5 Pathetic Ways Real Kings Died

Photograph of King Alexander of Greece

People “die squatting over their chamber pots,” said Game of Thrones, and later in the series, a sort-of king dies doing just that. But he dies because someone murders him. If they really wanted to be true to the history, they should have shown us what dying on the privy can really look like.

King Alexander of Greece Died by Monkey Bite, Breaking up a Fight Between a Monkey and a Dog

Charles Chusseau-Flaviens

The following story takes place in 1920. If this happened in, say, the year 450 B.C., we would still tell it to you because it’s hilarious, and historians conscientiously recorded how kings died, even back then. But this tale, which feels like something out of a storybook, happened in modern times, to a king who drove a motorcar. 

King Alexander of Greece had a dog named Fritz. On October 2, 1920, Fritz got into a fight with a monkey. The Barbary macaque is not native to Greece, but a palace groundskeeper owned one as a pet, and it and Fritz fought. Witnesses disagree on which animal was the aggressor. Alexander saw what was happening and pushed the two animals apart. Then a monkey bit him several times, and his wounds got infected and killed him.

The monkey who bit him? This was a different monkey from the one Fritz had been fighting; sources agree on this. Sources neglect to mention where this monkey came from, since the groundskeeper was only confirmed to own the one monkey. But as the famous monkey saying tells us, “When you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.” 

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