Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  KING JOHN

  VLAD III OF WALLACHIA

  GEORGE, DUKE OF CLARENCE

  IVAN IV

  LETTICE KNOLLYS

  ERZSÉBET (ELIZABETH) BÁTHORY

  PRINCE HENRY

  PAULINE BONAPARTE

  ARCHDUKE RUDOLF

  PRINCE ALBERT VICTOR

  PRINCESS MARGARET

  Acknowledgements

  Selected Bibiliography

  About the Author

  Also by Leslie Carroll

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © Leslie Carroll, 2011

  All rights reserved.

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,

  Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2011

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Carroll, Leslie, 1959-

  Royal pains: a rogues’ gallery of brats, brutes, and bad seeds/Leslie Carroll.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-110147876

  1. Kings and rulers—Conduct of life—History. 2. Royal houses—History. I. Title.

  D107.C293 2011

  940.09’9—dc22

  2010039898

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  For“Hun,”

  who has always marched to the beat

  of his own drummer.

  I love you, Daddy.

  Disobedience is my joy!

  —Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II,

  to film director Jean Cocteau

  Foreword

  According to an anonymous source addressing the subject of a major mid-eighteenth-century scandal, a royal’s conduct was “a matter of national as well as private concern, such a dangerous influence do they derive from their titular and elevated station.” In other words, the members of a royal family had a duty to both crown and country to behave themselves.

  Dereliction of that duty is what this book is all about.

  When I selected the subjects for this volume, I had no single overarching definition of “royal pain” other than classifying them according to the broad characterizations delineated in the subtitle. But as the chapters took shape, it became clear that each royal pain had his or her own standard for inclusion.

  Contained within these pages are profiles of a number of brats, brutes, and bad seeds, whether they were the monarchs’ brothers, sisters, cousins, or offspring (and sometimes the rulers themselves). They represent a panoply of vibrant characters whose rotten behavior scandalized the kingdom in their own day. Their actions earned them a lasting reputation in the pantheon of rotten royals, and shaped the course of history within their respective realms.

  Some members of the cast, such as Ivan the Terrible, Vlad Dracula, and Richard III, merit inclusion because they rank near the top of a proverbial “A-List” of regal evildoers, responsible for the assassinations of members of their own families, or for the deaths of thousands of their own subjects. Other royal pains in this volume, like the Duke of Cumberland and Pauline Bonaparte, embarrassed their reigning relatives and, by extension, the crown and kingdom, with their numerous ill-advised and publicly conducted “sexcapades.”

  And whenever and wherever there was a free press, some of these royal pains made newspaper headlines, victims of their own celebrity. Whether openly or obliquely, their misbehavior ended up splattered across the front page.

  Deprived of the opportunity to do anything substantive well into adulthood, the last three royals chronologically profiled here—Rudolph, Eddy, and Margaret—became lost souls. The exercise of their oversize sense of noblesse oblige led to ill-conceived associations and churlish behavior, exposing not only themselves but the entire royal family in an unflattering light.

  The gothically gruesome pact that Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria made with his teenage lover Mary Vetsera very likely evolved into a murder-suicide that became the focus of an international cover-up. During his brief lifetime, the shy Prince Eddy was internationally believed to be not only lazy and stupid, but an active player in London’s dicey homosexual subculture. Sexy and flamboyant Princess Margaret, caught smoking a cigarette in a nightclub, became a royal cause célèbre. And her star-crossed romance with a divorced courtier put the crown itself in the hot seat, accused in 72-point type of rampant hypocrisy.

  Occasionally, the sovereigns themselves were bad news, real bastards—in the unofficial sense of the word—and brutes par excellence. They ruled their realms with iron fists—and saw no need to glove them in illusory velvet. They thought nothing of torturing their own subjects; even the most loyal adherents might find themselves at the wrong end of a sharp object if their sovereign perceived that they had crossed him.

  In this volume, jealousies, lusts, and betrayals are played out on the world stage, pitting relations against one another for the highest possible stakes; it’s sibling rivalry and combative cousins on metaphorical steroids. You may never look at your own family the same way again.

  KING JOHN

  1166 OR 1167-1216

  RULED ENGLAND: 1199-1216

  SCHOOLCHILDREN LEARNING ABOUT THE MIDDLE AGES may have heard phrases like “wicked Prince John” and “evil King John” to describe this English royal. And much of what we think we know about John stems from his characterization as an archvillain in the various Robin Hood legends.

