Trashy Royals

We tend to think of Queen Victoria attired in black, with a dour countenance, but as a young queen she was anything but. Her marriage to Prince Albert was the rare love match, and according to her surviving letters and journal entries, the two enjoyed a vibrant intimacy, albeit in an era where birth control wasn't really a thing. The nine children Victoria and Albert produced speaks to that. Then,...

Queen Victoria was just 18 when she assumed the throne in the United Kingdom in 1837. She ruled for more than 63 years and is considered truly one of the great monarchs in history, but her reign did not start without a few hiccups. Looking at her first two years on the throne or so, we examine some of the personal politics that played out through the lenses of a few people in her orbit. Sir John C...

We tend to think of royal upbringings as fairly entitled, but for the future Queen Victoria, her childhood was more like a hostage situation. After her father's death when she was just an infant, her mother and (maybe) her mother's lover went to great lengths to control every aspect of her life. Young Victoria was simply never allowed to be alone, including sleeping in her mother's bedroom until t...

In the never-ending see-saw that was Romanov rule in Russia, a truly forward-thinking Tsar finally came to power in 1855. Alexander II accomplished Catherine the Great's never-achieved emancipation of Russia's serfs, among a host of other good-government reforms, leading his newly free and suddenly energized public to call him Alexander the Liberator. Likely influenced by a grand tour of Europe wh...

Not every Romanov Nicholas got to be a Tsar. In the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century, the grandson of Nicholas I, Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich, drove his royal family absolutely batty. The first in his family to go to college (as we would put it today), the dapper military hero scandalized St. Petersburg with his affair with an American woman and his theft - for money - of a v...

Upon the death (or departure?) of Russia's Alexander I in 1825, an unusual power struggle developed between his two surviving brothers. The eldest, Constantine, declined the opportunity to take power, leaving Nicholas, the youngest son of Paul I, the only legitimate candidate. The delay, and apparent passing over of the next in line, prompted an uprising called the Decembrist Revolt, and while Nic...

It's almost a historical accident that England's Queen Victoria, granddaughter of King George III, was born at all. Her father, George III's fourth son, shared his many brothers' predilection for the freedom of a bachelor's life, so when the heir apparent of the next generation, Princess Charlotte, died in childbirth, the princes of England found themselves in a race to marry and produce legitimat...

In the see-saw nature of Russian leadership, Catherine the Great had died before establishing her grandson, the future Alexander I, as her heir, leaving Alexander's father, Paul I, to take the big chair in his stead. This... went poorly for Paul, who was assassinated by a group of his nobles after just four and a half years. Alexander I became Emperor of Russia in 1801, and spent the first part of...

As the long reign of Catherine the Great wound down, she made moves to ensure the succession of her grandson, Alexander, but those were still incomplete by the time she died. Instead, it was her estranged son Paul who became emperor, and while his reign was not long, it was spiteful and much reviled by both the public and the elites. In just four and a half years, Paul I passed nearly 8,000 laws e...

One of history's great ironies is that one of Russia's most successful periods occurred under the leadership of a monarch with not a drop of Russian blood. Catherine II, better known as Catherine the Great, was a minor Prussian princess whose fairly horrible mother set her sights on achieving notoriety through her daughter. Fortunately for young Catherine (who was born Sophie), Frederick the Great...

It feels safe to say that when Russians recall a leader's reign as a "dark era," we're into some deeply, deeply dark events. Empress Anna, a niece of Peter the (Not So) Great, had survived many humiliations before Russia's Supreme Privy Council elevated her to Empress; they thought she would be easy to control, but instead, her decade-long reign was characterized by Anna's cruelty and capriciousne...

For the Dutch Republic, 1672 was a series of existential catastrophes that nearly saw the nation swallowed by France's Louis XIV. But the internal push and pulls that culminated in the brutal murder and partial consumption of the man who'd run the place for a couple of decades actually began much, much earlier, when Martin Luther (perhaps) hammered his Ninety-Five Theses into a church door, sparki...

