Whether it's the debauchery of ancient Roman emperors, the Tudor crime family, the shenanigans behind the Chair of St. Peter, or the Austrian elites’ attempts to save themselves by trading their daughters to other royal houses, it turns out that our betters have always been among our worst. Join Alicia and Stacie from Trashy Divorces as we turn our jaded eyes to a different kind of moral garbage fire: Trashy Royals! Thursdays. Brought to you by Hemlock Creatives.
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The much-discussed and much-reviled English King Henry VIII is best known, of course, as one of history's worst husbands. There were famously six wives, two of whom were lucky enough to outlive him. But before whatever madness began to take hold of him in his 30s, he was a dashing, popular young king with a devoted wife and, as far as historians can tell, a fairly limited number of mistresses.
These wonder years were not without obstacles and tragedies. Catherine of Aragon, his first and longest-married wife, suffered miscarriages and stillbirths throughout their years together, finally producing just a daughter, the future Mary I, or, for the Protestants in the audience, Bloody Mary.
Still, these years seemed to be a time of optimism for both Henry and the people of England. Who could have predicted the social and political earthquakes that were to come?
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78. Grace O'Malley, Ireland's Pirate Queen
Episode 78
Thursday, September 19, 2024 • Duration 46:52
A century and a half before the "Golden Age of Piracy," an Irish woman of noble birth was conquering the inland seas and coastlines on the western edge of the island. Gráinne Ó Máille, anglicized to Grace O'Malley, hailed from the Umhaill line, a seafaring clan of Connacht, and while the family did conduct legitimate forms of trade, they also ran protection rackets on boats that tried to fish their waters, and sometimes plundered merchant vessels in the area, as well as settlements belonging to neighboring clans.
Her life almost perfectly overlapped Queen Elizabeth I's, and during Grace's life, the English Crown was deeply invested in the conquest of Ireland, mostly by seducing its nobles into servitude with fancy English titles. Barons and Earls proliferated around Dublin for years, but English shenanigans finally reached the West of the country when Grace's first husband was cut out from the line of succession to his family's Chief of the Name. Then he was assassinated, leaving Grace ready and willing to enact violent revenge on his killers.
The Crown continued eroding the alliances she was building. Her second husband was demoted from his role as regional king of Connacht while Grace was jailed on a plundering trip. When the Crown-supported king died, Grace and her husband teamed up to raise an army of 2,000 men to insure his succession. He not only got the title, but was named a Baron as well, in exchange for his promise of fealty to English law.
But Crown agents had already set their sights on Grace O'Malley as the kind of noteworthy adversary whose arrest or death would send a message throughout the Emerald Isle, and Grace was eventually forced to sail to London to seek an audience with Queen Elizabeth herself, an effort in which she prevailed handily.
Grace's story is full of courage, vengeance, and daring-do, but it's also a story rooted in specific moment in time, when the longstanding society of Ireland was changing and being changed. Ireland's Pirate Queen Grace O'Malley saw it all up close, and as a most unconventional woman, charted her own course through.
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70. Meet the Bonapartes: Joseph Bonaparte, King of Naples, Spain, and New Jersey
Episode 70
Thursday, July 25, 2024 • Duration 30:27
To round out our Meet the Bonapartes series, we turn to Napoleon's eldest - and apparently coolest - brother, Joseph. Affable, charming, and comfortable in his own skin, he was a contrast to most of his siblings, including Napoleon. His easygoing nature made him popular even with political opponents, and Joseph was an important player in Napoleon's rise.
As a reward, Emperor Napoleon named Joseph the King of Naples, where he fashioned himself a man of the people and governed them well, implementing various government reforms, fighting crime, and creating jobs by building infrastructure. His reign in Naples was short lived, however, as Napoleon replaced him with their sister Caroline and her husband, Joachim Murat.
