The sport we call tennis is a variant of the original game by that name. Our tennis was for a long time called “lawn tennis” (though we rarely play it on a lawn). The original game, which we’ve now renamed to “real tennis,” has a different scoring system, different rackets and killed three French royals within two centuries.
In 1316, Louis the Quarrelsome ruled France. He was a huge fan of tennis, popularizing tennis courts far and wide, and on June 5th, he played a strenuous match before gulping down some chilled wine. The 26-year-old king died shortly thereafter, as the wine was possibly poisoned. In 1498, Charles VIII was king. He was on his way to a tennis match, not as a player but as a spectator. He slammed his head on the lintel of a door — a lintel is like a mantelpiece, but for doors. He still made it to the match, but upon leaving, he went unconscious and died a few hours later.
Charles was succeeded by Louis XII, who was succeeded by Francis I, whose son was Francis III. Francis II was Francis I’s grandson, and was born after Francis III, because royal family trees are weird sometimes. Francis III played a game of tennis on August 10, 1536, then he asked for some water. Right after drinking it, he died.
The court tortured someone named Count Sebastiano de Montecuccoli into confessing he poisoned the water, on the basis of “his name is Count Sebastiano de Montecuccoli, clearly he’s evil.” Some historians question whether Francis really was poisoned, however. Us, we choose to believe that all three of these kings were murdered, by a tennis-obsessed secret society. The only alternative is that all three of these kings just really liked tennis, and that would be stupid.