LUCREZIA FLATHEAD, Legendary Murderess or Innocent Widow?

"A good lawyer is much better than a good husband."
    -Lucrezia Flathead

Of all the Twelve Flatheads, it is most difficult to separate history from legend when studying Lucrezia, the only sister to eleven aggressive brothers born in 735 GUE. Showing a total lack of understanding for her delicate position, detractors have cruelly tried to claim that Lucrezia had a warped mind.

In 751 GUE, at the tender age of sixteen, Lucrezia married a very rich but very old nobleman from Gurth, Marcus Bzart-Foodle. Ten-and-a-half months later, he died in bed with his bride. Afterward, Bzart-Foodle's doctor could not recall whether he had warned Lucrezia to avoid over-exciting her husband's weak heart.

Lucrezia's second husband, a wealthy land baron from Mareilon named Oddzoe Glorb III, was found dead just five weeks after the wedding, his body mangled by hellhounds. It was quite understandable that Lucrezia had her multi-volume hellhound training manual removed from the house at once; the sight of it must have brought back tragic memories.

Five days later, Lucrezia sought consolation in a third marriage, to the Governor of Antharia, Hirax Mumbleton. Only two days after that, Antharia was without a governor. Hirax had been discovered in his office, smothered under a ton of raw granola. His sobbing widow immediately cancelled delivery of her daily truckloads of granola, in order to avoid any similar tragedies.

After her next fifteen husbands, all wealthy lords, died in their wedding nights (each husband being grueseomly killed in increasingly bizarre accidents), royal insiders reported that she was so distraught by her tragic string of bad luck that she was becoming dangerously suicidal. Fearing her suicide, the uber-widow was imprisoned in a cell in the dungeon by her elder brother Dimwit. Though it pained the king dearly, he had only done so for her only safety. She languished in that cell for the remaining fifteen years of her life. During that period, in search of comforting for her misery, Lucrezia had an insatiable fondness for prison guards. Coincidently, 1,800 prison guards were mysteriously poisoned in the years following her imprisonment.

But it wasn’t a prison guard for whom she felt her deepest love; it was a fellow inmate, who had been imprisoned for his flagrant overuse of magic without proper consent by the Enchanter’s Guild (but he had not been imprisoned until being arrested for refusing to attend Dimwit’s ridiculous coronation). Though he could have easily freed himself from any prison, he fell madly in love with Lucrezia. The two met frequently during Lucrezia’s imprisonment in the Flatheadia dungeon. Surprisingly, the visiting wizard did not die. He counted himself lucky to have used a long life spell on himself just before meeting Lucrezia, given her history of perpetual widow-hood.The union between Lucrezia Flathead and the unknown enchanter produced a child, Lucille Flathead.

Some legends say that Lucrezia’s death on 14 Mumberbur 789 was self-inducted. But this is contrary to other, most likely, reports. The Flathead widow had angered her own people, and the House of Flathead was not, by nature, forgiving. Not even an enchanter was able to protect Lucrezia from the hired guns charged with dispatching the murderess to the Great Beneath. When Lucrezia met her final misfortune—a secret execution—the enchanter, of whose child she bore, made a daring escape soon after with their child in tow. He spirited the young Lucille away to the recesses of the deepest underground, known only as The Dark—a network of catacombs beneath the prison.

It took all he could do to protect the child from the terrible curse on the House of Flathead—and only when he was certain that the child was to be spared, the enchanter disappeared, completely sapped of his powers. He was last seen in the general direction of Miznia, near Gurth. Rumor had it he had fallen to work as a lowly miner, perhaps having started another family, bit he had never been heard from again.

Lucrezia's corpse was later placed in the Tomb of the Twelve Flatheads and her skull upon a pole outside the same crypt by the "Keeper of the Dungeon." Although dead, the Twelve Flatheads foresaw that some cretin might tamper with their remains. Therefore, they took steps to punish trespassers with a curse. It is assumed that her remains are still there to this day.

Although long dead, Lucrezia Flathead was insane enough and famous enough to be seen as the inspiration for the modern Quendoran scientific study of criminal insanity.