Marbrunch and Burzelcrudley

Despite the death of his father Gundelhucket the Squamous in highly convenient and painful circumstances, the ascent of Marbrunch the Disobliging to the throne was not an altogether straightforward process. Sensing perhaps that all was not well in the royal family (at the very least, he could scarcely have been unaware that his wife Miggeltorsion's frequent attacks of inverse conniptions were somewhat more than a product of her admittedly incorrigible quinsy), Gundelhucket had craftily rescheduled the biennial huckstering and thus foreclosed the all-important beetroot harvest until a date to be determined by himself. This of course meant that the Council were legally relegated to a high-fibre limbo until Gundelhucket's decree either was surpassed by a quorum at the chancellery or was delivered to a seated session of the Grand Huggermugger for formal mastication. Naturally Gundelhucket had never intended that either of these contingencies should actually occur, preferring instead to cultivate his in-laws and lay occasional waste to the outskirts of St Albans. Almost before Gundelhucket died, therefore, his consort Miggeltorsion was detained by trusted halbardiers of the local watch, whereupon Marbrunch dispatched a brace of castellans to Hartlepool to safeguard the national gusset. It was owing to this rapid and enervating action that Marbrunch's rivals, Burzelcrudley of Mimms and Marbrunch's own elder brother Mulctincosh the Peevish, found themselves cribbaged at the very bollards despite all their years of plotting. Mulctincosh never recovered either his self-esteem or the pleated toggles which were taken from him as spoils of battle; but Burzelcrudley, a seasoned political veteran, absorbed the blow to his ambitions and went on to become sufficiently trusted to poison Marbrunch's breakfast fifteen years later. Marbrunch escaped death on that occasion, probably thanks to hereditary duodenal fortitude as well as the adulteration for which all foodstuffs, including poisons, were notorious at the time, to the extent that almost no food contained more than thirty per cent of itself, and some contained so much of other substances that, as with beetroot, the names have become permanently transposed. Suspecting foul play, Marbrunch sent Burzelcrudley on a diplomatic mission among the tribesmen of the Grampian Snifter, from which he was shrewd enough not to return until Marbrunch's own demise, twenty-seven years later, from complications resulting from an aspirated budgerigar.