Napoleon then dispatched Joseph to govern occupied Spain, where the public mood was very different. Not only was Spain's King Joseph reviled by commoners and elites alike, he himself became fairly burned out with the family business in this era. After Napoleon's defeat, he hopped a boat for New York and in a lot of ways, never looked back. He spent decades mostly living a quiet, prosperous life in New Jersey, before returning to Europe to be closer to his remaining family in his later years.
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69. Meet the Bonapartes: Elisa Bonaparte, Grand Duchess of Tuscany
Episode 69
Thursday, July 18, 2024 • Duration 32:57
Napoleon's eldest sister shared many of his more imperious personal qualities, but would prove to be surprisingly gifted at governance after her brother named her Princess of the Italian principalities of Piombino and Lucca. More territories would be added to the holdings she governed, eventually including the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with Florence as its capital.
Napoleon made Elisa its Grand Duchess, but also added new strings to her ability to govern independently. She was obligated to enforce Napoleon's decisions without modification, and the period of being a popular sovereign making well-received reforms and investments in her lands came to a close. As with the rest of her siblings, her fortunes fell as her brother's did, and died following an illness a few months before Napoleon himself.
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68. Meet the Bonapartes: Lucien Bonaparte, Head and Shoulders Above the Rest
Episode 68
Thursday, July 11, 2024 • Duration 33:26
It never hurts to have a hype man, and Napoleon's younger brother Lucien just happened to be a talented writer and orator. One could even say he was his brother's propagandist and co-conspirator in a ballot stuffing operation that led to Napoleon's initial domination of the government of France.
But Lucien, who was also the tallest of the Bonaparte siblings, came to have significant differences with his brother. The two were at odds for a number of years, with Lucien marrying secretly - twice - and refusing to divorce for strategic marriages Napoleon hoped to engineer. The brothers did eventually reconcile, with Lucien advocating strongly for Napoleon after the disastrous Hundred Days - effectively accusing France's ruling class of disloyalty - but the die was cast, and Napoleon's time as ruler of France was done.
Like several of his siblings, Lucien lived out his days in Italy, succumbing to stomach cancer in 1840.
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67. Meet the Bonapartes: Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais
Episode 67
Thursday, July 4, 2024 • Duration 53:23
Napoleon's meddling in his siblings' lives was the source of considerable angst for several of them. Napoleon had high expectations for his younger brother Louis, but Louis chafed at his brother's authority. Still, he ultimately agreed to marry Napoleon's step-daughter with Josephine, Hortense de Beauharnais, a marriage that would become notable most for the profound unhappiness of its spouses.
Four years into their terrible marriage, Napoleon decided that the territory of the modern Netherlands was a bit too independent, and installed Louis as its new king. The French Emperor expected his brother to serve merely as a titled governor of the region, but Louis really stepped up in the position. He began learning Dutch, renounced his French citizenship and declared himself Dutch, and demanded that his mostly-French ministers do the same. He also demanded it of his wife, who had only reluctantly accompanied her husband to Holland.
But Hortense also thrived in her role as Queen, and her popularity among her Dutch subjects irritated her jealous husband - who was also popular and effective, to be clear - irrationally. And the couples' success as monarchs there - Louis was known as 'Louis the Good' in Holland - irritated Napoleon irrationally. In 1810, their four year reign ended when Napoleon took it away from them by annexing it into France.
This effectively ended the sham of their marriage and the couple would spend the remainder of their lives apart. Neither lived long enough to see their youngest son become France's last monarch, Napoleon III.
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66. Meet the Bonapartes: Caroline Bonaparte Murat, Queen of Naples
Episode 66
Thursday, June 27, 2024 • Duration 43:38
If Pauline was Napoleon's most loyal sister, Caroline was undoubtedly his most scheming. As a child, she took orders from her big brother, but as he rose from celebrated military commander to Emperor, she made sure he never forgot to improve her fortunes, as well. After she married one of Napoleon's military advisors - a match he was only persuaded to support by his wife Josephine - Caroline swiftly moved up the odd intra-family career ladder.
