Yenghis Khan, the third con
to take over. There was Yingis Khan and then Oga
Day and then there was an interim in which there
was actually a female Khanes for a little while, was
like ten years. But anyway, Manka Khan was the third
male khn in the line of Gingus and Uh it

(01:05:23):
was supposed they supposedly sent forty men to Kara Korum
to kill Manka Khan and uh it was ordered, was
supposedly ordered by a lah al Din Muhammad, and they failed.
Manka Khan was already a an extremely loved he. Yeah,

(01:05:44):
he was already extremely paranoid guy. He had uh. He's
described very well by William of Tire, who was in English.
I think he was of English extraction, but obviously out
of Tire, who met with the Manga Khan and talked

(01:06:06):
to him and was supposedly searched. Basically strip searched at
the time because they were fearing more assassination attempts. So
the next time that the Kanate went further east or

(01:06:27):
further west. Yeah, they they destroyed them at at the
Alamout Castle, and yeah they they stuck around for a
few more years, but by twelve seventy five the line
was faltering and it is said to have died by then. However,

(01:06:51):
I mean there are legends that like it hung around
and you know, the Old Man in the Mountain myth
was there, and you know, so it they were around
for you know, one hundred and eighty five years basically
and were incredibly important, and it's just like, you know,
we have this like fantasy ass medieval Like it's like

(01:07:16):
you're playing like an Elder Scrolls game like Skyrim or
Oblivion or whatever, and you're like, well, gotta go join
the Brotherhood of Assassins, Like I mean, I guess it's
kind of like that, and you're just like this was
a real thing, and it's like, not only was it
a real thing, they tried they successfully assassinated uh crusaders

(01:07:40):
like European crusaders, their own like religious adversary co religionist adversaries,
and then also tried to like fucking assassinate like the
con the Great Cohn, who at that time ruled like
it was in the process of ruling over like the
largest contiguous land empire and his and it's just like

(01:08:01):
these guys were like a real thing and they could
just be like if you had the money or the connections,
you could hire these people. And that's just it was
a state for one hundred and eight Like how how
does that? How does a state like that function for
one hundred and eighty five years? It doesn't, like it
doesn't even in even in the medieval Islamic world, like

(01:08:28):
they still had peasants. They still had like you know,
peasants would pay up uh, and you know, you would
be ostensibly protected you you know, it's it's not the
exact same, it doesn't look the exact same, but it's
a similar system. Like that's pretty much how it was
all over Afro Eurasia at that point to one degree
or another, in the places that weren't still fairly tribal,

(01:08:50):
but like this was a state that was there, like
and it wasn't just like it was in Syria and
Iran and like you know, medieval maybe medieval Iron is
an incredibly important place, like that's very near Bagdad, and
it's just like, yeah, they're there, who can who cares?

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it's just a really good
lesson and how medieval qualities are just super different to
our own.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
I guess, like you can have these states within states
in a way that you no longer really can.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
There's this there is this possibility because of how decentralization
works in the fact that we don't have a functioning
state system per se. So if you could just like
get hold of enough land at a castle, then I mean,
I guess you're in business, right, Like, it's this world
of possibility that we just don't have the.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
We must.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
You're in business until uh really not until you make
the mistake of dealing with one of the cons and
it's not one of the and it's not one of
the lesser ones either. You get the whole You got
the whole fucking deal. Like in he was like, uh, oh,
you guys are going to try and kill me. That's cool. Well,

(01:10:05):
you know, you know we have an army, right and
they got horses and they can go far, and they
were like, maybe we didn't think about anyway. Yeah he he,
he tried it. And I should note it wasn't just
the assassins. He tried to wipe out all the Mizaries
because he just kind of uh as as far as

(01:10:25):
I can tell, you just kind of lumped them all together.
But yeah, he decimated. Yeah yeah, and then they died.
And now they're just uh like something like.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
You know, now they're just heart forever, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
Now they're just the basis for like you know, Rozell
ghoul In uh in fucking Batman and and part of
the Assassin's Creed games and you're just like, oh yeah
that thing. It's like, well yeah, but they were also
real people, like you know, and I mean, uh, the
Nassaari line still six around today. As I said, uh,

