Stupid Deaths: Richard the Lionheart

Death welcomes a new mummy judge to the Stupid Deaths panel, then calls up contestant 1199: Richard the Lionheart, King of England, who admits he disliked England so much that he spent his reign fighting abroad. With a crossbow bolt still stuck in his shoulder, Richard explains that while besieging a castle in France he and his men were so entertained by a defender batting away arrows with a frying pan that he never noticed a small boy taking aim at him. The wound turned gangrenous, and Death is astonished to learn that the king had gone into battle without any armour. The panel brands him Richard the Chicken Brain and sends him through to the afterlife, and Richard leaves boasting that he ordered his men to pardon the boy, only for the boy himself to shuffle onto the stage next, showing that the order was ignored.

Richard's contestant number, 1199, is the year he died. The real king was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt while besieging the castle of Châlus-Chabrol in March 1199 and died when the wound turned gangrenous; he pardoned the young crossbowman, but one chronicler records that the mercenary captain Mercadier had the boy flayed alive once Richard was dead.