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

by Farquhar, Michael

  At the center of the growing breach was Anne’s friend Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough. While Sarah had already made a habit of stirring things up between the royal sisters, as in the finance matter, her presence in Anne’s inner circle became intolerable to Queen Mary for another reason. Sarah’s husband, the Duke of Marlborough, (the couple were Winston Churchill’s ancestors) had been a leader in the Glorious Revolution that drove James II from the throne. There were indications, however, that the duke’s loyalty was turning back to the deposed king. Certainly he had corresponded with James in exile. For this reason, Marlborough was a threat to William and Mary, and the queen viewed Anne’s friendship with the wife of such a man as insulting, if not treasonous. She demanded her sister send Sarah away, but Anne, stubborn as always, refused.

  “This year began with family troubles of mine,” wrote Mary at the beginning of 1692. “Where they will end God only knows.” With the help of Sarah, the rift was growing wider and wider. The night before the Duke of Marlborough was dismissed from court as a suspected traitor, Mary and Anne had a terrible fight. The queen flew into a rage over the fact that Anne was sharing with Sarah some of the money she had received from Parliament, making it clear that she felt public money should not be spent on the wife of the man strongly suspected of treachery. Again she demanded Sarah’s removal—and again Anne refused.

  Several weeks later Anne brazenly showed up at court with Sarah in tow. While Queen Mary kept her cool publicly, the next day she fired off a scathing letter of rebuke to her sister. In it, she reiterated her position that Sarah had to go, adding “that I have all the reason imaginable to look upon your bringing her [to court], as the strangest thing that ever was done.”

  Anne was not pleased with the lofty attitude of the letter and showed it to Sarah, who later noted that it seemed to be Mary’s intention “to remind her sister of the distance between them and of what was due from the Princess of Denmark to the Queen of England.” Anne agreed and sat down to write her own angry letter. “Your care of my present condition is extremely obliging,” she wrote sarcastically. “And if you would be pleased to add to it so far, as upon my account to recall your severe command [to send away Sarah], I should ever acknowledge it as a very agreeable mark of your kindness to me. And I must freely own, that as I think this proceeding can be for no other intent than to give me a very sensible mortification, so there is no misery that I cannot readily resolve to suffer, rather than the thoughts of parting with her.”

  Given Mary’s passion for her own friend Frances Apsley,22 it would seem that she might at least understand Anne’s devotion to Sarah, but that was not the case. She responded to Anne’s letter with a curt message informing her that Sarah was forbidden to stay at her house. The duchess, always right in the thick of it, noted that her friend was being denied the right every subject had “of being mistress in her own house.” The relationship grew even frostier. “In all this,” wrote Mary, “I see the hand of God, and look upon our disagreeing as a punishment upon us for the irregularity by us commited upon the Revolution” against their father.

  While the mutual animosity never mellowed between them, Mary did visit her sister one last time. Anne had just given birth to one of her many dead babies, but instead of consoling the devastated woman, Mary took the opportunity to once again harp about Sarah. Anne was left white with anger, and the sisters would never see each other again.

  Some time later, when Mary II was dying of smallpox at only thirty-two years of age, there would be a reconciliation of sorts between the sisters, but not face to face. Their father James, on the other hand, was apparently still so bitter over his forced retirement from the throne that he refused to allow his court in exile to mourn for his dead daughter.

  Anne became queen in 1702 after the death of her brother-in-law William III. Plagued by gout, obesity, and all manner of other maladies, she was never the picture of vigorous good health. Seventeen pregnancies didn’t help matters, either. Unfortunately, most of her children were born dead, or did not live very long. None survived her. So when the last monarch of the Stuart dynasty mercifully passed away in 1714, a foreigner came to the throne.

  5

  Dislike Father, Dislike Son

  A vaguely ridiculous princeling from the German duchy of Hanover, a distant cousin, was the royal family’s closest legal relative after the death of Queen Anne.23 Although he barely spoke a word of English, he was promptly imported from Germany to rule Britain as King George I. Thus, the House of Hanover was established. It would be distinguished by five generations of fathers and sons who absolutely despised one another.2

  The animosity that existed between George I and his son, also named George, went back years to when the father was sovereign of only his miniature German kingdom of Hanover, the son was just a boy, and a messy affair alienated them forever. The elder George’s beautiful but reckless wife, Sophia Dorothea, was found to be sleeping with a Swedish officer by the name of Philip von Konigsmark. After the affair was discovered, Konigsmarkmysteriously disappeared. It was rumored that George had him hacked to pieces and buried beneath the floorboards of his palace at Hanover. Sophia Dorothea’s fate was arguably worse. After divorcing her, George ordered his ex-wife locked away for the rest of her life. She would live another thirty-two years, forbidden from ever seeing her children again.

