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

by Farquhar, Michael

  On another occasion, Victoria spoke of “the sorrow and bitter disappointment and the awful anxiety for the future this causes us.” Even her son’s appearance seemed to annoy her. “Handsome I cannot think him,” she sniffed, “with that painfully small and narrow head, those immense features and total want of a chin.” It was an ironic critique coming from a woman who could very well have been describing herself and who at least admitted of Edward: “He is my caricature.”

  The chasm between mother and son widened considerably upon the death of Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, to whom she was fanatically devoted and for whose death she loudly blamed Edward. It was enough to make any son feel special. The prince had been caught in a youthful indiscretion with an actress, and the morally sensitive Albert was devastated by the scandal surrounding his son. Coincidentally, he died a short time later. Victoria could not be convinced that it was typhoid, not grief, that carried her beloved away. In her gloom, the queen declared that she could never look at Edward again “without a shudder.” With his typical good nature and kindness, however, the prince overlooked his mother’s cruel accusations and remained solicitous and devoted to her.

  During Victoria’s morbid, self-imposed seclusion that would last for decades, the crepe-draped queen remained determined to keep the Prince of Wales away from anything even remotely resembling responsibility. She was convinced, unjustly, of Edward’s inherent unworthiness. “What would happen if I were to die next winter!” she wrote her daughter. “One shudders to think of it: it is too awful a contemplation. . . . The greatest improvement I fear will never make him fit for his position.” On another occasion she confided, “I often pray he may never survive me, for I know not what would happen.” All important state papers were kept from the prince, providing zero training for his future role. Removing a key from his pocket, Edward’s little brother, Leopold, once said: “It is the Queen’s Cabinet key, which opens all the secret despatch boxes. . . . The Prince of Wales is not allowed to have one.”

  Warm-hearted as he was, Edward couldn’t help but resent how insignificant his mother made him feel. “I am not of the slightest use to the Queen,” he once complained. “Everything I say or suggest is pooh-poohed and my brothers and sisters are more listened to than I am.” The more the queen kept him away from responsibility, the more Edward turned to other idle distractions like gambling and womanizing. This only confirmed in Victoria’s mind how unworthy he really was.

  Never trusting his judgment, the queen even tried to control Edward’s private life long after he was married. Lord Stanley noted in 1863 that all London was gossiping about the “extraordinary way” in which the queen insisted on directing “the Prince and Princess of Wales in every detail of their lives. They may not dine out, except with previous approval. . . . In addition, a daily and minute report of what passes at Marlborough House [their London residence] has to be sent to Windsor.”

  Throughout it all, the prince handled the mistrust and disapproval with dignity and good humor, always remaining a respectful and dutiful son. After he inherited the throne in 1901 at age fifty-nine, King Edward VII would reign with distinction for nine years, proving his mother’s attitude toward him totally unfounded. He lent his name to a genteel era, and was nicknamed Edward the Peacemaker for his adroit efforts to keep Europe from war. He was a good king, his mother be damned.

  PART V

  Royal Family Feud

  Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,” wrote Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man, recalling the days when Eastern kings would secure their thrones by gouging out the hearts and livers of their brethren. Royal relationships were no warmer in Western Europe. The crown meant power, and monarchs spent their days either defending it from predatory relatives, or lording it over the more compliant of their kinsmen. Family ties tended to suffer as a result, rendered as fragile as antique lace.

  Richard III: History’s most evil uncle?

  1

  The Royal Raptors

  Feuding royal families have been a part of Britain’s heritage from the very beginning. William the Conqueror had barely staked his claim to the island in 1066 before his snarly clan started bickering among themselves. His son, Henry I, imprisoned another son, Robert, Duke of Normandy, for twenty-eight years and is suspected of having orchestrated the tragic hunting “accident” that killed a third son, William II, in 1100. Vying for the crown years later, two of the Conqueror’s grandchildren, Stephen and Matilda, plunged the kingdom into a fierce civil war that was only settled when Matilda’s son became Henry II in 1154. Poor Henry was subjected to no fewer than four rebellions by his grasping sons, all urged on by their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose bitter estrangement from Henry resulted in her lengthy imprisonment. This loving family would hound its patriarch to death.

