I hope you will forgive me for coming into this, but I got interested and found the following quotations from a professional archivist, Dr Caroline Shenton, formerly Senior Archivist at the Public Record Office. She deals with Edward's death and reputation. Thought you would be interested:
“Most sources do not recount how Edward II died. The red hot poker story emerged about 30 years after Edward's death, told to a chronicler by a man who alleged he was a guard in the castle on the night. It is far more likely that he was starved or suffocated, rather like Richard II.
The poker story is much more enjoyable to recount however...”
“In fact, Edward II had a bastard son called Adam, which suggests that at the very least he was bisexual - you don't father illegitimate children if you are an avowed homosexual.”
“Incidentally, the charge that the king was 'enchanted' by Gaveston is responsible for the suggestion that they were lovers. Chroniclers probably meant that Gaveston had undue influence not befitting his station; it did not necessarily mean they were lovers. Charges of homosexuality were only made after Edward II's death; the most recent revision of the relationship between Edward and Gaveston is in P.Chaplais, 'Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother' (Oxford, 1994).”
“The thing that really got up the noses of the magnates was that Gaveston called them rude nicknames and did not defer to their superior status, not that he was sleeping with the king. If homosexuality were a bar to being a king then what about William Rufus, James I, William III....”
dxbuttingin