  Young George was so despondent over the fate of his mother that he once reportedly swam the moat of her castle prison in a vain attempt to rescue her. He never forgave his father for the mistreatment of his mother and grew up hating him. The feeling was mutual. When George I became king of Britain, his son, now Prince of Wales, sought to undermine him at every opportunity by courting political opponents to the king’s party. He even formed his own opposition party in both houses of Parliament. This did not endear son to father.

  Simmering tensions between the two evolved into all-out war when King George booted Prince George out of the palace. He was forbidden from seeing his own children, who remained in the king’s care, and was declared persona non grata to anyone who wished to retain the king’s favor. Undeterred, the Prince of Wales established a rival court at his new home, Leicester House. Among the favorite activities of the dissidents who gathered there was making fun of the king and all his blundering ways—especially his penchant for ugly mistresses.

  Whenever father and son did meet, fearful scenes tended to erupt. King George even ordered the prince arrested at one point, but nothing came of it except even more hostility. It was said that Prince George could not wait for his father to die so he could finally free his mother, but this was not to be. Sophia Dorothea died in 1726, a year before her ex-husband. When the prince heard the news that the king had finally expired, he could hardly believe it. “Dat is one big lie,” he exclaimed in his thick German accent, incredulous that he was at last free from his paternal enemy.

  Relations between the new King George II and his own son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, were even less tender. “Our first-born is the greatest ass, the greatest liar, the greatest canaille and the greatest beast in the whole world and we heartily wish he was out of it,” the proud papa once said. George I had wanted his grandson to marry Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, but as soon as George II ascended to the throne he immediately nixed the match. “I did not think that ingrafting my half-witted coxcomb upon a mad woman would improve the breed,” he later explained.

  Prince Frederick held his father in equal esteem, describing him as “an obstinate self-indulgent miserly martinet with an insatiable sexual appetite.” He had a point. Like his father before him, the king became the object of ridicule within his son’s social circles. Hearing such insightful declarations as “I hate all boets and bainters,” who could resist? Thanks to King George’s increasing obsession with order and punctuality, his court became rigid and dull. “No mill horse ever went on a more constant track on a more unchanging circle,” Lord Hervey once remarked. All the fun was to be had at Prince Frederick’s altern
ative court.

  Hoping to undermine his son’s ability to entertain, and thus his social standing, King George slashed the prince’s allowance. He also made it clear, just as his own father had done to him before, that any contact with Frederick or his wife would be considered a gross insult to the king. But the Prince of Wales thrived nevertheless, and constantly eclipsed his father among London’s glittering elite. “My Got,” gasped the outraged king, “popularity always makes me sick, but [Frederick’s] makes me vomit.”24 King George could barely muster even a facade of mourning when Prince Frederick died in 1751.

  Because of Frederick’s early death, George II was succeeded by his grandson, George III, in 1760. With a large brood of debauched sons, the king who lost the American colonies had plenty of opportunity to continue the great Hanoverian tradition of father-son feuding. When he wasn’t exhibiting symptoms of madness, King George was rather prudish in his moral outlook. His sons’ wild behavior, therefore, upset him tremendously, and he never failed to scold them whenever the opportunity arose.

  He was particularly disturbed by his eldest son and heir, the future George IV. During his rational moments the king berated the Prince of Wales for his compulsive drinking, gambling, and womanizing, but it was during his lapses into insanity that King George really let loose on his son. During one episode, the royal family was dining at Windsor Castle when the king exploded in a mad fit. Interrupting the conversation, George suddenly rose up from the table, grabbed the prince by the collar, yanked him out of his chair and flung him against a wall. Prince George broke into tears after the scene, but recovered sufficiently to use his father’s mental illness to his advantage.

  The loyal son delighted audiences all over London with his wicked imitations of his dad’s foaming-at-the-mouth bouts of insanity. And he made no secret of his desire to see the king locked away forever so he could rule in his stead. When it looked like the king’s illness was becoming permanent, the younger George joyfully swept into action and prepared for his Regency. George III disappointed him, however. The king seemed to rally after each episode, leaving the prince to wait like a buzzard for a permanent descent into insanity. He was finally rewarded in 1810, when his father left reason behind for good.

  With no son of his own to carry on the father-son feuding for which the Hanoverians had become so famous, George IV simply turned on his daughter, Charlotte. He was repelled by the spirited girl, detecting in his heir elements of her crude, licentious mother, Caroline, from whom he was bitterly estranged.25 When Princess Charlotte had the grace to die in labor, there were no other children among George III’s sons, so a mad scramble began among them to settle down and sire an heir. Edward, Duke of Kent, was the lucky one, fathering the future Queen Victoria in 1819.

  6

  In-Laws on the Outs

  After George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his brother William IV. Victoria was next in line right after him. The girl’s mother couldn’t stand the king her daughter was destined to replace, finding him to be an oversexed oaf, and she was fiercely determined to keep her precious Victoria away from him. King William did not appreciate the effort. In front of a large group of guests gathered one night at Windsor Castle, he lacerated his sister-in-law for her rudeness:

  “I should . . . have the satisfaction of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady (pointing to Victoria), the heiress presumptive of the crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me [Victoria’s mother], who is surrounded by evil advisors and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed.