  But fictional depictions aside, John did indeed plot against his father, Henry II of England, as well as his elder brother Richard, whom he betrayed on numerous occasions. As king, Richard awarded John considerable preferment, but it was never enough; he always wanted more. After John legitimately ascended the throne, his insistence on wedding a barely pubescent girl promised in marriage to one of his most powerful vassals set in motion a conflict that would redraw the map of
Europe. Years later, he upped the enmity ante by sexually harassing his barons’ wives and daughters.

  John was a usurper, a hedonist, and a hypocrite. And as far as his barons (and even his mother) were concerned, very much a royal pain.

  He was the youngest of the seven surviving children born to Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. And in due time John would become the apple of Henry’s eye and the bane of Eleanor’s. She was forty-four years old when she gave birth to John (forty-five, if he was born in 1167). Meanwhile the proud papa, eleven years younger than his queen, was carrying on a torrid affair with a sixteen-year-old Welsh blonde named Rosamund.

  John was born into a family of willful, competive, passionate, and brilliant political strategists; it was no surprise, then, that his childhood was the scene of more than one pitched battle royal. “From the Devil they came and to the Devil they will return,” declared the venerated Abbé Bernard of Clairvaux, speaking of the hot-tempered Angevin kings of England. Their French dynastic name derived from the first Angevin, John’s father, Henry II, who had been the Count of Anjou. Popular medieval legend held that the family was descended from Satan’s daughter Melusine, and those of their contemporaries who had been on the receiving end of Angevin wrath gave it credence.

  The royal line of Henry II was also known as the Plantagenets (because of the sprig of yellow broom or planta genista that the men jauntily wore in their caps). Henry’s relationship with his four sons, two of whom would die during his lifetime, was fraught with mistrust and hostility. When they were mere boys, John’s older brothers—young Henry, Geoffrey, and Richard—were ceded the counties of Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine (in name only, not in governance). John, the baby of the family, was long denied any continental territories, earning him the nickname “Lackland.” In 1173 Henry’s three oldest sons took up arms against him, encouraged by their mother to revolt because the king intended to take back some of their holdings and bestow them upon John instead. Henry planned to name John as his heir, in part because at only six or seven years old the prince was too young to have joined his brothers’ rebellion.

  However, John’s tender years were no guarantee of his eventual loyalty or trustworthiness. During the reign of his father, and later that of his brother Richard, John switched allegiances almost as often as he bathed. (As an aside, royal records of his own reign show that he paid his ewerer for twenty-three baths over sixteen months.) John initially supported their father when Richard made a bid for the throne. But after he realized that he was backing the losing man, he became a turncoat, fighting alongside Richard against Henry II in 1189. Henry died that July with the shock of John’s betrayal on his lips. Some medieval chroniclers were fond of claiming that it was John’s treachery, not illness and battle fatigue, that killed the king.

  John was not named Henry’s heir. Richard had bested their father in battle and compelled the dying Henry to leave the kingdom to him. John did, however, inherit the famous Angevin temper. According to the twelfth-century chronicler Richard of Devizes, Prince John once broke out in such a rage against Richard’s chancellor William Longchamp that “his whole person became so changed as to be hardly recognizable. Rage contorted his brow, his burning eyes glittered, bluish spots discolored the pink of his cheeks, and I know not what would have become of the chancellor if in that moment of frenzy he had fallen like an apple into his hands as they sawed the air.”

  Richard was crowned king of England on September 3, 1189. Just a few days earlier, on August 29, John had wed one of their cousins, Isabella of Gloucester, to whom he had been betrothed since 1176, when the pair were mere children. John’s marriage to Isabella made him heir to his father-in-law, which entitled him to be styled the Earl of Gloucester and enabled John to collect the revenues from cousin Isabella’s property, but that was the extent of his connubial perquisites. The couple never dwelled together as man and wife. In fact, the horrified Archbishop of Canterbury had protested the marriage on the grounds of consanguinity. The spouses, both descendants of Henry I, were too closely related, and a papal dispensation that would have permitted the couple to wed had never been issued. John then intervened with a papal legate to secure the document. Yet even though the couple thus became legally married on paper, Archbishop Baldwin had forbidden them to have conjugal relations, or even to cohabit.

  To satisfy his sexual urges John had numerous affairs, but they didn’t satisfy his lust for land—and for as much power as he could wield, although Richard’s wedding gift to his younger brother had included Nottinghamshire and six other English counties (from which John would derive extensive revenues), as well as a county in Normandy that entitled John to be titled Count of Mortain. After Richard’s coronation, although John was also styled Prince John of England, he would use his French title throughout his brother’s reign.

