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Historic Betrayals that Shocked the World

Khalid Elhassan January 12, 2023 32 min

A Medieval Dinner Betrayal

The Black Dinner featured another murderous betrayal of guests by their hosts. While not as bloody as the Glencoe Massacre in that it had fewer victims, it was just as dramatic. In 1437, King James I of Scotland was assassinated, and was succeeded by his six-year-old son, James II. Scotland was governed by a regent, Archibald Douglas, 5^th Earl of Douglas, until his death in 1439. The regency was then split between three noblemen, William Crichton, 1^st Lord Crichton, Sir Alexander Livingston, and James Douglas, Earl of Avondale and a kinsman of the Earl of Douglas. All three resented the Earls of Douglas, Scotland’s most powerful aristocrats at the time, and conspired to bring them low.

Betrayal at the Black Dinner. The Society of John de Graeme

So in 1440, Crichton, Livingston, and James Douglas, invited the late earl’s son, sixteen-year-old William Douglas, 6^th Earl of Douglas, and his younger brother to dine with the ten-year-old King James I at Edinburgh Castle. In the middle of the dinner, a black bull’s head – which symbolized death back then – was placed in front of the young earl. In a betrayal of the rules of hospitality, William Douglas and his younger brother were then seized and dragged outside. There, they were accused of treason, given a mock trial, and beheaded. As George R. R. Martin put it when he discussed how the real life Black Dinner and Glencoe Massacre inspired the fictional Red Wedding: “No matter how much I make up, there’s stuff in history that’s just as bad, or worse“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.