Caractacus' Sons

I'm going to start a collection of  "It Just Popped Into My Head" stories.  They are short, random stories written slightly in Aesop's Fables style.
Here is my first installment.

Caractacus' Sons
By Melody Beerbower, Nov 8, 2011

Once upon a time there was a king named Caractacus. Now I know Caractacus is not a normal name for a king, but the king's father was anything but normal, so he named him Caractacus.  And so it remained until his death, and even after his death no one had the heart to change it. So, Caractacus is the name written on his tomb stone.

King Caractacus had a wife, whose name is not worth mentioning. She was not very good at anything except having babies, which she did on a regular basis of about once a year.

The first four were sons, which greatly pleased the king, because all kings like to have someone to carry on their name. (Even if it is an ugly one like Caracticus.)  But when the next three were also boys, the king was a bit disappointed. (All Kings like to have at least one daughter to marry off to a wealthy suitor.) However, when the next two were also boys, he simply said he'd expected as much.

After ten years and thirteen sons (the queen had triplets on the tenth year) the queen stopped having children. These were the names of her thirteen sons:

Caractacus I
Caractacus II
Caractacus III
Caractacus IV
Caractacus V
Caractacus VI
Caractacus VII
Caractacus VIII
Caractacus IX
Caractacus X
Caractacus XI
Caractacus XII
Caractacus XIII

(The king was brainless enough to burden his boys with the same burden he'd been burdened with before.)

The Queen asserted that she had gone through all the pain and labor of having them, someone else could go through the trouble of raising them, and with that she slept for the next three years, and no one could wake her.

By this time the eldest was thirteen. To get the ages of the others you need only to count backwards one year for each until you reach the triplets, all of whom were then three.  

The king had been too busy ruling to take care of his sons, so the thirteen-year-old took care of the the twelve-year-old, the twelve-year-old took care of the eleven-year-old, the eleven-year-old took care of the ten-year-old, the ten-year-old took care of the nine-year-old, the nine-year-old took care of the eight-year-old, the eight-year-old took care of the seven-year-old, the seven-year-old took care of the six-year-old, the six-year-old took care of the five-year-old, the five-year-old took care of the four-year-old, and the triplets took care themselves.

However this did not last long, because King George (What proper name for a king!) from the neighboring kingdom, sent over his army and wiped out the whole family-- including the unnamed queen. So the name of Caractcus was never passed on to the third generation, and that's why you never read anything about his sons in history.

The End