6 of the Most Bizarre Accidents That Killed Kings of the Past (7 photos)

The Darwin Awards aren't handed out posthumously across centuries, but plenty of historical figures certainly earned one. While kings, tsars, dukes, and emperors usually met their ends on battlefields, from disease, or in violent coups, a select few managed to bow out in the most absurd and senseless ways imaginable.







Philip III, portrait by an unknown artist

King Philip III of Spain was obsessed with order and discipline—a fixation that quite possibly drove his country into decline and stripped away nearly all its geopolitical clout. Highly superstitious and enamored with luxury, he preferred to ignore Spain's spiraling poverty and the ballooning debts of the crown. When reality finally caught up with him, he wasted no time shifting the blame: first expelling the Moriscos—industrious, affluent Spaniards of Muslim heritage—and then the Romani population. For good measure, he also issued a decree championing the importance of pure bloodlines.

In his daily life, His Majesty instituted an impossibly rigid system of court etiquette and enforced it ruthlessly. Under his own rules, the king wasn't even permitted to pour himself a glass of wine—that duty fell exclusively to a designated official.

According to the memoirs of Marshal de Bassompierre, Philip III once dozed off in an armchair beside a roaring fireplace (likely after a few too many drinks, as nothing else quite explains what followed). A stray spark set the chair ablaze, sending courtiers scrambling to find the grandee who held the official privilege of moving the royal chair. By the time they found him, there was nothing—and no one—left to move.

Philip III was just 43 years old.





The eighth French monarch to bear the name Charles

Charles VIII of France, from the House of Valois, ascended the throne at the tender age of thirteen. A gentle youth, he dutifully listened to his older sister and regent, Anne de Beaujeu, without ruffling any feathers. Every now and then, he waged war on someone, as was the fashion of the era. But it wasn't battle that did him in.

Approaching thirty, Charles was walking through a doorway when—either out of sheer absentmindedness or poor eyesight—he failed to spot a low lintel. He slammed his head right into it at full stride, slipped into a coma, and died.

Picture it: while everyone around him was succumbing to the plague—including his loyal courtier, the Duke of Montpensier—the King of France was taken down by a doorframe.



George Washington, the first President of the United States

Not a monarch, certainly, but a giant among leaders all the same. At 67, George Washington was a robust, hale and hearty man. Then he got caught out in a cold mix of snow and freezing rain, neglected to change into dry clothes, and came down with a nasty chill. Panicked by his deteriorating condition, his family summoned doctor after doctor. Each physician promptly drained some of the president's blood—the go-to cure-all of the era. After several rounds, Washington simply ran out of blood and died.

Had they just let him rest and ride out the illness, he likely would have sneezed it off and gone right back to governing.



King Alexander I of Greece with his wife

Like many European monarchs, King Alexander I of Greece was of German descent. Unsurprisingly, he favored a pro-German stance during World War I—though nobody particularly cared, given that the Greek crown wielded virtually no real political power.

Perhaps in an act of defiance, Alexander chose to marry Aspasia Manos, the daughter of a common army colonel. The match ignited a major scandal, though the public eventually came around.

A year after the wedding, the dashing 27-year-old monarch was strolling through the palace gardens with his German Shepherd when a resident macaque lunged at the dog. A vicious fight broke out. The king rushed in to pull the animals apart, and the monkey sank its teeth into his leg.

The macaque's mouth was far from clean, and the wound was poorly treated, eventually leading to severe sepsis. The sheer tragedy was that his life could easily have been saved by simply amputating the infected limb. Yet not a single Greek surgeon was willing to go down in history as the man who sawed off the king's leg—so instead, it was the king who went down in history as the monarch felled by a pet monkey.



Frederick Barbarossa became a legendary king

Frederick Barbarossa, the legendary German king and Holy Roman Emperor, met a sudden and shocking end right at the height of his power.

Nearly 70 when he embarked on the Third Crusade, Barbarossa remained a powerhouse of a man and the very image of a chivalric knight: charming in conversation, ruthless in politics, and generous in victory. Riding at his back was arguably the most formidable army in all of Europe.

En route from Byzantium to the Holy Land, Muslim cavalry ambushed his forces, dealing them a rough blow. But the setback only fired Barbarossa up, and he pressed forward with even greater determination.

Soon, a rushing mountain river blocked his army's path. His inner circle urged caution, suggesting they scout for a bridge or a safe shallow crossing, but Barbarossa insisted on fording the torrent immediately on horseback.

After a heated argument, he decided to lead by example. Clad in full armor, he spurred his warhorse—likely armored as well—straight into the churning water. In an instant, the river dragged him under, never to resurface alive.



The merry, good-natured King of Aragon

King Martin the Humane of Aragon was, by all accounts, a man who loved a good laugh. While hard historical proof remains thin, legend has it that he literally died of laughter and indigestion. The story goes that a jester approached him and quipped that he'd spotted a deer in a vineyard hanging by its tail like a common thief, sending Martin into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Unfortunately, the king had just devoured an entire roasted goose—no small feast, even plucked and cooked. Strained beyond its limits by the massive meal and violent spasms of laughter, his stomach ruptured. Just like that, the Humane King was no more.