A Treasury of Royal Scandals: An Historical Look at Royal Misbehaviour: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest MostWanton Kings Queens (A Michael Farquhar Treasury, Band 1) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Farquhar is a writer and editor at the Washington Post specializing in history. He is the author of the bestsellers A Treasury of Great American Scandals and A Treasury of Royal Scandals. He appeared on the History Channel’s Russia, Land of the Tsars and will be featured on a forthcoming program about the French Revolution.

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Table of Contents

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Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Introduction

PART I - The Lust Emperors

Chapter 1 - From Russia with Lots of Love

Chapter 2 - French Kiss

Chapter 3 - England Swings

PART II - Six Royals Sinning

Chapter 1 - Envy: If Anyone Should Oppose This Union

Chapter 2 - Pride: Here Comes the Sun King

Chapter 3 - Wrath: Have an Ice Day

Chapter 4 - Gluttony: Eat, Drink, and Be Mocked

Chapter 5 - Covetousness: Hail Mary, Full of Greed

Chapter 6 - Sloth: An Idle Mind Is the Duchess’s Playground

PART III - Unholy Matrimony

Chapter 1 - Mad About You

Chapter 2 - Until Divorce or Decapitation Do Us Part (in Six Sections)

Chapter 3 - Head Over a Heel

Chapter 4 - A Wedding! Let’s Celibate!

Chapter 5 - Wails From the Vienna Wood

Chapter 6 - A Marriage Made in Hell

PART IV - Mom Was a Monster, Pop Was a Weasel

Chapter 1 - How to Make a Bloody Mary

Chapter 2 - Jane Grey’s Blues

Chapter 3 - Hun, I Shrunk the Kid

Chapter 4 - Peter the Not -So-Hot

Chapter 5 - We Are Not Abused. We Are Abusive

PART V - Royal Family Feud

Chapter 1 - The Royal Raptors

Chapter 2 - Crown of Thorns

Chapter 3 - Trouble in the House of Tudor

Chapter 4 - Shattered Sorority

Chapter 5 - Dislike Father, Dislike Son

Chapter 6 - In-Laws on the Outs

Chapter 7 - The Battling Bonapartes

PART VI - Strange Reigns

Chapter 1 - Temper, Temper

Chapter 2 - Swimming in a Shallow Gene Pool

Chapter 3 - The Belle of Versailles

Chapter 4 - A Great Mind Is a Terrible Thing

Chapter 5 - Drool Britannia

Chapter 6 - The Law Is an Ass

Chapter 7 - The Eyes Have It

PART VII - When in Rome

Chapter 1 - The Rage of Tiberius

Chapter 2 - Oh, God !

Chapter 3 - I Claudius, Aren’t I?

Chapter 4 - A Son Should Love His Mother, But . . .

Chapter 5 - The Year of Living Dangerously

PART VIII - Papal Vice

Chapter 1 - Not So Dear Johns

Chapter 2 - A Matter of Grave Consequence

Chapter 3 - Her Holiness?

Chapter 4 - King of Kings

Chapter 5 - Innocent Proven Guilty

Chapter 6 - Feel the Burn

Chapter 7 - Papal Bully

Chapter 8 - Will the Real Pope Please Rise?

Chapter 9 - Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Chapter 10 - All the Holiness Money Can Buy

Chapter 11 - Indulge Me If You Will

Chapter 12 - In the Ghetto

PART IX - Death Be Not Dignified

Chapter 1 - A Tight Squeeze

Chapter 2 - A Royal Pain in the Ass

Chapter 3 - Spinning in Her Grave

Chapter 4 - Strike Three

Chapter 5 - Prescription for Disaster

Chapter 6 - A Look of Detachment

Chapter 7 - Eat Your Heart Out

Chapter 8 - Royal Flush

Chapter 9 - A Lot Off the Top

Chapter 10 - The Case of the Purloined Penis

Chapter 11 - Extreme Overkill

Chapter 12 - It ’s Not Nice to Kill the King

APPENDIX I - British Monarchs (1066-Present)

APPENDIX II

Appendix III - Russian Monarchs (1682-1917) The Romanovs

APPENDIX IV

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

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A TREASURY OF ROYAL SCANDALS

Michael Farquhar is a writer and editor at The Washington Post specializing in history. He is coauthor of The Century: History as It Happened on the Front Page of the Capital’s Newspaper, and his work has been published in The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, Reader’s Digest, and Discovery Online.

Henry VIII

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First published in Penguin Books 2001

All rights reserved

Illustration credits
Frontispiece (ii), pages 28, 54, 100, 126, 172, 202, 260:
The Granger Collection, New York.
Page 2: © Leonard de Selva/CORBIS.
Page 222: © Christel Gerstenberg/CORBIS.

eISBN : 978-1-101-01039-6

CIP data available

This book is dedicated with love to my grandmother, Claire O’Donnell Donahue Courtney. What a life!

All I say is, kings is kings and you got to make allowances.

—Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Introduction

The twentieth century was a slaughterhouse for European monarchy. Across the continent, scores of kings and queens were swept from their thrones in a frenzy of war and revolution. Those managing to cling to their crowns, meanwhile, have been rendered either faceless and bland, as in, say, Norway, or, as in Britain, regarded as little more than inane tabloid fodder.

Maybe the decline of monarchy is for the best. After all, the notion that one individual—no matter how stupid or depraved—should by some fluke of birth hold dominion over all others is ridiculous and well past its prime. Still, there’s a void now. People with unlimited power and an inbred sense of their own superiority tended to misbehave. Royally. Democratically elected presidents and prime ministers—not to mention constitutionally constrained monarchs—simply can’t compete. Consequently, things are a lot duller these days, and what passes for scandal is almost laughable.

So what if Charles and Diana were miserably married? He never slammed the doors of Westminster Abbey in her face, or buried pieces of her boyfriend under the floorboards of his palace. That was behavior typical of a bygone era celebrated in this treasury—a time of lusty kings and treacherous queens; of murderous tsars, insane emperors, and unholy popes (once the supreme monarchs in Europe). Toe sucking aside, Fergie and the rest of this generation’s royals can’t hold a scandal to their forbears. Not one of them has delivered anything worthy of the name, and are thus excluded from this collection.

Some of the stories that do appear here are no doubt familiar to readers of history. But they are classics, and no anthology of royal bad behavior would be complete without them. Others have been mined from the past, largely unexposed. All of the stories showcase the rich assortment of scandals that once flourished across Europe. And, thanks to the generations of royals who unwittingly created them, they remain immensely entertaining.

Family Trees

PART I

The Lust Emperors

“Lust’s passion will be served,” the French libertine and novelist Marquis de Sade once wrote. “It demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.” The Marquis might have added that this relentless vice has always been oblivious to social status. So, the whole theory behind royalty—that it conferred a certain exalted status over ordinary mortals; a place closer to God in the hierarchy of the universe—was compromised somewhat by the fact that kings and queens proved themselves to be every bit as...