Mad Kings & Queens: History's Most Famous Raving Royals

By Alison Rattle and Allison Vale

A frank and fascinating history of forty of Europe’s most loony, deluded, and downright dangerous monarchs.

In Mad Kings & Queens co-authors Alison Rattle and Allison Vale reveal a legion of kings and queens who have abused the pedestal of power in spectacular style. The respectability of the royal position is well and truly tossed aside by the whimsy and wanton depravity of these mad European monarchs, including:

• The queen who murdered her husband with a red-hot spit.
• The bloodthirsty monarch who impaled tens of thousands of his subjects.
• The vampiric ruler who bathed in the blood of young women.
• The king of excess who beheaded his wives.

Mad Kings and Queens explores seven hundred years of royal eccentricity, detailing a catalogue of madness and exploring the finer intricacies of royal breeding that lay at its root.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781435138865

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ISABELLA SHE-WOLF OF FRANCE

JOAN I OF NAPLES

ROBERT III OF SCOTLAND

CHARLES VI OF FRANCE

ISABEL OF PORTUGAL

VLAD THE IMPALER OF WALACHIA

JUANA OF CASTILE

HENRY VIII OF ENGLAND

IVAN THE TERRIBLE OF RUSSIA

ERIK XIV OF SWEDEN

ANNA OF SAXONY

RUDOLF II OF AUSTRIA

FYODOR I THE BELLRINGER OF RUSSIA

ERZÉBET BÁTHORY OF HUNGARY

MUSTAFA I OF TURKEY

MARIA ELEONORE OF BRANDENBURG

MURAD IV OF TURKEY

IBRAHIM I OF TURKEY

CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN

LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE

CHARLES II OF SPAIN

IVAN THE IGNORANT OF RUSSIA

GIAN GASTONE DE’ MEDICI

PETER THE GREAT OF RUSSIA

PHILIP V OF SPAIN

FREDERICK WILLIAM I OF PRUSSIA

ANNA I OF RUSSIA

BARBARA OF PORTUGAL

FERDINAND VI OF SPAIN

CATHERINE THE GREAT OF RUSSIA

MARIA I OF PORTUGAL

GEORGE III OF ENGLAND

IVAN (ANTONOVICH) VI OF RUSSIA

ISABELLA OF BOURBON-PARMA

CHRISTIAN VII OF DENMARK

MARIE ANTOINETTE OF FRANCE

CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK

FERDINAND I OF AUSTRIA

CHARLOTTE OF BELGIUM

LUDWIG II THE SWAN KING OF BAVARIA

APPENDIX I: MAD MONARCHS BY NATIONALITY

APPENDIX II: ROYAL LINEAGES

INTRODUCTION

They don’t come more appalling than aristocrats. During the last five hundred years of European monarchy, the royal courts and palaces have seethed with rulers who have been, at best, eccentric or mentally deficient, and at worst, psychopathic monsters who have committed the most heinous acts while sheltered behind the cloak and crown of royalty.

Some have slaughtered, slashed, tortured, and murdered their way through their ruthless and bloody reigns. A handful extended the boundaries of human depravity.

The proliferation of inbreeding among royal families, as documented in Appendix II, spawned a tragic historical heritage of simpletons, sad-heads, and hideously deformed imbeciles, all laughingly given powers beyond their comprehension. The certifiably deranged royalty in this peculiar catalogue all have one thing in common: they lacked a compulsion to keep up appearances.

This book examines and delves into the lives and minds of forty of the most controversial, misguided, and deplorable royals from Europe’s last seven hundred years. It provides revealing insights into the scandalous, whimsical, lunatic, and nefarious exploits committed by the most idiosyncratic rulers the world has ever seen. From a duchess who bathed in the blood of virgins and a prince who gleefully impaled tens of thousands, to a king who collected tall soldiers and an empress who cut out tongues, we confront the raving rulers of history who, even today, remain a compelling and disturbing reminder of the lethal combination of irrationality and absolute power.

ISABELLA SHE-WOLF OF FRANCE

   (c. 1295–1358)   

Isabella was born into the French royal family and married the King of England. Her reign could have been remarkable, but her husband’s homosexuality, encroaching mental instability, and poor judgment fueled her considerable rage and ambition and sealed the fate of all who stood in her way. She has gone down in history as a callous and hard-hearted woman who was so hungry for power and bloody revenge that she was driven to regicide, earning her the title, She-Wolf of France.

A fine romance

Isabella was the daughter of the King of France, and had been raised from infancy to expect a politically expedient marriage and a future abroad. She had been betrothed to England’s Prince Edward, who was ten years her senior, since she was seven, and by her twelfth birthday, the Pope had already been urging their families to tie the knot for some years.

