A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest Most Wanton Kings Queens (7 page)

In an earlier era, heads would have rolled for such audacious disrespect, but George presided over a monarchy—first as Prince Regent during his father, George III’s, mental incapacity, then as king—that had been slowly losing its power over the years. As much as he surely would have loved to order the executions of his tormentors, there was little George could do to counter their relentless assault, particularly since they were often right.

When
The Examiner
published a particularly nasty attack on the Prince Regent in 1812—calling him, among other things, “a violator of his word, a libertine head over ears in debt” and “a despiser of domestic ties”—he was successful in having the author and his brother, the paper’s editor, arrested and charged “with intention to traduce and vilify His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, Regent of the United Kingdom.” Writer and editor were fined and jailed, but it was hardly a royal victory as the sentences only made George more unpopular. It was during this time that a devastating verse by Charles Lamb made the rounds:

 

Things didn’t get much better when George became king in 1820, probably because he continued to give his critics fresh ammunition. They had a grand time with the king and his last mistress, Lady Conyngham, including the pamphleteer who distributed this verse:

 

A lifetime of debauchery started wrecking the king’s body and mind toward the end of his life, and he became a recluse at Windsor Castle. His appetite, however, was little affected. His mode of living now was “really beyond belief,” noted Mrs. Arbuthnot, who had chronicled other events in the life of the king. The Duke of Wellington was a frequent visitor at Windsor and noted the king’s breakfast menu one day. He had “a pidgeon and beef steak pie of which he ate two pigeons and three beef-steaks, three parts of a bottle of Mozelle, a glass of dry champagne, two classes of port [and] a glass of brandy! He had taken laudanum the night before, again before this breakfast, again last night and again this morning.” Not surprisingly, George IV died not long after.

It had been a life of great potential never realized, of appetites out of control. Of course the critics had the last word. “There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased King,” the
Times
of London editorialized the day after his funeral. “What eye has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow . . . for that Leviathan of the
haut ton
, George IV.”

 

 

T
he kings of Spain once plundered the New World in their quest for gold. Britain’s Queen Mary plundered living rooms. This early twentieth-century consort of King George V was quite a collector. Though she favored valuable little knickknacks and objects d’art, she didn’t like paying for them. Mary had other ways of getting what she wanted and no home she visited was safe from her acquisitive glare.

“I am caressing it with my eyes,” she would coyly whisper upon spotting a particular item she wanted, while lingering before it for added effect. This little routine was often enough for the owner in awe of royalty to insist immediately that she have it. But for those who didn’t quite get the message, the marauding queen went a step further. Just before leaving the targeted home, Mary would make a dramatic pause at the doorstep and ask, “May I go back and say goodbye to that dear little [fill in the blank of whatever it was she wanted that day]?” With this less than subtle hint, the predatory queen usually got her prize. There were occasions, however, when actually paying became the only option left. If she happened to leave a home empty-handed, her thank-you note often included a request to purchase the coveted piece. Few could resist this final assault.

As Queen Mary’s collection grew ever larger, those who regularly hosted her began to take precautions whenever she came for a visit. Anything they thought the queen might like was stashed away until the royal assault was over. Not everyone fell for the queen’s charms, however. When she was collecting miniature items for her elaborate dollhouse, she persuaded famous authors of the time to donate tiny volumes of their works. A whole library was assembled, with one holdout. George Bernard Shaw rebuffed the queen’s request, noted her daughter, “in a very rude manner.” Basically he told her where she could stick her little book.

 

 

I
f Edward VIII really was in cahoots with the Nazis, as has been alleged, it would prove that at least he was doing
something
after his abdication of the British throne in 1936. As it stands, however, the rumors of collaboration are almost certainly untrue, making the ex-king’s life every bit as idle and vacuous as it appeared.

Led by his gasping, domineering duchess
¹⁰
—the woman for whom he set aside his crown to marry—the Duke of Windsor, as he was titled after the abdication, adopted a lifestyle almost totally devoid of purpose. His main preoccupation was social flitting with his wife between New York, Paris, and Palm Beach, always courting the rich and absorbing their hospitality. The only real responsibility the duke seemed willing to shoulder was the care and feeding of the couple’s pet pugs.

He had given up the only job he was born to do, but he had nothing to replace it. Still, Edward insisted on retaining all of his royal dignity and prerequisites, and those he expected for his wife. The servants wore liveried uniforms, while portraits of the duke and duchess hung amidst those of his royal ancestors in their meticulously decorated homes and apartments. Without a kingdom to rule, Edward and Wallis presided over a small fiefdom of servants, chauffeurs, and cooks.

If Edward ever did expend any real energy—aside from his perpetual efforts to wring money out of the British government—it was in his almost obsessive desire to have Wallis granted a royal title. This had been refused her when she married Edward—sensibilities at the time utterly opposed to the brash, twice-divorced American from Baltimore being styled “Her Royal Highness.” It was a snub bitterly resented by Edward and one that he never ceased trying to remedy.

