Alternative History Theatrical Account of the Death of the Four Estonian Kings 1343

Kuningad: näidend aastast 1343 (Kings: A Play from the Year 1343) is historical novelist/playwright Tiit Aleksejev's retelling of the symbolic end of the St. George's Night Uprising by the local populace against the ruling Danish & Germanic nobility in mediaeval Livonia (present day Estonia & Latvia).

To the best of my knowledge, the entire story of the Four Kings is based on paraphrases of the now lost Younger Livonian Rhymed Chronicle written in the late 1340's by Bartholomäus Hoeneke, a chaplain of the Master of the Livonian Order of Crusading German Knights. Trusting this account is somewhat like trusting the American Indian Bureau's account of the death of Sitting Bull at the hands of its agents, i.e. it is more likely that a planned institutional murder was covered up and blamed on its victims.

Aleksejev takes this bare bones story and constructs a scenario with three kings, each of whom is a stand-in for various stereotypical rulers, e.g. the competent king, the naïve king, the lazy king. There is no actual fourth king as a character, but rather one exists either a symbol of hope in the lead character of the Salanõunik (the Privy Counsellor role) who does place a coronet on his head before heading into battle towards the end of the play OR as a fictional construct by the Master of the Livonian Order.

There are likely subtleties about modern day Estonian politicians in the play that I am missing out on (Aleksejev states at the front-end that all anachronisms are intentional) but that did not detract from my enjoyment of this alternative history version of a pivotal point in Estonian history. ( )