Honeymoon 6: "With her head tucked underneath her arm..."

The Birthday Trilogy, Part II

In the Tower of London large as life,
The Ghost of Anne Boleyn walks they declare.
For Anne Boleyn was once King Henry's wife,
Until he made the headsman bob her hair!
Ah, yes, he did her wrong, long years ago
And, she comes up at night to tell him so!

R.P. Weston & Bert Lee, With her head tucked underneath her arm

Before I met Karli, I used to travel for my birthday - it was an extra little gift, and I enjoyed the opportunity to do something completely different to celebrate the day in a foreign country.  Karli's work schedule has made September travel a bit more of a challenge for the last few years, but this year we had the excuse of taking our honeymoon, so here we are in England, far from home on September 26th.

So - what does the well-travelled geek do in London for their birthday?

The day starts with an appropriately themed card from my wife (it's only been five weeks since the wedding, so it's still neat to say "wife".)  After a leisurely cup of tea and a croissant at our AirBnB, conveniently located just south of Waterloo Station, we make our way to the Underground, buy a pair of day passes, and we're off to our first stop: the Tower of London, one of my favourite sightseeing spots in London.

Karli had expected the Tower of London to be just that: a tower. She was surprised to discover that in fact we were visiting a small castle somehow left untouched over the centuries by London's ongoing urban development. The castle encloses almost 12 acres of land, with another six acres in the surrounding grounds, known as the Tower Liberties. (The castle's moat was drained and filled in at around 1830.)

I've always been fascinated by history, perhaps because there's a point in time where it's a lot like epic fantasy, just without magic, elves or dragons.  Castles and sieges, swords and armour, kings and queens, deadly combat, base betrayals, brutal torture and silent assassination, it's all there.  In fact, some of the events in George R. R. Martin's epic Game of Thrones series are based on the 15th century War of the Roses, where the House of York was locked in battle with the House of Lancaster for control of the English throne for 32 years.  (And Martin's Red Wedding is partially based on the Black Dinner, a 1440 Scottish dine-and-die party.)

The Tower of London's grim history stands testament to the bloody nature of those past centuries - not as long past as one might think, the Tower last saw use as a prison and killing ground in 1941.  Imprisonments, tortures, executions, midnight murders, mysterious disappearances, the Tower has seen them all. Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, lived her last days in captivity at the Tower of London, which also witnessed her execution - oh, and the executioner's axe and block are on display in the castle. Henry's less famous fifth wife, Catherine Howard, suffered the same fate.

The Tower's current incarnation is far friendlier than its role in decades and centuries gone by:  one part museum, one part history lesson, one part arsenal, one part school, and home to the Crown Jewels, the Tower sees over two million visitors annually.

The central keep, known as the White Tower, is the oldest part of the castle. This Norman fortification was built in 1087 under the orders of Harold the Conqueror, and now showcases the more noteworthy items from the Royal Armouries collection.

The White Tower's exhibits are not intended to present a comprehensive history of arms and armour, but rather its most impressive examples: the armour of kings.*  As such, the samples on display are skillfully crafted, artfully articulated, and artistically embellished - gilded, embossed, and engraved.

The exhibits also feature a full range of functionality: specialized jousting and mêlée armours for the make-believe of tournaments, fantastic parade armours, multi-pieced garniture armours with interchangeable pieces, and practical field armours for the battlefield itself.

The final display is far more utilitarian and perhaps shows a grim sense of humour:  it's a contemporary P90 submachine gun, stubby, ugly and unornamented - which, at 900 rounds per minute, is a completely democratic solution to the final argument of kings.

- Sid

* There is also a small apologetic plaque that addresses the lack of the armour of queens - or any mention of queens at all, really.