Sad over historical deaths?

[Personyouneedisnannymcphee]

Obviously death happens every day and there are many recent, very sad deaths. But some historical ones actually make me ache a little when I think about them I think due to the details and historical background of them more so than sometimes things I hear on the news. Some of these being:

-the Romanov children. Of course the Tsar was horrific but how they died thinking they were going to safety and then didn’t get killed by bullets as jewels in their clothes protected them so they were finished with bayonets.

-Anne Boylyn’s death because the details of her ladies not letting the men touch her afterwards for fears they’d violate her headless body.

AIBU for sometimes being incredibly sad over these people I never knew or do you have your own historical death that makes your stomach drop when you think of it?

YANBU OP. Wilfred Owen breaks my heart.

Not unreasonable to be sad about a historical death. Several of my ancestors and what their last day or days were like sadden me, even with what little I know.

Likewise those who died in WW1 @TooBigForMyBoots not just Wilfred Owen.

I think the Romanov children and Anne Boleyn had incredibly privileged lives compared to contemporary peasants. Children would regularly starve to death in both tudor England or czarist Russia. I think we feel a connection because we know their personal stories rather their circumstances being particularly horrific.

There’s a memorial in St Paul’s for the 10 children of a Victorian church warden who died before the age of 5. That one makes me sad.

Also the princes in the tower.

Virginia Woolf putting stones in her coat pockets, then jumping into the river. The thought of her walking to the river and looking around for the right number of stones, makes me so sad.

Yes - I remember feeling so sad about Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. Such a waste.

Also a music group called Viola Beach a few years ago, all killed in a gruesome car crash when so young with all that potential just their career was taking off.

Once I became a mother I grieved again for cases like James Bulger too.

I watched the Challenger space disaster series on Netflix not that long ago and since then have watched a few more things about it. It makes me sad because it should never have happened, such a waste of life and there has been so much optimism about the whole thing.

There’s something like 6 hours after Marilyn’s death too that are unaccounted for. God knows what they did to her. And the creep that’s buried above her facing down. Shes stuck under him for eternity

The last Tsar wasn’t horrific, just not at all suited to the role and a bit shielded from the problems within Russia at the time. Killing all of his children was seen by the Bolsheviks as a way to ensure the monarchy couldn’t come back. Yes, horrendous, yes they were innocents, but that’s the risk faced by being a member of the royal family at that time.

Jane Grey 😢 she was used as a child by the people who should have protected her because they wanted power, but she was to pay the price for their greed.

@Personyouneedisnannymcphee Yes, absolutely, regarding the Tsar ( apparently he was an inflexible autocrat) but what had the children done to deserve such a fate? King George V had blood on his hands imo, as the Romanovs wanted safe haven in England (they owned property here) and the king refused to have anything to do with it. Then I read that the family were about to be moved to a place of safety, and the princesses caught measles and had to be isolated. I think their wealth could have been confiscated and the constitution allowed to revoke the monarchy for good, then the family should have been allowed to go into exile, provided some country would be willing to take them in, considering what England's response was.
@TooBigForMyBoots Yes Wilfred Owen's death was heartbreaking, just one week before the Armistice. His family heard the church bells ringing to signel the end of the War, and then received the telegram. Also, Wilfred Owen's literary hero John Keats, killed at 25 just like WO, but it was tuberculosis that killed poor Keats. The similarities between the two poets, both trained for the professions and gave them up, both had well heeled grandparents but the money had not filtered down to the grandchildren, and both writers had known financial hardship.
Also, Marie Antoinette, accused of cohorting with the enemies of France, when she wrote regularly to her Austrian family. Did this royal couple deserve to be beheaded?

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Stevie Ray Vaughan's death really upsets me even now. I'm a big fan of his music and it is sad that he died at the peak of his career. But it is the fact that he had turned his chaotic life around, was beating his addictions and helping others to do the same, then died in a helicopter that he wasn't even meant to be on that is so tragic.

Not famous people but I was thinking the other week when my little one was poorly how awful it must have be in Victorian times in the workhouses and on on the streets for mothers who just had no means to help their sick children.

Star Hobson 😢 the poor poor wee soul.

Catherine Howard- effectively an abused child, married off to Henry VIII as a teen and executed for behaving as a teen.

When I was researching my family history I read in a Victorian newspaper about a man in Leeds in the 1890s whose wife had died, leaving him with two children aged 18 months and 6 months. His landlady had evicted them, so he went before the Board of Guardians to ask for admission to the workhouse. They refused, and he then took both his babies and jumped into the canal. Passers-by pulled them out, but both children were dead. The man was arrested, tried and found guilty of murder and then executed by hanging.

I can't help but feel that the poor, desperate guy would've been better off left to drown. So, so tragic.

All you wanna do from Six is so unbelievably sad.

Have you been to that garden in London with all the memorials to people who died saving others? It's incredibly moving - quite a high number of children saving their friends and family members.

Anne Bolyn fought hard for charity.
She was pursued and harassed by Henry and ultimately murdered.

History has then been written to remembered as some whore temptress.

Yes, I came on to say this too.

I’m from Derbyshire and the deaths from the plague in the village of Eyam always got me as a child especially the vicar’s wife who nearly made it through.

Have you been to that garden in London with all the memorials to people who died saving others? It's incredibly moving - quite a high number of children saving their friends and family members.

Postmans Park. It’s such a lovely find in London.

Arthur Labinjo Hughes. The footage of that little boy crying that no one loved him will haunt me to the grave. Unutterable cruelty.

The women that Jack the Ripper murdered. Their deaths, and the subsequent way they have become almost novelty caricatures is horrendous. “The Five” by Hallie Rubenhold should be compulsory reading because it illustrates not just what happened to those women but what happens to all women in poverty.

I agree with Catherine Howard - a really sad life.

Mary Bryant's children. I often wonder if she thought the escape was worth it when both her children died in the process.

And I don't know we by but I often think of the children who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki- not the ones who died immediately but the ones who suffered. I hate the thought of children who had nothing to do with the war in such unimaginable suffering- many without their parents to comfort them. Obviously children suffer in wars all the time so I'm not sure why that in particular plays on my mind.

The children who died in the Victoria hall disaster in Sunderland too.