Princesses Behaving Badly

by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

  ANNE BOLEYN

  Joan, Eleanor, and Jacquetta all suffered under the accusations of sorcery, but at least they got to keep their heads. Anne Boleyn wasn’t so lucky.

  Anne came to the English court in 1522, at age 21, after having come of age in France. Despite her English heritage, she was totally French—pretty, witty, clever, expertly flirtatious, and devastatingly fashionable. Henry had already made her sister his mistress, but Anne was different; she toyed with him, talked back, and refused to sleep with him (at least for a little while). They became lovers of the everything-but-actual-sex sort. Henry, meanwhile, was dealing with the usual royal problem of a wife, Catherine of Aragon, who had not yet produced a male heir; he believed that Anne could, if only she’d give him a chance to knock her up.

  For six years, their relationship was an open secret in the court. Everyone knew that Henry was looking for a way out of his marriage; that the Boleyns were rocketing through the social stratosphere; and that it was Anne who ruled the court and Henry’s heart. But it wasn’t until 1533 that Henry’s advisors hit up on a clever but dangerous way of getting him his divorce. If the Catholic pope wouldn’t grant him one, then why not divorce the pope? Henry’s decision to usurp the power of the Roman Catholic church not only got him excommunicated, it also gave the nation a new state religion, the Church of England, as well as a new queen. With Catherine out of the picture, Henry and Anne had a hasty shotgun wedding, and, already six months pregnant, Anne got her crown.

  That year, Anne delivered a healthy baby girl, Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth I). But all of her subsequent pregnancies ended in tragedy; she miscarried a boy who, according to popular lore, was a deformed “monster,” and then another boy. Anne just couldn’t give Henry what he desperately needed, and the couple quarreled constantly. Anne was jealous, she made scenes, and Henry was already starting to size up other court ladies, presumably keeping a weather eye out for birthing hips. His roving gaze hit upon Jane Seymour, one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, a somewhat unsparkling woman who came from a big family and could be expected to breed well.

  Henry had found his next queen, but a second divorce was out of the question, so his advisors devised another solution. In 1536, on the evidence of one possibly homosexual and definitely tortured minstrel who claimed he’d slept with her, Anne was charged with adultery; among the five men accused of having sexual relations with her was her own brother. She was also charged with treason and conspiracy to kill the king, supposedly having chatted about which of her lovers she’d marry after Henry was dead.

  Contrary to lore, Anne was not formally charged with witchcraft, but the public accusations made it easier to convict her. Witchcraft explained the miscarriage of a child at a time when people believed congenital defects were Satan’s work and the fault of the mother. It also absolved Henry from guilt, because he could claim Anne had bewitched him into divorcing Catherine. That Anne was rumored to have an extra digit on one hand and a mysterious mole on her neck were touted as proof of her dalliances with the Devil.

  Anne was found guilty on all counts by the presiding judge, her own uncle. She was beheaded at the Tower of London on May 19, 1536. She went to her death denying all charges and still professing love for the king who’d abandoned her. Before mounting the scaffold, she seemed resigned to her fate and joked with the executioner that killing her would be easy. “I have only a little neck,” she said with a laugh, placing her hands around her small white throat.

  Roxolana

  THE PRINCESS WHO WENT FROM SEX SLAVE TO SULTANA

  CA. 1502–APRIL 1558

  THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

  In 1536 Suleiman, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, had only two people he could trust. One was Ibrahim Pasha, his grand vizier and longtime friend. The other was his wife, Roxolana. She was Ukrainian and a former sex slave who survived the tiger pit of the harem to become sultana. After the grand vizier was found dead, his throat sliced open, Roxolana became Suleiman’s sole advisor and confidante. Guess who was behind Pasha’s murder.

  HAREM SCARE ’EM

  When Roxolana came to the sultan’s court about 1520, the hasseki (chief concubine) was a beautiful Circassian woman named Gulbahar who had already borne the sultan a son. Almost immediately Roxolana, then about 17 years old, managed to claw her way up from her status as a servant to become one of the sultan’s favorites. She became his only favorite by losing a fight.

