N339.5. Uxorious king is burned to death while taking an alcohol bath (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

Welcome to my A to Z Challenge blog series titled WTF - Weird Things in Folktales! Find the introduction post (explaining the theme) here. Find all other participating blogs in the comments of each day's post on the main blog! You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

N in the Motif Index stands for Chance and Fate. It includes wagers and gambling ("N2.5. - Whole kingdom as wager"), treasure troves, divine helpers... and what I personally like to call the Folktale Darwin Awards. Behold an example:

N339.5. Uxorious king is burned to death while taking an alcohol bath 

For those of you like me, who never heard the word before: Uxorious means "having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife." Which is totally NOT what is happening in this story. 

Although it is marked as a folktale motif, this story comes from the Novellas of Matteo Bandello, a 16th century Italian writer. His stories, just like other books of novellas such as the Decameron, are based on older tale types, anecdotes, and other folk genres. In this case, a very popular medieval legend about the death of Charles II of Navarre.

Bandello paints a none-too-kind picture of King Charles. He claims that he was a "man of very ill fashions and very cruel" - sins including siding with the English against the French, rebelling against the dauphin Charles (later Charles V) and killing many Parisians, sacking and burning towns and slaughtering people, ruling Navarre in terror by massacring men and ravishing women, and beheading envoys who were pleading with him to lower taxes. So, not a nice person.

Of course there is a painting

Legend says that Charles was "very old and decrepit", but still lustful and "never without a concubine." Shortly before his death he lusted after a woman of twenty-two years, and after a hard day of beheading envoys, he wanted to sleep with her - but alas, he "felt himself wax very feeble." In order to get his strength back up, he had himself wrapped in sheets soaked in spirits of wine (alcohol), and stood in a room, surrounded by copper vessels filled with red-hot coals. On top of this brilliant idea, he ordered his servants to blow on the coals with bellows, to keep them burning. As one would expect, sparks flew from the fire, alighted on the king, and promptly burned him to a crisp in his alcohol-soaked cocoon.

Bandello labels this as "an express judgment from God."
I'm surprised we have not seen this on Game of Thrones yet.

(Read the story here.)

Runner-ups
N2.3.5. Intestines wagered
N7. Trained rat upsets pieces in gambling game: trained (or transformed) cat chases it away
N56. Wager: woman to turn somersault in middle of public square
N119.1. Dog tries to catch its fate in its own tail
N125.2. Luck determined by whether a crooked-necked demigod is looking at one
N211.2. Unavailing attempt to get rid of slippers; they always return
N228. Leopard tied in bag in water floats to shore and finds a mate
N271.9. Tree follows murderer
N314. Persons fall asleep on rock, which magically shoots upward
N318.2. Princess accidentally elopes with wrong man
N334.3. Practical joker asks doctor to castrate him
N335.2.1. Sick queen lying under red satin carried off by bird who thinks it is red meat
N340.3. Woman wrongly condemned for drunkenness when seen to take one drink
N383.1. Man falls dead when he realizes that he has been riding over frozen sea
N542.2. Treasure to be found when three-legged cat shrieks over the burial place
N684. Naked soldier becomes general