  “I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted—grossly and continually insulted—by that person, but I am determined to endure no longer a course of behavior so disrespectful to me. Amongst many other things I have particularly to complain of the manner in which that young lady has been kept away from my court; she has been repeatedly kept from my drawing-rooms, at which she ought always to have been present, but I am fully resolved that this shall not happen again.

  “I would have her know that I am king, and that I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do so.”

  Recalling the terrible scene some twenty years later, Queen Victoria told her eldest daughter how she remembered always being “on pins and needles, with the whole family hardly on speaking terms. I (a mere child) between two fires—trying to be civil and then scolded at home! Oh! it was dreadful, and that has given me such a horror of Windsor, which I can’t get over.” If that family tension upset her, imagine how the queen would have felt had she lived to see her grandsons—Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and King George V of Britain—face off in a little conflict that became known as World War I.

  7

  The Battling Bonapartes

  While the royal families of Britain spent centuries squabbling among themselves, their ancient enemies across the channel were engaged in similar pursuits. In France it had always been Valois versus Valois or Bourbon versus Bourbon. Then came the Bonapartes—perhaps the most dysfunctional bunch of them all.

  Things were going fairly well for Napoleon after a series of dubious military victories made him a star in post-Revolutionary France. But then the diminutive Corsican with the gargantuan ego had to go and make himself royal. As soon as he crowned himself emperor in 1804, his already fractious family started acting royal as well. Judging by the way they treated one another, the Bonapartes all played their new roles magnificently.

  When the clan wasn’t maneuvering for more power and wealth, they were rebelling against their brother’s imperious rule and making his life miserable. “The Emperor is truly rendered unhappy by his family,” Madame Desvaisnes said at the time of Napoleon’s coronation. “They are all acting like a pack of devils deliberately bent on tormenting him.” The emperor, for his part, indulged his siblings’ greed with kingdoms, titles, and lots and lots of cash, but only because it suited him. When it did not, he never hesitated to snatch his gifts away. And in return for the generous bounty, his brothers and sisters were subjects of his unbending will.

  Napoleon’s rapid rise to glory was particularly hard on his older brother, Joseph, who had grown accustomed to being the respected leader of the fatherless family. It was to him they always turned in times of trouble, and his word was law. Even Napoleon—who bowed to no man—handed over his salary to Joseph for investment and dispersal. “Whatever circumstances fate reserves for you,” Napoleon wrote his older brother in an uncharacteristically mushy letter in the years before his fame surged and his heart closed, “you certainly know, my friend, you can have no better friend than I, who holds you most dear and who desires most sincerely your happiness. . . . We have lived together for so many years, and have been so closely united, that our hearts are one, and you know better than anyone how fond I am of you. I find in writing these words an emotion I have rarely felt in my life.”

  The warm feelings between the Bonaparte brothers would soon evaporate. Joseph was left seething with jealousy as his younger brother eclipsed him and came to dominate not only the family, but Europe as well. He was losing his treasured place of honor, and though Napoleon tossed him lucrative positions and other consolation prizes along the way, it still rankled.

  The emperor wanted his family to participate in his new dynasty, but he made a decision that would forever alienate him from Joseph. Childless at the time, Napoleon named his nephew heir to the throne—a position Joseph naturally assumed would be his. “If my brother cannot entrust this to me,” Joseph fumed after firing a pistol at a portrait of Napoleon, “if he does not do for me what is expected of him [then] . . . to sacrifice one’s tastes, one’s ambitions, for nothing, for the mere possibility of an eventual position of power, to endure all that, and then possibly in vain, one must be either insane or a born intriguer.”

  A fearful scene between the brot
hers erupted a few months before Napoleon’s coronation, with Joseph screeching about his rights as the eldest member of the family and Napoleon becoming infuriated at his presumption. “How dare he speak to me of his rights and of his interests!” Napoleon raged. “To do this before me, his brother, to arouse his jealousy and pretensions, is to wound me at my most sensitive point. I shall not forget that . . . It is as if he had said to an impassioned lover that he had fucked his mistress. Well . . . my mistress is the power I have created. I have done far too much to achieve this conquest to permit someone else to ravish or even covet her.”

  When one of his counselors attempted to speak up for Joseph, Napoleon lashed out again: “You forget therefore that my brothers are nothing without me, that they are great now because I have made them so . . . there are thousands of men in France who have rendered far greater services to the state. But let’s face the hard facts. Joseph is not destined to reign. He is older than I: I will live longer than he, and in addition, I am in good health. Moreover, he was not born in a high enough social position to have warranted such an illusion on his part . . . He, like myself, was born in a common position. But I raised myself by my own abilities. He, on the other hand, has remained exactly the same since birth. To rule in France, one must either be born in grandeur . . . or else be capable of distinguishing oneself above all the others . . . For the succession to the throne to succeed, it must therefore be passed on to our children born in that grandeur.”