Prestwich 2003，第38頁; Phillips 2011，第5頁; Gillingham, John, Hard on Wales, Times Literary Supplement, Times Literary Supplement, 11 July 2008 [22 April 2014], （原始內容存檔於2020-03-25）
Initial sources either did not suggest that Edward had been murdered at all, or suggested that he had been suffocated or strangled. The first sources to begin to successfully popularise the "anal rape" narrative were the longer Brut and Polychronicon chronicles in the mid-1330s and 1340s respectively. One of Edward's biographers, Seymour Phillips, notes that while the hot iron story could be true, it is much more likely that he was suffocated, noting that the account of the red hot iron seems suspiciously similar to earlier accounts of the murder of King Edmund Ironside; the similarities to this earlier story are also highlighted by Ian Mortimer and Pierre Chaplais. His other biographer, Roy Haines, makes no reference at all to the red hot poker story. Ian Mortimer, who argues that Edward did not die in 1327, naturally disputes the "anal rape" story. Paul Doherty notes that modern historians take the "lurid description of Edward's death with more than a pinch of salt". Michael Prestwich has noted that most of Geoffrey le Baker's story "belongs to the world of romance rather than of history", but has also noted that Edward "very possibly" died from the insertion of a red hot iron.
Haines, Roy Martin. King Edward II: His life, his reign and its aftermath, 1284–1330. Montreal, Canada and Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-7735-3157-4.
Prestwich, Michael. Edward I. Berkeley, CA & Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. 1988. ISBN 978-0-520-06266-5.
