From: Peter Stephenson <pws@ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Subject: (urth) Swords/axes
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 09:50:17 +0200

"Mark Millman" wrote:
> In England (and in the Germanic countries generally,
> to a lesser extent) the axe was favored; on the Con-
> tinent (and especially in the Romance countries) the
> sword was preferred.

Just a PS: the long-standing tradition in England was that common
people were beheaded by the axe, nobles had the right to the sword.
Thus many of the more famous executions (such as Charles I) were by
the sword.  Traitors from William Wallace on, as is even more
well-known, were hung, drawn and quartered.

None of this seems to be relevant to Urth, were you can have any
weapon as long as it's the sword the executioner happens to be
carrying --- except maybe it implies the sword is more pleasant.
Yeah, right. I think the executioner in question made more difference:
an inexpert one took several blows to get the head off.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@ibmth.df.unipi.it>       Tel: +39 050 844536
WWW:  http://www.ifh.de/~pws/
Dipartimento di Fisica, Via Buonarotti 2, 56100 Pisa, Italy

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