A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest Most Wanton Kings Queens (34 page)

That terrible legacy is detailed in Part VI, Chapter 2.

He was also Charles I of Spain.

A title used by British monarchs ever since.

Recounted in Part IX, Chapter 4.
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The first of Catherine de Medici’s three sons to rule France (see Part I, Chapter 2).

As seen in Part I, Chapter 1.

With devastating results that are recounted in Part VI, Chapter 2.

John Dudley also was the father of Elizabeth I’s great love, Robert (see Part I, Chapter 3).

Peter the Great wasn’t the only Russian monarch to murder his child. In 1581, Ivan the Terrible grew so enraged at his son and namesake that he clobbered him with his iron staff, killing young Ivan instantly.

George IV and William IV, among a number of her other licentious uncles.

One of a number of undignified royal demises explored in Part IX.

Among his most ardent supporters is a group called The Richard III Society, which believes the king has been maligned by history, especially by Shakespeare and by one of the sources for his unflattering play about Richard, Sir Thomas More. Far from the demonic “bottled spider” conjured by the Bard, many Ricardians see a cuddly medieval teddy bear. “I just know that if I were alive in the fifteenth century I could borrow a cup of sugar from Richard,” one Ricardian gushed in a society newsletter. Thomas More, partisans say, was nothing but a Tudor-era lackey, writing his history of Richard III during the reign of Henry VIII (the son of Richard’s vanquisher), and loath to offend his monarch—never mind that More eventually lost his head for his willingness to defy royalty. While it is true that Richard was not deformed—that was a literary device to indicate raw evil—the evidence of his treachery is compelling indeed. There is, among so much else, the well-documented heap of bodies and reputations that Richard climbed over to achieve power, and the inescapable fact that it was during his reign that his young nephews disappeared forever.

Details of Mary’s crush on Frances are found in Part I, Chapter 3.

Queen Anne did have a half brother, James Edward Stuart, known as “The Old Pretender.” He was James II’s son by his second wife Mary of Modena, but was declared ineligible to inherit the British crown because he was an avowed Catholic. Nevertheless, he did have supporters, including Louis XIV of France, and they declared him King James III upon his father’s death in exile. The Old Pretender made several abortive attempts to gain the throne, as did his son, Charles Edward Stuart, known as both “The Young Pretender” and “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” The Stuart cause was a lost one, however, and the foreign Hanoverian line continues to rule to this day.
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And who, as seen in Part I, Chapter 3, raised lechery to new heights.

Some sources attribute this sentiment to Frederick’s equally unloving mother, Queen Caroline.

See Part III, Chapter 6.

Henry’s strained family relations are recounted in Part V, Chapter 1.

See Part III, Chapter 1.

In addition to his first wife, Maria of Portugal (Don Carlos’s mother), Philip also was married to “Bloody” Mary I, with whom he shared the English crown until her death in 1558, and Elizabeth of Valois, daughter of Henri II and Catherine de Medici.
³
To avoid confusion with Charles II of England, who reigned at roughly the same time, Charles II is spelled the Spanish way here.

The war resulted in the acension of a French Bourbon king, Philip V, to the Spanish throne.

The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was formed in 1867, and lasted until the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918.

See Part III, Chapter 4.

See Part IX, Chapter 11.

Because of an historical glitch in the numbering of popes, there was no Pope John XX. There was, however, another (discredited) John XXIII in the fifteenth century.

Other sources say the young pope died of a stroke while having sex.

Antipopes are individuals whose claim to the papacy has been rejected by the Church, though certain tumultuous periods in papal history have made it sometimes difficult to distinguish between valid and invalid claimants. There are thirty-nine listed antipopes. Some, like the original John XXIII, have the same name as officially recognized popes.

The Cathars were ascetics with a strict moral code who believed in the duality of life—that good and evil were actually separate creations.

This Clement VII is now considered an antipope, while the Clement VII who reigned two centuries later (and who denied Henry VIII his divorce from Katherine of Aragon) is officially recognized. Benedict XIII and Alexander V are other antipopes listed in this section.

Mary’s miserable marriage to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, is recounted in Part III, Chapter 3.

Louis XIV’s career as the center of attention at Versailles is explored in Part II, Chapter 2.

See Part I, Chapter 3, for details about George II’s busy love life, and Part V, Chapter 5, for the account of his unpleasant relationship with his son, Frederick.

Louis XVI’s execution also was a degrading public spectacle. After being mangled by the guillotine, the king’s severed head was seized by a young guard who, according to one eyewitness, paraded it around the scaffold “with the most atrocious and indecent gestures.”