There's porn in the phone booths. This must be London. Our very first day out and about in the capital city of England. Very exiting. The first order of business is a quick tube hop over to the Tower of London. It's larger than it seems on the telly. Of course the name the Tower of London is rather deceiving as it is truly a full blown castle with a tendency to house very famous prisoners. As massive as it is, one can definitely feel how the builders were less worried about aesthetics and more concerned about a visit from a foreign King with a couple thousand of his most loyal subjects in tow. Around the outer wall, where people did not live, you can still see the architecture from the earliest times in the Roman style. Especially in the Salt Tower and White Tower’s Roman Chapel, the walls are very thick, and the windows are no more than arrow slits defending the Thames River. As you walk up the spiral staircase, you might notice that the pillar around which the stairs wind is on your right. This was another defensive feature as most people are right-handed. Attackers coming up the stairway would be unable to wield their swords effectively as the pillar would get in their way. This was not a problem for the defenders coming down the stairs who would have been at a significant advantage.

The White Tower is devoted to an impressive armory chronicling the history of England until Queen Victoria. Indeed, the first museum open to the English public was known as the Spanish Armory, housed in the White Tower. Here, King James II displayed a great deal of the bounty looted from the defeat of the Spanish Armada under Queen Elizabeth I. Though clearly thought out to bolster patriotic fervor, it did set a precedent for other museums to be built as what the King did tended to become fashionable. I personally thought the most interesting piece in the museum was a suit of samurai armor given to the East India Company by Emperor Tokugawa Hidetawa in 1613. Not exactly what one expects to see in a medieval castle. There were also some more eccentric pieces such as Henry VIII’s shield-guns and a steam powered rifle.

While looking at the Crown Jewels I came across a couple stories about their history from the guides around the area. Go blind luck. Front and center on the coronation crown there is a large ruby that is known as the Black Prince Ruby. You can see it here. How the Black Prince got the ruby is a tale of great daring do and treachery. The Black Prince was for lack of a better term, a mercenary. And he was good at it. So good that when the King of Spain got into a war with France and was having trouble with a battle, he called for the Black Prince to win the day for him, promising anything his heart desired. Now back then, Spain was not the unified country it is today but rather a collection of small kingdoms paying tribute to one another. It turned out that the King of Spain at the time was a vassal of a Muslim King and paid tribute to him. When the Black Prince visited the court of the King of Spain, he saw this Muslim King with a beautiful great ruby on a chain around his neck. The Black Prince decided then and there that that was to be the price he would demand of the Spanish King for winning his battle. The King was of course appalled as this was not his to give. But he agreed. The Black Prince emerged victorious from the battle and at the celebratory feast; the King of Spain murdered his lord and presented the ruby to the Black Prince. This was also about the time that the Spanish started to drive the Muslims out of Spain. Hell of a way to start a war. A few kings later, Henry V wore a crown with the Black Prince Ruby over his armor at the famous battle of Agincourt. During a fight with another knight Henry got hit in the head with a pommel and the ruby fell out. After the battle, one of the bloodiest in history at that point, he summoned all of his lords and commanded them to find a ruby the size of a watchface amongst all of the lobed off limbs, dead horses, fallen weapons and the like. It’s good to be the king. However the ruby was safely found lying on a small hedge in plain sight. Ever since then, the ruby has been considered lucky. And finally, in 1913 King George V decided to visit the colony of India. As he was Emperor, protocol dictated that he have a crown made up for his trip. So a crown of 26,000 jewels was crafted for him, which he wore for only three and a half hours. And then they put it in a museum for silly tourists to gawk at. The crown has eight arches around it coming to the point at the top. This is deliberate. A prince’s crown will only have two arches as he is only a half king. A king’s will have four arches to signify the four corners of his kingdom. And an emperor’s crown will have eight arches to show that you rule your own and another’s kingdom.

Outside, one of the Tower Warders was giving a bit of a tour, so I decided to hop along. It turns out that the Warders nickname of Beefeaters is a rather unknown quality. No one really knows why they are called that. One theory goes that at times the crown was strapped for cash, so it would pay the Warders in beef. But those contracts also show the Warders being paid in other foodstuffs as well as in beer. So why not nickname them Beerdrinkers? Maybe it reminded them too much of the French word grognard.

After a quick trip to the Laundromat, I joined the class later that evening for a play called The History Boys at the National Theater. A coming-of-age story, it deals with a group of seniors who receive special tutoring to try to get them into Oxford so as to improve the school’s standing. Along the way the play deals with the student-teacher relationship, the idea of teaching to the test instead of an education, and homosexuality in society. All in all a very good production that is coming to the United States sometime soon.

Updated by Andrew Dunbar on January 30, 2006. Would you like to know more?