  Ruler of vast domains that included all of England and much of France, Henry II decided to divide up his territory among his sons while he was still alive. He even had his eldest son, Henry the Younger, crowned king of England while he, too, retained the title. If Henry was hoping this would make the boys happy and ensure a peaceful transition after his death, he was tragically mistaken. The children wanted the power as well as the titles, and rebelled when Henry indicated he wasn’t ready to relinquish that. In various combinations, and with stunning treachery, they rose up against their father—and each other.

  There was, at the time, a tapestry hanging in the royal chamber at Westminster. It featured four eaglets preying upon the parent bird, the fourth poised at the parent’s neck prepared to gouge out the eyes. “The four eaglets are my four sons who cease not to persecute me even unto death,” King Henry reportedly said. “The youngest of them, who I now embrace with so much affection, will some time in the end insult me more grievously than any of the others.” And so it came to be.

  The fourth eaglet ready to rip out the father’s eyes turned out to be Henry’s beloved youngest son, the infamous future King John of Magna Carta fame. King Henry had striven to advance John’s fortunes, especially since he didn’t inherit all the land his brothers did (hence the “Lackland” that is often attached to his name). Showing just how grateful he was, John joined older brother Richard (the Lion Hearted) in his final rebellion against their father.

  At least Richard had some legitimate gripes with dad, not the least of which was the recurring rumor that Henry was sleeping with Richard’s fiancée. But John’s betrayal was too much for his father to bear. When he saw his beloved son had covertly switched allegiance, and that his name now headed the list of conspirators, Henry was finally defeated and broken. The once proud monarch lay back in his bed, closed his eyes in despair, and died. John subsequently kept himself busy during the next reign—that of Richard I—trying to steal his brother’s throne while the new king was off fighting in the Crusades. It was against this background of fraternal disloyalty that the legendary Robin Hood played his part.

  Royal family relations had hardly improved several generations later when Queen Isabella, estranged wife of Edward II, raided her husband’s kingdom with her lover in 1326 and had the king put to a ghastly death.20 Their son Edward III then sired a family whose descendents engaged in a bloody feud that lasted for more than three decades and became famous as “The Wars of the Roses.”

  2

  Crown of Thorns

  The Wars of the Roses was a fancy name, coined years later, for a nasty feud in the late fifteenth century between the royal houses of York, represented by the white rose, and Lancaster, represented by the red, over which branch of the Plantagenet dynasty should rule England. Three kings, a prince of Wales, and numerous royal dukes were murdered, executed, or killed in battle during this dark era of inbred intrigue.

  The extended royal drama, which so intrigued Shakespeare that he devoted half his history plays to it, originated late in the fourteenth century when Edward III’s grandson, who became Henry IV and started the Lancastrian line of kings, usurped the throne of his cousin, Richard II, and
had him murdered. While regicide wasn’t any way to promote kinship, things nevertheless went fairly smoothly for the Lancastrian kings—at least for a time. Though Henry IV faced a series of rebellions, his son peacefully inherited his throne and went down in history as the heroic Henry V who defeated the French at Agincourt and other great battles during the Hundred Years War while reasserting English power on the continent. The triumphant king died young, however, and was succeeded by his far less inspiring son.

  Henry VI, who was not yet a year old when he became king in 1422, grew up to be a kind, pious man, if a bit of a simpleton. Plain and unassuming, he much preferred wearing a hair shirt to a crown and abhorred war and bloodshed. He is still revered today as the founder of the famed boys’ school Eton and of King’s College, Cambridge. Good guy though he was, Henry proved to be a dazzlingly incompetent monarch.

  In the medieval world, when mighty rulers were needed to subdue sometimes overwhelming chaos, Henry VI was a toothless lion on a savage plain. He was, as Pope Pius II described him, “a man more timorous than a woman, utterly devoid of wit or spirit.” Blushing at the very mention of sex, and sincerely believing his son was sired by the Holy Spirit, Henry was hardly the type meant to dominate the feudal food chain.