In 1804, with Napoleon on his self-appointed throne, Caroline and her sisters became Imperial Princesses. In 1806, she became a Grand Duchess of two German principalities in Napoleon's portfolio. In 1808, she became Queen Consort of Naples, with her husband Joachim Murat becoming its flamboyant king.
Obviously, these titles and positions of power would not hold. After Napoleon's fall, and Joachim's death, she styled herself a countess from her exile in Austria, then lived out her life in Florence.
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65. Meet the Bonapartes: Pauline Bonaparte
Episode 65
Thursday, June 20, 2024 • Duration 43:35
It's probably no surprise that in a family with as much internal intrigue as the Bonapartes had, Napoleon had a favorite among his three sisters. Pauline Bonaparte was eleven years younger than her brother, but was similarly ambitious and was generally happy to take part in his plans for himself and her. A natural beauty with a flirtatious, if slightly sinister, reputation, Napoleon pushed her into two strategic marriages, and ended up with the titles Princess consort of Sulmona and of Rossano - this through her second, unhappy marriage - and Princess of Guastalla. This title referred to a Duchy her brother granted her in Italy, but upon finding out that the place was basically backwater, she organized its sale to Parma for six million francs and a courtesy title.
Pauline was the only one of Napoleon's siblings who visited him in exile, and their bond was so strong that there were rumors of incest throughout their lives. Pauline enjoyed them, believing that such stories implied that she had far more influence over her brother than she probably really did. As a woman who constantly courted scandal and attention, Pauline made an important contribution to the Italian art world when, during her marriage to Prince Camillo Borghese, she commissioned sculptor Antonio Canova to create a statue of her as the goddess Venus, and insisted on posing nude in Catholic Rome while the work was produced. Upon the Venus Victrix's arrival at their home at Palazzo Salviati-Borghese in Florence, Camillo immediately had it moved to a storage area, far from the eyes of guests.
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64. Meet the Bonapartes: Jerome Bonaparte and Betsy Patterson Bonaparte
Episode 64
Thursday, June 13, 2024 • Duration 50:01
Napoleon's youngest brother Jerome was an endless headache for him. Lacking ambition but loving luxury, he fled a stint in the French navy (after nearly sparking a war with England) for America to wait out his brother's wrath.
It was in Baltimore that he met the woman who would become his first wife, socialite Elizabeth Patterson. Marrying her against both her father's wishes and his brother's permission created quite a conundrum for all involved. Worse, when the young couple, now pregnant, tried to return to Europe to smooth things over, Jerome abandoned Betsy in order to be brought back into the fold - and eventually made King of Westphalia.
Betsy gave birth to their son in London, the only harbor that would let her ship dock, and returned to America to build a fortune through canny real estate investing. She and her son spent decades splitting their time between America and Europe, where the Bonaparte women decided - finally - that they liked the headstrong Betsy, though she and Bo really wanted nothing to do with them. Perhaps that was the secret all along.
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63. Meet the Bonapartes: Napoleon and Marie Louise of Austria
Episode 63
Thursday, June 6, 2024 • Duration 52:31
When it came time for Napoleon to find a successor to Josephine as his wife, pickings were slimmer than you might expect. Russia's Alexander I wouldn't entertain the idea of a marriage between the French emperor and Alex's youngest sister, Anna Pavlovna. Austria, which had spent years battling - and losing to - France, became the unlikely solution to Napoleon's problem. Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria was 19, suitable in rank, and available. The fact that she was Marie Antoinette's grand-niece was perhaps not brought up by the French side during negotiations for her hand.
Her marriage to Napoleon in April 1810 started badly, but things would level out between the couple and she gave birth to their son, Napoleon II, on March 20, 1811. The heir situation handled, Napoleon resumed his increasingly disastrous military campaigns, including a failed invasion of Russia that cost him half a million soldiers. After a thorough defeat by unified European armies - including Austria's - in 1814, Napoleon was exiled to Elba, and Marie Louise and her son made their way back to Vienna, and what would become a surprising new chapter of her life.
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