The last couple of years have been a time of enormous change for the House of Windsor, the United Kingdom, and the 14 nations that comprise the Commonwealth, and we are so grateful to be joined by podcasting superstar and Royal watcher extraordinaire Kristen Meinzer to discuss. When Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8, 2022, Prince Charles, England’s longest-serving Prince of Wales, immediately...

Pausing from the messiness of Plantagenet England, Alicia takes us on a trip to the east to visit Mother Russia, circa 1700, where the Romanov Tsar Peter the Great was busily acquiring lands, founding cities, and reforming the institutions of a country that - largely through his efforts - would become a major player on the world state for centuries to come. But with those accolades and accomplishm...

Alicia continues with our inexorable march to the Tudor dynasty with yet another French princess contributing to the Plantagenet - now technically Lancastrian - line of the English monarchy. Her marriage to King Henry V, grandson of John of Gaunt and great grandson of King Edward III, was cut tragically short when Henry died on military adventure in France. Doubly tragically, Henry's child with Ca...

It's probably impossible to fully understand the events leading up to the Tudor dynasty without talking about perhaps the 14th century's most singular figure - at least from a historical perspective. John of Gaunt was the third son of King Edward III, and through beneficial marriages, became extremely rich in both land and money. His successes on the battlefield and the untimely death of his broth...

While the 14th century wasn't exactly a hotbed of feminist fervor in England, the place wasn't without its powerful and intriguing women. Joan of Kent was one. Though her family was caught up in the armed conflicts that ended the reign of Edward II, once Edward III threw off the restraints imposed by his mother, Isabella of France, he welcomed Joan's family - his relatives - back to his court. Thi...

The War of the Roses was hardly the first period of civil war in England. In fact, Edward III's father oversaw such a period long before Eddie III's kids kicked off a few generations of bloody sibling rivalry. Interestingly for the age, Edward II's wife, Isabella of France, had a starring role in ending his disastrous reign. Alicia has the full story, from the 12-year-old fully royal child bride t...

Unsurprisingly, the French Revolution didn’t happen particularly spontaneously. Years of financial mismanagement, poor crops, massive unemployment, and a swelling population in Paris itself all contributed to a growing dissatisfaction with King Louis XVI and the monarchy in general. The King’s cause wasn’t helped at all by a lingering suspicion that his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, was a profliga...

Welcome to the Court of the Trashy Royals, friends! Today, Alicia takes us on a wild ride through the family values of the descendants of England’s King Edward III (1312-1377), who basically spent the next century-plus fighting over who would wear the big crown. The question was finally settled by the emergence of England’s first Tudor king, whose red- and white-rose motif represented a final comi...

Rounding out the Julio-Claudian emperors of Rome is Nero, the fifth and final of his line. While his ascension was initially met with relief, it was only a few short years before Nero’s hands were as covered in blood as his predecessors’, but it was a fire that finally sealed his fate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy an...

While Rome expanded its reach across Europe and onto the isles of Britannia, not everyone was on board with domination from a distant bureaucracy. Rebellions and uprisings in Roman-held territory were not particularly uncommon, but a series of missteps by Roman governors in what is now the United Kingdom amounted to a series of costly own-goals. After Caligula’s successor, Claudius, gained a footh...

Imagine being so destructive, and so capricious in your violence and sadism, that even two thousand years after you shake off your mortal coil, your childhood nickname still evokes wickedness, wantonness, and profound corruption among all who hear it. Welcome to Trashy Royals, friends, where we begin with Rome’s third emperor – and among its most notorious – Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, known...

New from the team at Hemlock Creatives, Alicia and Stacie (Trashy Divorces) turn their jaded eyes toward the long history of Our Betters, only to find that they, too, are raging dumpster fires. Weekly episodes begin May 4 - subscribe now and never miss the trashcandy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Priva...