Although Crichton says that his height made him feel like an outcast when he was a kid, he had a sense of humor about it later in life. An example of that is one of the fake names he picked when he decided to start writing novels while still intending to be a doctor (reasoning that patients would be less likely to tell him about their anal warts if they thought they might end up in a book). Crichton's most common pseudonym was "John Lange," but he also wrote one book as "Jeffrey Hudson" -- a sarcastic reference to Captain Jeffery "Lord Minimus" Hudson, a 17th-century dwarf who has been described as the real-life Tyrion Lannister.
Hudson was known as the "Queen's Dwarf" because he was gifted to Queen Henrietta Maria of England as an amusing curiosity when he was 7 years old and 18 inches high. "Gifting" a child to someone for entertainment is bad enough, but the way it happened was even more undignified: he was "served" to queen and king in a pie from which he burst out wearing a tiny knight's armor.Â
Hudson lived with the Queen until his 20s when England broke out into one of its periodic civil wars. It's been reported that he served at the Royalist side and was named "Captain of Horse." After that, he lost his patience for prancing around for the Queen and her hangers-on and challenged anyone who mocked him to a duel. One time, his opponent showed up with a water sprinkler (basically, a Medieval Super Soaker) thinking he'd get a good laugh. Hudson showed up with a real gun and shot him dead.Â
Killing high society members was somewhat frowned upon at the time, so Hudson was exiled and ended up being kidnapped by pirates and forced into slavery in North Africa. He managed to escape and make his way back to England 25 years later, by which point he'd grown to 45 inches. Not a whole lot is known about his final years except for the fact that he received two mysterious payments from the Secret Service. Unfortunately, whatever mission he carried out to earn that money was considered less noteworthy than his past as pie stuffing by whoever wrote his epitaph: