DRUNKEN MESSENGER... NOT? DRUGGED?

Because this part of the Handless Maiden story usually shows the use of ethanol as a narcotic (though Homer had done it centuries before in the Odyssey). Which is as true as the Pope is Catholic.
"Patient Helen", the Victorian retelling by Sabine Baring-Gould, calls the young royals Constant and Helen of England. He goes forth to fight the infidels on an unspecified battlefield on the Continent, and chaos is come again.
The Queen Stepmother lives near Dover...
But what struck me most was how the author has bowdlerised the story, having the messenger drugged instead of plunged into an ethylic coma (this was an age of temperance, but the story is for young children!):

She bade a feast be made for him, and she spiced his wine 

with something that would make him sleep. So he ate and drank, and 

then felt drowsy, and went to sleep with his head on the table. 

When the messenger awoke, he was rather ashamed at having slept;

and he had no idea as to what had been done while he was sleeping. 

Now by her orders the servants of the queen- 
mother were on the watch for the return of the 
messenger, and when he reached Dover they in- 
vited him to sup at the house of their lady, whilst 
his horses were being got ready. He agreed, and 
was well entertained, and again the queen-mother 
spiced his cup so that he fell asleep. 

 

This reminds me, in turn, of a 1980s Othello production, 

(the "Victorian" one by Trevor Nunn, with McKellen as Iago)

in which Iago spikes Cassio's first drink with brandy behind the 

young lieutenant's back. 

Said detail has inspired me to include it in most of my Othello fiction, 

most notably The Countess of Toggenburg,

 a novella that retells the supposed real events behind 

the Shakespearean tragedy in Reformation-era Central Europe.