Brawls, disappearances, executions, affairs and more affairs.
Some royal scandals resound through history, cropping up like mushrooms whenever the subject of kingly misbehaviour is raised—Henry VIII throwing over his wife and his church for the nubile charms of Anne Boleyn, Edward VIII renouncing his throne for an American divorcée with hip bones that could cut glass. Then there are the famous scandals that are not actually scandals at all—Catherine the Great did not, in fact, have intercourse with a horse—and some that really ought to be better known. Here are a few.
The Queen of Denmark and the Royal Physician
Poor Caroline Matilda! As a teenaged British princess, she was married off sight unseen to King Christian VII of Denmark—a perfectly nice young man except for his violent temper and fits of madness. In spite of Caroline Matilda’s warm charm and natural beauty, the royal marriage deteriorated swiftly along with the king’s mental state. His bouts of insanity were treated by a German doctor named Johann Struensee whose influence stabilized the monarch’s erratic Behavior. The doctor believed that an improved relationship with his wife would also help the king, and he encouraged Christian to behave more kindly towards the queen. Isolated and unhappy in Denmark and at the mercy of a factional and gossipy court, Caroline Matilda was grateful for the doctor’s help and just as susceptible as her husband to Struensee’s calm authority. The physician and the queen became lovers, and together they worked to enact liberal reforms in the king’s name with Struensee eventually acquiring enough power to issue more than a thousand cabinet orders. Furious at the reforms, a conservative cabal plotted to overthrow the lovers in the king’s name. Struensee was executed, and Caroline Matilda was divorced from her husband and separated from her beloved children—one of whom was most likely Struensee’s. Thanks to the intervention of her brother, King George III of England, she was sent into exile in Germany rather than imprisoned in Denmark. In her genteel captivity, she amused herself with a tiny theatre, books, and charitable endeavours before dying suddenly of scarlet fever in 1775. She was 23.
The Tour de Nesle Affair
In 1314, King Philip IV of France was feeling rather good about his dynasty. His daughter, Isabelle, was Queen of England, and his three sons were neatly married off to a trio of noblewomen who were related to one another and ready to produce the next generation of French princes. Queen Isabelle, eager to welcome her sisters-in-law to the family, made them each a present of distinctive and costly embroidered purses. To Isabelle’s surprise, during the next family reunion, she spotted the purses hanging from the belts of a pair of brothers, knights at her father’s court at a time when prowess at arms made rock stars out of men who knew how to handle a lance. Wise to what this royal regifting meant, Isabelle hurried off to tell her father, and the king promptly set spies to watch his daughters-in-law. Within weeks, the trio of princesses were caught in flagrante with their lovers at a decrepit old Parisian fortress called the Tour de Nesle. The lovers were tortured in ways that would make any character on Game of Thrones shudder and finally executed—which must have come as a bit of a relief after all the castrating and flaying and oil-boiling. The princesses were imprisoned underground in dank, filthy dungeons, with their heads shaved and their children disinherited. The king himself died shortly afterwards. Within a generation, King Philip’s dynasty was destroyed, and the French throne passed to a distant cousin. The disagreement over who ought to inherit the crown sparked the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, plunging much of Western Europe into armed conflict that would last for the better part of a century, and all because of a trio of misbehaving princesses. In a delicious twist, it is said that the wreckage of King Philip’s dynasty is due to a curse laid upon him by Jacques de Molay, the Grand Master of the Templars, burned to death on bogus charges of heresy and witchcraft on the king’s orders earlier in 1314.
The Duke of Cumberland’s Midnight Intruder
Queen Victoria’s uncles were notorious for their exploits and excesses—drinking, gambling, seductions, and secret marriages—but none was as reviled as the Duke of Cumberland. In an age when character was supposedly mirrored by appearance, his sinister scar and violent temper marked him in public opinion as deeply malevolent. He was the least popular of King George III’s sons, and his reputation was not improved by the rumour that he had raped more than one noblewoman and impregnated his own sister, Princess Sophia. His infamy was sealed on a dark spring night in 1810. In the early hours, he suddenly leapt out of bed, screaming for his servants that he had been attacked, struck violently in the head several times. Claiming to be suspicious that his valet, Joseph Sellis, had not responded to his shouts, he dispatched his staff to search for the man. They found Sellis’s door bolted from the inside. After forcing the lock, they discovered Sellis, tucked in bed and nearly decapitated from a slash of a straight razor. Cumberland claimed—and an inquest agreed—that the valet committed suicide, but most people believed Sellis had been attacked by Cumberland. The public speculated about motives for the attack, each more sensational than the last and culminating in the explanation that Sellis was slashed after fighting off the duke’s attempt to rape him. True or not, it was a sordid story that followed Cumberland for the rest of his life, and there were fears upon Victoria’s accession to the throne that her uncle, heir presumptive until she bore her own child, would murder her to gain the crown. Part of the outpouring of jubilation at the birth of Queen Victoria’s eldest child was no doubt due to the fact that the villainous Cumberland was no longer first in the line of succession and had moved to Germany, never to return. (In 1830, another verdict of suicide was returned with another member of Cumberland’s household was found with a slashed throat. Nothing was ever proven against the duke, but it seems fair to suggest he was at the very least deeply unlucky.)
The Affair of the Poisons
Witchcraft! Poison! Sex! This scandal has it ALL. During the reign of Louis XIV, poison was having a heyday, providing a tidy path to inheritance and influence, but it came as a tremendous shock when the news broke that black magic rituals were being employed by those closest to the king himself. The scandal began with the arrest and execution of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, a noblewoman who murdered her father and brothers after trying out her poisons on the poor patients of the local charity hospital. The sensational story sparked rumours of other such crimes. A suspected forger and murderer claimed to have evidence that poison was rife at the court of the Sun King, and investigations were begun. It was discovered that the king’s chief mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, was implicated as a favoured client of Catherine Monvoison, a Parisian supplier of powders and potions intended to secure the king’s affections. There were whispers of sex rituals and rites involving dead infants, news that horrified Louis. Monvoison—whose name, quite delightfully, means “my neighbor”—was burned at the stake and hundreds of others were implicated. Many died as a result of torture or suicide during the investigation, 36 were executed, and even those who escaped punishment were left with ruined reputations and lives in tatters. Madame de Montespan, who allegedly allowed a satanic priest to say a Black Mass over her naked body in a love rite to bind the Louis to her forever, was the mother of several of the king’s beloved illegitimate children and therefore too close to the monarch to be arrested and tried for her possible crimes. Instead, she quietly retired to a convent and a solemn life of contemplation and penance.
Read More – Royal Scandals Through The Centuries [Article from 12/03/20]