  Surrounding himself with greedy and inept advisors who picked his coffers clean, Henry allowed England to slide into disorder, debt and decay. Crowned ruler of France as well, he stood by as the once vast English possessions there were gradually snatched away by the likes of Joan of Arc until almost nothing was left. And further undermining his effectiveness were his debilitating bouts of insanity.

  As England fell into ruin and France leaked away under Henry’s timid rule, the king’s powerful cousin Richard, Duke of York, watched with increasing agitation. Descended from two of Edward III’s sons on both his parents’ sides, York had a claim to the throne that was arguably superior to Henry’s. In time, out of sheer frustration, he would move to assert it. An ugly family clash was looming.

  The Duke of York was put in charge of the kingdom while cousin Henry suffered through one of his early bouts with madness, but his influence quickly waned after the king recovered his senses. Seeking to gain more control—and especially to oust Henry’s greedy favorite, their mutual cousin, the Duke of Somerset—York confronted Henry by force at St. Albans in 1455. Somerset was killed and the king wounded in the neck by a passing arrow. It was the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, yet while the Yorkists were now ahead by one, the removal of King Henry VI, was not yet part of their plan. That would come later.

  The meek monarch sought peace and reconciliation more than anything else, but his ferocious French queen, Margaret of Anjou, was eager to quash York once and for all. Since she was the partner in the marriage with all the mettle, Margaret usually got her way. London at this time was swarming with agitated supporters of both the Duke of York and the Lancastrian King Henry as the government tried to mediate their differences. Ever the dependable sap, the king staged a “loveday” ceremony to encourage and display family unity. Although Queen Margaret went along with the idea—even walking hand in hand with her sworn enemy York in a procession to St. Paul’s Cathedral—she did so with clenched teeth.

  Margaret was convinced York was out to steal Henry’s throne, a suspicion that became all the more gnawing after St. Albans, when Henry suffered through another one of his “episodes” and the royal duke once again assumed control of the kingdom. Raising an army, the angry queen defeated her husband’s cousin at the Battle of Ludlow in 1459 and sent him scurrying away to Ireland. She then introduced legislation declaring him a traitor. The act, which not very subtly deplored York’s “most diabolic unkindness and wretched envy” and his “execrable and most detestable” deed at St. Albans, was passed by the group of English peers who subsequently became known as “The Parliament of Devils.”

  Bill or no bill, the now-outlawed Duke of York was far from finished. He returned from Ireland, his forces routed the king’s at Northumberland, and Henry was brought back to London a prisoner. When York himself entered the city, he formally submitted his claim to the throne. For once, Henry VI stood up for himself. In defiance of his cousin York’s claim, he proclaimed to a gathering of peers, “My father was king [Henry V]; his father was also king [Henry IV]; I have worn the crown for forty years, from my cradle. You have all sworn fealty to me as your sovereign, and your fathers did the like to my fathers. How then can my right be disputed?”

  While no one was prepared to unseat an anointed king, York now held the power. Parliament came to a compromise of sorts, reluctantly declaring that the duke would be first in line to inherit the crown, displacing Henry’s only son, Edward of Lancaster. Now Queen Margaret was really mad. Raising another army in 1460, she had her forces attack York’s at the Battle of Wakefield and the duke was killed. His severed head was displayed on the gates of York city with a paper crown stuck to it—a fun, kind of medieval way of mocking his kingly pretensions.

  Heading south, the king’s victorious Lancastrian forces then attacked the remnants of York’s in the second Battle of St. Albans. King Henry was reunited with his family after reportedly spending the entire skirmish laughing and singing to himself. Margaret, meanwhile, treated their son to a little post-battle entertainment; she allowed the seven-year-old Prince of Wales to condemn the Yorkist leaders and then watch their executions. The queen, however, would have little time to gloat. The Duke of York was dead, but his formidable seventeen-year-old son and heir, Edward, was gathering strength. Certainly he didn’t find the stunt with his father’s head one bit funny.