  Gulbahar and Roxolana hated each other from the beginning and the rivalry only intensified after the birth of Roxolana’s son. Tensions came to a head one day when Gulbahar called Roxolana a “traitor” and “sold meat” (trust us, a really rude thing to say). Infuriated, Roxolana greased up for a catfight. When it was over, Roxolana’s hair was torn out, her face covered in scratches; she was in no condition to see the sultan.

  Which may have been her plan all along. When an envoy came to bring Roxolana to her lover’s apartments, she refused, sending word that she didn’t want to offend Suleiman’s magnificence with her battered appearance, no matter how desperately she wanted to see him. Alarmed, the sultan demanded her to come; once he saw the damage, he sent Gulbahar packing to an outpost of the Ottoman Empire—and just like that, Roxolana became first lady of the harem.

  The sultan was so enamored of her that he became nearly monogamous (pretty much as good as it gets with emperors). Once, when he was presented with a gift of beautiful women, Roxolana made such a fuss that he was forced to return them. She reportedly even convinced him to marry off the most attractive members of the harem, arguing that their beauty was going to waste. Roxolana enjoyed other signs of his favor, too. For example, she bore Suleiman one daughter and four sons in rapid succession, in contravention to the age-old “one concubine, one son” principle meant to minimize a woman’s influence and reduce fighting over the throne.

  Her meteoric rise was all the more remarkable for her humble origins. The name Roxolana (or Roxelane) means “the Russian woman” and was probably given to her by the court; it’s not strictly accurate, because Roxolana was from Polish-controlled western Ukraine. Though her real name is lost to us, making it difficult to track her origins, it’s generally accepted that Roxolana was born between 1502 and 1505, possibly the daughter of a priest; one persistent rumor claimed that she was the illegitimate daughter of Sigismund I of Poland, but that was probably just an attempt to gussy up her origins. Whatever her heritage, at age 15 she was abducted by Crimean Tatars during a raid and forced to walk to Caffa, the biggest slave market in the Black Sea region. There, legend has it that the future grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha picked her out as a present for Prince Suleiman (just a bit ironic, given Pasha’s fate).

  So what was it about this young slave that ensnared the sultan so completely? After all, she entered the harem at the lowest level and found herself in competition with 300 other women, all of whom were attractive, interesting, or talented in some way. According to one ambassador, Roxolana was no beauty—she was short and a little fat, though she was elegant and modest, graced with fair skin and red hair. Suleiman’s initial attraction was probably based on her personality; she was pleasant and witty, played the guitar, and made him feel good. The name the Turks knew her by was Hurrem, meaning “joyful” or “laughing one.” Of course, detractors claimed that she held the sultan’s affection through love potions and sorcery; the Turkish public called her ziadi, or “witch.” She certainly was crafty. For example, when a fire destroyed the Old Seraglio, the palace where she and the other concubines lived, she demanded to be installed in the new palace with the sultan, giving her the advantage over rivals.

  Once there, Roxolana never left. In either 1533 or 1534, not long after she moved in, the sultan married his red-haired concubine in a sumptuous ceremony outfitted with everything a good royal wedding should have: music, dancing, feasting, swings, giraffes. The marriage was a very big deal. As a contemporary reported, “There is great talk about the marriage and none can say what it means.” That was because
Suleiman was the first sultan to marry a concubine in three centuries; moreover, Roxolana was the first slave concubine in the history of the Ottoman Empire to be freed and made a legal wife.

  As sultana, Roxolana enjoyed more latitude than other women who’d come before her (mothers of sultans, for example), often taking care of matters of state when the sultan was away. To combat public opinion that she was a witch, she worked hard to foster a reputation as a charitable woman, doing good works and funding the construction of magnificent and useful buildings.

  MURDER MOST CONVENIENT

  But all her privileges could easily disappear if Roxolana didn’t keep a tight grip on her power. She hadn’t fought her way out of the anonymity of the harem just to become the sultan’s trophy-wife broodmare. And that was why she set her sights on taking down the grand vizier. He was the only other person the sultan trusted, the only person at court with as much power as she had; plus she just didn’t like him. Ibrahim Pasha was no shrinking violet—this was a man who, when a poet slandered him in public, ordered the unfortunate man paraded around the city on a donkey and then strangled to death.