(01:11:11):
you can you can look at a picture of the
fifth Aga Khan. He just it's a normal looking guy
who I believe. Uh oh, there's one thing.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
That cons are good at. It's rolling through town and
clearing everything out. Yeah right, you know they just comment
and they just fucking plow it. It's a they're a
blunt instrument. Yeah, you know, it's like you know, whereas
the assassins very specifically are.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
Yeah, like a refined one. So yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
You know, assassination has a long and uh and I
would say rich history and I mean in the Middle
Ages you got stuff like this. You had and before this,
as I said, you had the sakari I like you know,
you just have when when the world hasn't been homogenized

(01:12:08):
to certain systems, fully homogenized to certain systems, and like
you you have like these piecemeal land arrangements based on
you know, these kind of haphazard structures you can there
there there are avenues for very uh you know, for
for like for for these groups too to come in

(01:12:31):
and do this, and you can so you can have
the Order of Assassins taking over a few castles and
ruling some territory. You can have the Teutonic Knights who
were created like as a crusader, uh, you know, to
to back up the crusaders. And they were just like, yeah,
but what if we went and took over Lithuanian Poland
for a while. That would be fun, right, And everyone

(01:12:52):
was like, no, okay, well we're going to do it anyway.
And then like it's so like you you have these
avenues and and uh, weird offshoot states shoot up to
fill in those gaps, and it's uh, you know, it's

(01:13:12):
kind of what's fun about the Middle Ages because you
can't have this international order of assassins that's just hanging
around and doing the bidding of you know, like the
King of England and and you know their their local eyemam,
and you're just like sure, sure, why not? You know what,
there's your interconnected world there. It is like Rich of

(01:13:35):
the Line. Art's like, yo, man, do you guys want
to kill this? Like you you have other people who
could do this, like and you're just like, nope, got
to call the best. Sorry, can't can't be, can't be
bringing in any of these English punks.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
To do it. Yeah, you know this way, you know,
hundreds of years later people could act like you didn't
do it because.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
Don't get me started. I'm actually do you know, I'm
gonna stop right here. I'm not. This is not Nora
talks trash about her colleagues all the air hours.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
No no, no, no, no, yeah, folks, that's you know,
that's medieval assassinations. There are, of course many more than this.
We didn't get to all of them. We just kind
of wanted to get a few points and to talk
about the assassins because they are interesting and fun. But yeah,

(01:14:33):
I think that is going to about do it for
us today. I don't know what'll be back next with
next week, but it will be something. But yeah, Eleanor
in the meantime, what do you got going on? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
My major thing, if you want some nonsense for me,
is aforementioned article over my personal Patreon that one's cheap
from a quid a month. Helps me keep the the
lights on over here. But that's what I got going on.
I've had one of those months last this month where
it's basically like I've done a bunch of stuff that's

(01:15:09):
gonna come out next month, so you know, like I
think that that's gonna kind of start rolling soon.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
So yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
Otherwise, I'm on the socials at Going Medieval. You can
check my stuff out there, but yeah, you know, I'm
mostly just hanging here. What can I say?

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
This is?

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
This is my work, you know?

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, you can find me Lucas Amazing on
the socials, probably locked down on Twitter.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
Who's to say, oh, wait, shit, I guess if you
live in Hartleypool in the UK, I'll be there on
Friday if you want to come to the Pool Folk Festival.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
I guess that's something I could say.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
Yeah, if you're in Hartleypool. Yeah, and uh yeah, I
will not be. I will sadly not be at the
Hartleypool Folk Festival. I will be in spirit, of course,
but yeah, you find I'll show people's history of the
Old Republic if you would like to hear me yap
about Star Wars. Anyway, thank you very much for listening

(01:16:06):
and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
Where did that fucking stop button go?

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
There? It is