When Isabella and her new husband arrived on English soil, they were greeted by his lover, Piers Gaveston, who was bedecked with the priceless jewels that Isabella’s father had given Edward as a wedding gift. It was a defining moment in her relationship with her husband and, not surprisingly, Isabella took an instant dislike to Gaveston.

Edward and Gaveston had been lovers since adolescence. Once Edward took the throne as King Edward II, he opened the King’s coffers to Gaveston and lavished affection upon him, to the virtual exclusion of the Queen. Isabella grew despondent, and wrote achingly bleak letters back home in which she despaired of her marriage and bemoaned her empty marital bed.

Initially, she bore her burden well. But not so the archbishops and the barons, who grew so irritated by the financial burden of her husband’s flirtations that they raised armies and went on the offensive. With Gaveston and a pregnant Isabella in tow, Edward fled to Scotland where he hoped to find refuge. He didn’t. As the hostile armies approached, a terrified Edward grabbed his lover and together they fled, leaving Isabella, pregnant and alone, to escape the wrath of the advancing Scottish King, Robert I, the Bruce. It was an unforgivable act of betrayal that was thereafter to color Isabella’s every action, even after Gaveston’s death in 1312.

A lover and a plot

Isabella eventually fled to the court of her brother, King Charles IV, in France. There, she fell hopelessly in love with a Welshman, Roger Mortimer. Mortimer and Isabella raised an army, borrowed a flotilla of warships, and marched on Edward, rallying support as they went. Victorious, Isabella ruthlessly ordered the gruesome execution of any of the King’s allies, and tortures for those Isabella accused of sodomy with her husband that included disembowelment and castration.

Isabella subjected Edward to a humiliating public de-frocking, and broadcasted that he was no longer suitable to reign because of his mental deficiencies. She then had him unceremoniously incarcerated.

She hoped to remove any threat from the overthrown monarch permanently, and tried to hasten Edward’s death with starvation and torture. As an additional measure, she had Edward placed in a cell above the castle morgue, so that the foul stench of rotting corpses filled the air he breathed. But Edward proved more hardy than expected, and after eight months was still alive.

Regicide

Nervous that the longer he survived the greater the risk an army would be

Reviews for Mad Kings & Queens

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first line of the introduction reads, "They don't come more appalling than aristocrats." This is a look at about forty royals who behaved very badly. Included are the ones you know, like Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory, but there are the less famous, like Charles VI of France, who had iron rods sewn into his clothes because he believed he was made of glass and was afraid of shattering. Philip V of Spain became so mad that he believed his feet were too mismatched for him to walk, he attacked people and bit chunks from himself. Anna I of Russia had overweight woman force-fed until they fainted and made noblemen impersonate chickens.I devoured this book quickly as it's so interesting, but I have to take half a point off because some of the people weren't mad, so didn't belong in the book. Rulers such as King Henry VIII were cruel or selfish, while others suffered from depression. So many of these bios start off with the fact that the subject didn't have much of a chance at being normal due to the amount of in-breeding for generations.

[krumbs_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Changed my mind a bit on this one. I don't really get the organization--by region would have made lot of sense but what's in this makes a sort of sense that's...not. Also, just because a person is power hungry and likes sex doesn't really make them "mad". Eh. A little too much like National Enquirer than anything historically reliable.
_______

There were some crazy, crazy people in charge of countries. Fascinating book to pick up and flip through every so often, but not one to read all the way through in a sitting.

The only real downside--a lack of dates throughout. Birth and death dates are given (when available) but it's difficult to follow some of the events without key dates included throughout the vignettes of each life.

[london_stj · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Mad Kings & Queens is exactly what one would expect from a Barnes and Noble bargain history book, but I am nonetheless disappointed. I was prepared for the lackluster writing and the lack of development, but I was not prepared for the prejudice and judgment that guided the choices made by Rattle and Vale. It is no secret that royal lines have long been plagued with mental instability, and the "inbreeding" of European royal families has lead to a long list of unfortunate offspring. This progeny makes up a strong portion of the book, which is seasoned with famous figures such as Vlad the Impaler and Elizabeth Bathory (named as Erzsebet Bathory, accent marks missing). What I found distressing was the long list of monarchs who were dubbed insane for, well, enjoying sex. Some of these royal figures are even included for simply enjoying sex with their lawful partners. Others, of course, include queens who had a number of affairs, and rulers who indulged in homosexual desires of varying degrees. While I understand that contemporary politics, religion, and cultural stigmas would likely influence the subjects of these royals to recoil in horror, does a strong libido really mark a historical figure for entrance into a collection of Mad Kings & Queens? I would argue that a king who engaged in sexual congress with his wife late into his seventies deserves a little more indulgence than the tsar who ran naked through the streets stabbing citizens. Interested in naughty kings and queens? Eleanor Herman is a lot more fun - and a lot less judgmental.