  Roxolana made sure the sultan heard all the court gossip about the vizier and knew how much she disliked him. Ibrahim, meanwhile, didn’t do himself any favors at court: he was becoming increasingly arrogant and seemed to be making decisions without the sultan’s permission. Whispers that he was plotting against Suleiman were growing louder (perhaps because Roxolana was shouting them into her husband’s ear). On March 15, 1536, Ibraham’s battered corpse was found in his bloodstained bedroom. He’d been executed by the sinister deaf-mute assassins the sultan kept around for just such a purpose.

  By the 1550s, Roxolana was a power unto herself, but even she needed allies. She soon formed a political faction with Rüstem Pasha, her daughter’s like-minded husband and the new grand vizier. On the opposite side was 37-year-old Prince Mustafa, Suleiman’s heir and son of the disgraced concubine Gulbahar. Though he governed a distant outpost of the empire, Mustafa was his father’s son in strength of mind, character, and ambition. He was also popular, whereas Roxolana’s sons were not.

  Roxolana knew that if Mustafa took the throne, she’d be either killed or sent back to the Old Seraglio, home to second-string wives and used concubines. She also knew that for Mustafa to clear a path to the throne, he’d need to have her sons murdered. She had only one option: make sure he never got the chance.

  Popular legend claims that Roxolana first tried to dispatch Mustafa herself, sending a gift of poisoned clothing. When that failed, she used her influence to get the sultan to do her dirty work for her. In 1553 Mustafa was executed by his father on the pretext that he was planning to assassinate the sultan and usurp the throne. In the minds of the Turkish public and politicians, Roxolana and Rüstem Pasha were responsible for trumping up the charges and turning the sultan against his son; some even claimed that Roxolana used witchcraft to poison her husband’s affections. Rüstem Pasha took the fall—he was stripped of his title on the day Mustafa was executed. The demotion was only temporary, however; Roxolana’s insistent urging brought him back to his old position two years later.

  LOVE CONQUERS ALL

  Concubines in the Ottoman Empire lived, bore children, and died by the thousands without anyone ever knowing their names. Roxolana’s charm must have been great, indeed, for her to sway the sultan into making an honest woman out of her.

  But all wasn’t due to her craftiness and scheming. At the heart of the story is something a bit wonderful—love. Suleiman loved Roxolana dearly, and for the most part faithfully, for the better part of four decades. His deep devotion is evident not only in how he treated her but also in what he wrote to and about her. One of his poems reveals the depth of his feelings: “My intimate companion, my one and all/sovereign of all beauties, my sultan./My life, the gift I own, my be-all,/my elixir of Paradise, my Eden.”

  Roxolana seems to have loved her husband back in equal measure. During his frequent absences, she wrote him constantly, sparing no detail of her days, the children’s health, and life at court. She wrote, “My Lord, your absence has kindled a fire in me that does not abate.”

  When Roxolana died in 1558 (of causes unknown), Suleiman was heartbroken. He built her a beautiful mausoleum, making her the first harem woman to be buried in such grandeur. The sultan died eight years later, suffering from gout, arthritis, an ulcer on his leg, and a blood feud for the throne between his two remaining sons.

  Catherine Radziwill

  THE STALKER PRINCESS

  MARCH 30, 1858–MAY 12, 1941

  GERMANY AND SOUTH AFRICA

  Over a few weeks in 1884, fashionable Europeans were shocked and scandalized, as well as highly amused, by the letters of one Count Paul Vasili published in a French magazine. The “count” was supposedly a diplomat at the Berlin court of Kaiser Wilhelm I, though everyone knew the name was a pseudonym.