His persistence on the issue drove deeper the wedge between the duke and his family—a relationship that was already strained because of the abdication crisis and the royal family’s refusal to receive Wallis. “I cannot tell you how grieved I am at your brother being so tiresome about the HRH [Her Royal Highness],” Edward’s mother Queen Mary wrote his brother George VI, who had ascended the throne in his place. “Giving
her
this title would be fatal, and after all these years I fear lest people think that we condone this dreadful marriage which was such a blow to us in every way.”

Even as Britain was bravely facing Hitler’s devastating onslaught during World War II and Buckingham Palace was being bombed, the former king was badgering the government and the royal family about the title he coveted for his wife. Taking time out from leading the nation’s war effort, Prime Minister Winston Churchill offered the Duke a bit of advice on the issue. “Having voluntarily resigned the finest Throne in the world,” Churchill wrote, “it would be natural to treat all minor questions of ceremony and precedence as entirely beneath your interest and your dignity.”

Alas, it was not.

Vigorously pursuing the HRH issue was about as busy as Edward ever got during the war, which, sadly enough, was probably the most active period of his post-abdication career. He did serve as governor of the Bahamas during this time. With a world at war, this was not one of the most taxing assignments, yet Edward found it so unpalatable that he asked for a leave soon after he had arrived. It was August, after all, not the most pleasant month to settle on a tropical island. Churchill found the request for leave a tad premature. He was “very grieved to hear that you are entertaining such an idea,” Walter Monckton wrote Edward. The prime minister hoped that, when the people of Britain were suffering so much, the duke “would be willing to put up with the discomfort and remain at your post until weather conditions made things less unpleasant.”

Edward did reluctantly come around to his patriotic duty, but insisted that the accommodations in the Bahamas were unacceptable in their current state. “We found Government House quite uninhabitable,” the duke told his friend and predecessor as governor, Bede Clifford, “and fled from the place after a week’s picnic and sandflies.” The money allotted for the home’s upgrading was insufficient, Edward informed Colonial Secretary George Lloyd, and he requested additional funds to whip it into shape. Churchill’s response to the request was succinct. “Comment is needless,” he jotted on the memo.

After their grueling experience in the Bahamas, Edward and Wallis felt themselves entitled to a little leisure after the war. They spent the rest of their lives drowning in it. A typical day for the Duke consisted of a few rounds of golf, weather permitting, maybe a nap, then a drink—but never before 4 p.M. His main job was passing the duchess’s orders to the help, or meekly following them himself, as she busily arranged for that evening’s dinner and social activities.

In a moment of perhaps unintentional honesty, Edward revealed the sheer emptiness of his life. “You know what my day was today?” he said to the wife of an American diplomat. “I got up late, and then I went with the Duchess and watched her buy a hat, and then on the way home I had the car drop me in the Bois to watch some of your soldiers playing football, and then I planned to take a walk, but it was so cold that I could hardly bear it . . . When I got home the Duchess was having her French lesson, so I had no one to talk to, so I got a lot of tin boxes down which my mother had sent me last week and looked through them. They were essays and so on that I had written when I was in France studying French before the Great War . . . You know, I’m not much of a reading man.”

A
mong royalty, love and marriage rarely went together like a horse and carriage—more like a mongoose and cobra. All too often royal unions were coldly calculated political arrangements, with some couples not even meeting until the wedding ceremony. If one did have a choice of mate, the desire to wed was not always mutual. Kings had a way with coercion, and woe to his queen when he became bored. The following is a selection of royalty’s most miserable marriages.

Joanna the Mad still obsessing over Philip the Fair.

 

 

H
e was a dashing prince, heir to vast territories across Europe. They called him “Philip the Handsome,” although “Philip the Heel” would have worked just as well. He treated his wife like a royal rash. She was the striking daughter of Spain’s legendary co-monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. They called her “Joanna the Mad.” Indeed, she was crazy about her husband—absolutely
nuts
, it turned out. Together, Joan and Phil forged one of the more pathetic unions in European royal history, where sexual dominance and relentless obsession endured to the grave—and well beyond.

As far as arranged royal marriages went, this one looked promising. Philip found Joanna quite alluring when he first saw her in 1496, a perk not to be underestimated in an era when strangers were wed to strangers without the slightest regard to compatibility. For her part, Joanna was immediately entranced by Philip’s good looks and charm. Their first meeting went so well, in fact, that Philip insisted the wedding ceremony be arranged right away so he could bed his bride without delay.

Apparently the sex was fantastic and Joanna, who had been raised in the court of her ultra-conservative Catholic parents, was intoxicated. Philip, on the other hand, was a typical royal male who felt no particular allegiance to the marital bed. As Philip roamed, Joanna became more and more despondent. She breathed only for him, ignoring even the religious devotions that had once sustained her. Her neediness, however, only served to bring out Philip’s inherent nastiness. He parceled out sex to his grateful wife, alternating it with threats of violence to subjugate her further. Joanna’s familiar Spanish staff was sent away, and she was left isolated in Philip’s hostile Flemish court. She was too paranoid even to write her parents.