Saturday, 30 May 2026

Three Lions

The crest of the Duchy of Lancaster is three golden lions on a red background. See the attached image. Knowing nothing of heraldry, I cannot say whether there is any connection between three lions for Lancaster and Three Hearts And Three Lions for Holger Danske.

The King of England is the Duke of Lancaster. He must visit Lancaster Castle at least once in his reign to be given the keys to the castle and has already done so. I saw a waving arm through a car window.

As Alan Moore argues, we can see ourselves either as trapped rats or as legendary beings walking streets of:

"...jewelled histories and secret legends..."
-Alan Moore, I Hear A New World (London, 2026), p. 327.

It is down to us.

1 comment:

S.M. Stirling said...

That's an -early- family image. Later on they got really complicated.

Francis Drake tried to incorporate the arms of the ancient noble Drake family (griffins, basically), but they sued to deny him.

So he made his own (complicated) set of arms with a sailing ship as the central piece.

And if you look really carefully, you can see a Griffin hanging by the neck, dead, from one of the spars.