I was somewhat bewildered the other week when I came across King James! The Black King Who Had The Bible Translated Into English! with its confident assertion that King James I and VI was Black ….., yes, the son of Mary Queen of Scots and her second husband, King Henry, better known as Lord Darnley ( himself a Stuart/Stewart of Anglo-Scottish stock ) was, er, Black, as in Black…..
I then came upon a piece from History Debunked which looks at this latest nonsense and puts it in its proper context as both modern fable and conspiracy theory. It can be seen at Was King James I of England black?
Some of it, ironically, is, I assume, an unconscious reworking of the engaging medieval myth of Scotia, the daughter of Pharoah migrating to Scotland - though that would sit oddly with the idea of the Black Hebrew Elect.
One might be tempted to dismiss this idea as the manifest nonsense it is, but in the age of instant messaging and ever accessible videos online, anf the acceptance of so many conspiracy theories by the gullible, one should perhaps be forewarned and prepared to answer such ideas when they do crop up.
I will just add, rhetorically, what does the Duchess of Sussex and her erstwhile friend Ms Winfrey make of all this? After all, if the Royal Family are actually Black, what does that do to their claims about prejudice?
2 comments:
I gather that when King Charles II made his escape following defeat at the Battle of Worcester his enemies issued a description of him as "a black man of about two yards height". "Black" in this instance referred to the colour of his hair!
Indeed so.
The sad thing is that similar descriptions are used to justify this outlandish belief. As Its advocates are conspiracy theorists they always have an answer on the lines of the “real portraits” having been destroyed and white faces substituted..,,
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