  None of the Plantagenets trusted one another as far as they could spit. Any alliances were matters of expediency and were sundered as often as they were cemented. Richard was fully aware of his brother’s jealousy, as well as John’s penchant for treachery. Nonetheless, the new king was extremely generous to his sibling and perhaps there was a method to his madness, but medieval historians didn’t see it. The contemporary chronicler William of Newburgh was of the opinion that Richard was far too bountiful and lenient with John, believing that such largesse would only swell the Count of Mortain’s head and lead him into the temptation to acquire more by any means.

  Richard had scarcely become king before he prepared to go on crusade in the Holy Land. Wary that his younger brother might incite the barons to rebellion, or even to usurp the throne, he ordered John to stay out of England for a period of three years—by which time he expected to have returned from the crusade. Although John had never been Eleanor’s favorite son, her maternal instincts got the better of her political ones. She urged Richard to release John from his oath to remain on the Continent. The consequences of Richard’s acquiescence to their mother’s request were disastrous—for John did nothing whatsoever to curb his duplicity.

  Not only was Prince John prepared to commit treason by allying himself with England’s greatest enemy, but his treachery was about to take the form of bigamy.

  In 1191, the king of France, Philip Augustus II, offered John all of King Richard’s continental lands if John would marry his sister Alys. When she was a little girl, Alys was officially betrothed to Richard and was sent to live at the English court among her future in-laws; but when she reached her midteens she became the mistress of King Henry, instead of his son’s bride. Richard refused to honor the marital treaty with France because Alys was damaged goods. He eventually wed Berengaria of Navarre in a match arranged by his mother and then proceeded to ignore his queen for the better part of their marriage. Initially unaware of why his sister had been jilted by Richard, then disgusted by the discovery that she had soiled her honor and that of France by warming Henry’s bed, Philip had a sour taste in his mouth from the whole ordeal, and he was eager to find a way to stick it to Richard.

  John seriously considered Philip’s offer of Alys’s hand in marriage. However, Philip was in no position to redistribute the territories in France that formed part of Richard’s kingdom. And John was already married to Isabella of Gloucester, regardless of the fact that they had never consummated their union. Nevertheless, John was about to make a secret dash for the Continent to parley with Philip when his mother discovered his plans. Eleanor rushed from Aquitaine to England to prevent John’s departure, threatening him with the forfeiture of all his lands if he insisted on pursuing an unholy alliance with Philip of France.

  John obeyed his mother only to the extent that he remained in England. By then, he wanted more than his brother’s continental lands. He wanted the entire kingdom. And because John had been born on English soil (Richard was born in Aquitaine), he thought he deserved to wear the crown. Besides, he was there—and ready to rule!

  John began laying the groundwork for claiming the crown while Richard was still
in Cyprus. A master of spin-doctoring centuries before it became standard operating procedure in every political campaign, he traveled throughout the realm spreading rumors that Richard had named him as his successor, adding in dramatically dire tones that the king would never return from the Holy Land. John even intimated that Richard was already dead—although no one believed him. The following year, John extracted oaths of loyalty from various barons, and appropriated funds from the exchequer for his own use.

  In December 1192, on his way home from the Holy Land, Richard was taken prisoner by Duke Leopold V of Austria. A few weeks later, he was handed over to Leopold’s cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VI, who kept Richard captive, demanding an exorbitant ransom from England. But rather than do his level best to effect his brother’s swift and safe release, John endeavored to waylay into his own coffers the ransom money their mother fought so hard to obtain, soaking their subjects until they had no more to contribute. When countless silver marks somehow disappeared, instead of questioning her treacherous younger son about the missing money, Eleanor insisted on increasing the taxes on an already financially strapped populace until the ransom was raised.

  By the spring of 1194, when Richard returned to his kingdom, it was evident that John’s assumption of authority had been entirely unauthorized and the barons had been duped into supporting him. Although Richard may have slept with one eye open from then on, he forgave his twenty-seven-year-old brother. “Think no more of it, John; you are only a child who has had evil counsellors,” Richard told the contrite and humbled prince. “Now, what can I give you for dinner?”

  On April 6, 1199, Richard died in Eleanor’s arms. He had been shot in the shoulder by an archer standing on the parapet of Châlus Castle near Limoges, a fortress Richard was preparing to invade. The wound turned gangrenous and Richard died from the infection. Eleanor now had no choice but to support John as Richard’s successor, regardless of his previous efforts to usurp his elder brother’s throne and pillage the kingdom for his own greedy ends. John was a royal pain, but he was still her son.