Luises
Assistant executioner
Not only that. As you say, in a wheel execution, the sentence could include a coup-de-grace. But in extreme cases, it didn't. The condemned had his limbs threaded through the wheel's spokes, which was very painful. But then, he was left to die, most of the times of thirst, which could take three or four days. In these cases, the sentence would include turning the wheel every hour or so. If the wheel was tilted, this resulted in the position and the weight of the condemned shifting, mangling with the broken bones and reopening the wounds. This could result in an almost constant state of pain, not unlike the one caused by the dance on the cross.
I assume the condemned is a man because in real life women were spared of the wheel, or any other torture which implied nakedness, for the shake of "decency". Instead of being executed in the wheel, women were burned alive at the stake, a sentence that could be carried on fully clothed. The pain of feeling your flesh slowly consumed by the fire was surely much worse than that of the wheel, but at least she would lose conscience after just a few minutes.