  The people of London also were unamused by all the looting and pillaging King Henry’s forces had done while heading south. They slammed the city’s gates shut on the royal family and their Lancastrian army and instead welcomed in York’s son, who immediately declared himself King Edward IV. Issuing a rather windy proclamation, Edward lamented that in the time of “our adversary, he that calleth himself King Henry the Sixth” there existed “not plenty, peace, justice, good governance, policy and virtuous conversation, but unrest, inward war and trouble, unrightwiseness, shedding and effusion of innocent blood, abusion of the laws, partiality, riot, extortion, murder, rape and vicious living, have been the guiders and leaders of the noble realm of England.” It was an elaborate justification for the second usurpation of the throne by a family member in less than a century. And this one would not be the last.

  Edward IV was now sovereign, but Henry VI still lived. England’s new monarch chased the old to the north, where he met and defeated the ex-king’s forces at Towton in the most savage encounter of the long, dreadful family feud. “This battle was sore fought,” one chronicler wrote of the cold winter clash, “for hope of life was set [a]side on every part and taking of prisoners was proclaimed a great offence.” The snow shimmered with the blood of thousands hacked apart or pierced by arrows, including that of forty-two Lancastrian knights whom Edward ordered immediately beheaded on the battlefield after their capture.

  The new king had proved a victorious warrior at Towton. With his hulking frame covered in gilded armor and his helmet adorned with a jeweled coronet, he inspired his forces whenever he appeared among them in the thick of battle. Cousin Henry, on the other hand, characteristically spent the night praying. After the devastating loss, the deposed royal family made a midnight escape to Scotland, carrying whatever possessions they could.

  The former King Henry VI became an elusive shadow, hovering forlornly around his lost kingdom for years to come. In 1465, after wandering from refuge to refuge, he was finally captured, betrayed by a monk who had been sheltering him. “He fell into the bloody hands of his deadly enemies, his own subjects,” as one contemporary put it. To compound the indignity, the former king of England—his feet tied to the stirrups beneath the belly of his horse and wearing a straw hat—was paraded through several towns on his way to imprisonment in the Tower of London. Parliament, meanwhile, had declared “the said Henr
y, usurper” a traitor, while enthusiastically confirming Edward’s claim to the throne after his formal coronation.

  Despite pockets of Lancastrian resistance, often led by the indefatigable former Queen Margaret, Edward IV’s Yorkist regime seemed secure. The Wars of the Roses, however, were far from over. King Edward wore the crown, but he had another close relative, the Earl of Warwick, to thank for it. Known to history as “The Kingmaker,” Warwick was the second most powerful man in England. Problem was, he wanted to be the first. The eventual confrontation between the king and his “over mighty subject” would result in the stunning restoration of Henry VI. Given the family history, Edward should not have been surprised by the turn of events.

  The king’s relationship with Warwick started to deteriorate gradually as the earl attempted to control his royal kinsman in exchange for all the help he provided in gaining Edward the crown. But when the king married Elizabeth Woodville, a former lady-in-waiting to ex-Queen Margaret, relations between the two collapsed entirely. Warwick loathed the new queen, primarily because she had a load of upstart relatives whom she sought to advance. With King Edward’s support, they married well, reaped huge financial rewards, and were given influential positions in government. The mighty earl felt threatened by all these arrivistes and lashed out.

  His first move was to encourage a popular revolt in Kent in 1469, seeding widespread discontent over Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s relatives. Her father and brother were early victims of the rebellion, beheaded without trial on Warwick’s orders. It was a none too subtle message from the earl to cousin Edward IV that he was not happy. Warwick’s cohorts, including Edward’s own brother, the Duke of Clarence, continued to sow rebellion, even capturing the king at one point. Edward was forced to abandon any pretense of friendship with his treacherous relatives and declare war. Though he issued a proclamation in the spring of 1470 denouncing Warwick and brother Clarence as “rebels and traitors,” he would lose his crown that fall.