Royal Scandals
Royal scandals are nothing new – since the beginning of recorded history, society’s elites have been embroiled in torrid affairs, caught up in corruption and doing anything they can to gain and stay in power. And in antiquity, things R were at times a little more… wild.
In a world where blood sports were major public events, it seems like no one would bat an eye to things like murder and prostitution, but emperors and kings knew how to take things just a bit too far. Family ties often didn’t mean much, either. Read on to find out about an emperor who banished his own daughter from the empire, an empress who blinded her son in a desperate bid to keep her crown, and a king so proud of his wife’s beauty that he wanted to show her off.
EMPEROR EXILES HIS DAUGHTER FOR ADULTERY
Being in the imperial family was no guarantee of safety, as Julia the Elder found out
2 BCE
Being the daughter of Rome’s first emperor was no assurance of safety – and that was something that Julia the Elder learnt the hard way. Her first two marriages, to Marcus Marcellus and Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, had both ended with the men’s deaths, so in 12 BCE Julia was forced into a union with her step-brother, Tiberius, the son of Augustus’
