TOWER OF DOOM
Death of Queen Raven leaves 7 birds. In lore if 2 more go, kingdom falls
THe ‘ queen’ of the ravens at the Tower of London is missing, feared dead – which legend has it may imperil the nation.
Merlina has not been seen by staff at the royal palace for several weeks.
The presumed death brings the number of ravens at the Tower to seven. According to a superstition dating back to the reign of Charles II, should there be fewer than six in residence the castle and the kingdom itself may fall.
Merlina had been at the Tower since 2007. Wild ravens usually live for ten to 15 years but those in the Tower of London have been reported to survive until the age of 40. Charles II is thought to have been the first to call for the ravens to be protected after he was warned that the crown and the tower itself would fall if they left.
The king’s order was given against the wishes of his royal astronomer, John Flamsteed, who complained that
‘Biscuits soaked in blood’
the ravens would fly past his telescope and interrupt the business in his observatory in the castle’s 11th century keep, called the White Tower.
During the Second World War the number of ravens fell to just a single bird before prime minister Winston Churchill ordered that the flock be increased to at least six.
A spokesman for the Tower said: ‘Since joining us in 2007, Merlina was our undisputed ruler of the roost, Queen of the Tower Ravens.
‘She will be greatly missed by her fellow ravens, the Ravenmaster, and all of us in the tower community.’
The spokesman said there were no immediate plans to fill the vacancy left by Merlina but in time it was hoped a new chick from the Tower breeding programme would be ‘up to the formidable challenge of continuing her legacy’. A flock of ravens is known as an ‘unkindness’.
In 2018 the Tower launched the breeding programme after Historic Royal Palaces warned it had become ‘ increasingly difficult’ to find birds as there were ‘very few legal captive raven breeders in the UK’.
The ravens enjoy freedom of the Tower and preside over four different territories within its walls. But they are said to respond only to the Ravenmaster and tourists are warned not to get too close. The ravens are fed twice a day on a special diet of mice, chicks, rats and assorted raw meats.
As a special treat, they are sometimes given biscuits soaked in blood.
Famous prisoners of the London landmark have included the young Princes in the Tower, thought to have been murdered by their uncle Richard III, and gunpowder plotter Guy Fawkes.
Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn was beheaded there in 1536 – followed six years later by his fifth wife Catherine Howard.
Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess was briefly locked up in the Tower in 1941 after he parachuted into Scotland in a renegade plan to negotiate peace with the British.