  Whoever he was, he appeared to have access to all the most important people, whom he ruthlessly skewered, calling them out by name and revealing their every fault. On Empress Augusta: “She is intriguing, false, and affected. She has no dignity and notion of propriety.… She surrounds herself with courtiers and favorites who are the first to speak ill of their Imperial mistress.” And the court: “Adultery flourishes like a plant in its chosen soil.… Virtue is among the number things regarded as useless. As to love, one meets with it rarely. In Berlin society, they take and quit each other according to their fancy.” About Berlin’s well-to-do Frauen: “The high-class Berlin woman neither reads, works, nor has any occupation. She passes her time in chattering, dressing and undressing, and seeking who will help her in these things. She has neither a serious idea in her head, not a worthy thought in her heart.… She is wanting in grace, education, and tact.” In short, Berlin was a tar pit of intolerance, provincial manners, sexual intrigue, gossip, and dissolution. The letters proved so popular that they were reprinted in a book called, appropriately enough, Berlin Society.

  Not surprisingly, Berlin society wasn’t pleased. The royal court, seat of the German Empire, was only about 15 years old, and the city itself only lately raised from a unsophisticated, dirt-road backwater. Its inhabitants were a bit touchy about that fact, and to see themselves mocked by someone who’d been allowed into the inner circle was just too much. The real writer, however, was not a diplomat at all but one of their own—26-year-old Princess Catherine Radziwill.

  BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS

  Born Countess Ekaterina Adamevna Rzewuska, the daughter of an exiled Polish noble in what is now Ukraine, Catherine grew up in a castle haunted since the days when a family member decided to brick his mother alive in the tower in order to get his inheritance. At age 15, Catherine was married off to Prince Adam Karl Wilhelm Radziwill, a 28-year-old Polish exile living in Berlin. It was a quick and drab ceremony. In 1873 Catherine, who’d spent time in Paris and St. Petersburg, made her entrance into Berlin society; she was not impressed.

  Catherine always had an acerbic wit, which she now used to show her disdain for the kaiser’s newly established court; one British ambassador noted that she was feared in court for her “mordant tongue.” Encouraged by her aunt (widow of the French writer Honoré de Balzac), Catherine turned her sharp observations into words, first through letters and then later in the scathing and anonymous Berlin Society.

  Gossip was all well and good, but what Catherine was really passionate about was politics, a sphere that, as a woman, she could never fully inhabit. When not pregnant (she had five children by age 22), she spent her days listening to speeches at the German Parliament. Her thwarted political ambitions turned her toward journalism, and before long people began to suspect that it was her “mordant tongue” behind Berlin Society. In 1885 she and her husband were forced to decamp for St. Petersburg, though Catherine didn’t mind; she obviously hated Berlin and felt much more Russian in spirit, a reflection of her mother’s heritage. She never fully acknowledged her expulsion from
court, only later claiming that Empress Augusta didn’t like her because she was guilty of the “inexcusable crime of having written a book, a most innocent book by the way.” That book was by no means the last Catherine would write, nor would it be the final example of her writing to get her into trouble.

  RHODES SCHOLAR

  The next few years were not kind to the princess—her efforts to become an influential political matchmaker in St. Petersburg yielded little fruit, and the ascension of Tsar Nicholas II, who had no time for her, rendered her even less useful. As her marriage was breaking down and her children were leaving the nest, Catherine devoted her attention to political journalism. But without the support of the tsar, she lacked the one thing that had made her more than just another witty writer: access. What Catherine needed was another political situation into which she could insinuate herself.

  In February 1896, she found the perfect circumstance while at a dinner party in London. That night, she was seated next to Cecil Rhodes, a British-born South African statesman (namesake of Rhodesia and founder of the Rhodes scholarship). The former prime minister of the British Cape colony was at a career low. Only a month earlier, he’d been forced to resign after the disastrous Jameson Raid, a failed attempt to invade and overthrow the government of the Boer republic of Transvaal. The raid was led by Dr. Leander Jameson, Rhodes’s right-hand man, and had Rhodes’s approval.

  Rhodes soon forgot Catherine almost completely, but she sure remembered him. In 1897, about a year and a half after their meeting, she wrote to him declaring that she had at first been suspicious of him but now realized his greatness. Moreover, she was “blessed or cursed with the gift of second sight” and had visions of harm coming to him within six months. She enclosed a gold charm and begged him to wear it. Rhodes, it appears, was favorably impressed—the letter was kept, and so was the amulet. She wrote him again a year and a half later, this time asking for investment advice. He wrote back, advising her to invest in the Mashonaland Railway.