Description: Table of Contents PENGUIN BOOKS Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Introduction PART I - The Lust Emperors Chapter 1 - From Russia with Lots of Love Chapter 2 - French Kiss Chapter 3 - England Swings PART II - Six Royals Sinning Chapter 1 - Envy: If Anyone Should Oppose This Union Chapter 2 - Pride: Here Comes the Sun King Chapter 3 - Wrath: Have an Ice Day Chapter 4 - Gluttony: Eat, Drink, and Be Mocked Chapter 5 - Covetousness: Hail Mary, Full of Greed Chapter 6 - Sloth: An Idle Mind Is the Duchess''s Playground PART III - Unholy Matrimony Chapter 1 - Mad About You Chapter 2 - Until Divorce or Decapitation Do Us Part (in Six Sections) Chapter 3 - Head Over a Heel Chapter 4 - A Wedding! Let''s Celibate! Chapter 5 - Wails From the Vienna Wood Chapter 6 - A Marriage Made in Hell PART IV - Mom Was a Monster, Pop Was a Weasel Chapter 1 - How to Make a Bloody Mary Chapter 2 - Jane Grey''s Blues Chapter 3 - Hun, I Shrunk the Kid Chapter 4 - Peter the Not -So-Hot Chapter 5 - We Are Not Abused. We Are Abusive PART V - Royal Family Feud Chapter 1 - The Royal Raptors Chapter 2 - Crown of Thorns Chapter 3 - Trouble in the House of Tudor Chapter 4 - Shattered Sorority Chapter 5 - Dislike Father, Dislike Son Chapter 6 - In-Laws on the Outs Chapter 7 - The Battling Bonapartes PART VI - Strange Reigns Chapter 1 - Temper, Temper Chapter 2 - Swimming in a Shallow Gene Pool Chapter 3 - The Belle of Versailles Chapter 4 - A Great Mind Is a Terrible Thing Chapter 5 - Drool Britannia Chapter 6 - The Law Is an Ass Chapter 7 - The Eyes Have It PART VII - When in Rome Chapter 1 - The Rage of Tiberius Chapter 2 - Oh, God ! Chapter 3 - I Claudius, Aren''t I? Chapter 4 - A Son Should Love His Mother, But . . . Chapter 5 - The Year of Living Dangerously PART VIII - Papal Vice Chapter 1 - Not So Dear Johns Chapter 2 - A Matter of Grave Consequence Chapter 3 - Her Holiness? Chapter 4 - King of Kings Chapter 5 - Innocent Proven Guilty Chapter 6 - Feel the Burn Chapter 7 - Papal Bully Chapter 8 - Will the Real Pope Please Rise? Chapter 9 - Double, Double, Toil and Trouble Chapter 10 - All the Holiness Money Can Buy Chapter 11 - Indulge Me If You Will Chapter 12 - In the Ghetto PART IX - Death Be Not Dignified Chapter 1 - A Tight Squeeze Chapter 2 - A Royal Pain in the Ass Chapter 3 - Spinning in Her Grave Chapter 4 - Strike Three Chapter 5 - Prescription for Disaster Chapter 6 - A Look of Detachment Chapter 7 - Eat Your Heart Out Chapter 8 - Royal Flush Chapter 9 - A Lot Off the Top Chapter 10 - The Case of the Purloined Penis Chapter 11 - Extreme Overkill Chapter 12 - It ''s Not Nice to Kill the King APPENDIX I - British Monarchs (1066-Present) APPENDIX II Appendix III - Russian Monarchs (1682-1917) The Romanovs APPENDIX IV Select Bibliography Acknowledgements PENGUIN BOOKS A TREASURY OF ROYAL SCANDALS Michael Farquhar is a writer and editor at The Washington Post specializing in history. He is coauthor of The Century: History as It Happened on the Front Page of the Capital''s Newspaper , and his work has been published in The Chicago Sun-Times , Chicago Tribune , Dallas Morning News , Reader''s Digest , and Discovery Online. Henry VIII PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published in Penguin Books 2001 Copyright Michael Farquhar, 2001 All rights reserved Illustration credits Frontispiece (ii), pages 28, 54, 100, 126, 172, 202, 260: The Granger Collection, New York. Page 2: Leonard de Selva/CORBIS. Page 222: Christel Gerstenberg/CORBIS. eISBN : 978-1-101-01039-6 CIP data available This book is dedicated with love to my grandmother, Claire O''Donnell Donahue Courtney. What a life! All I say is, kings is kings and you got to make allowances. --Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Introduction The twentieth century was a slaughterhouse for European monarchy. Across the continent, scores of kings and queens were swept from their thrones in a frenzy of war and revolution. Those managing to cling to their crowns, meanwhile, have been rendered either faceless and bland, as in, say, Norway, or, as in Britain, regarded as little more than inane tabloid fodder. Maybe the decline of monarchy is for the best. After all, the notion that one individual--no matter how stupid or depraved--should by some fluke of birth hold dominion over all others is ridiculous and well past its prime. Still, there''s a void now. People with unlimited power and an inbred sense of their own superiority tended to misbehave. Royally. Democratically elected presidents and prime ministers--not to mention constitutionally constrained monarchs--simply can''t compete. Consequently, things are a lot duller these days, and what passes for scandal is almost laughable. So what if Charles and Diana were miserably married? He never slammed the doors of Westminster Abbey in her face, or buried pieces of her boyfriend under the floorboards of his palace. That was behavior typical of a bygone era celebrated in this treasury--a time of lusty kings and treacherous queens; of murderous tsars, insane emperors, and unholy popes (once the supreme monarchs in Europe). Toe sucking aside, Fergie and the rest of this generation''s royals can''t hold a scandal to their forbears. Not one of them has delivered anything worthy of the name, and are thus excluded from this collection. Some of the stories that do appear here are no doubt familiar to readers of history. But they are classics, and no anthology of royal bad behavior would be complete without them. Others have been mined from the past, largely unexposed. All of the stories showcase the rich assortment of scandals that once flourished across Europe. And, thanks to the generations of royals who unwittingly created them, they remain immensely entertaining. Family Trees PART I The Lust Emperors " L ust''s passion will be served," the French libertine and novelist Marquis de Sade once wrote. "It demands, it militates, it tyrannizes." The Marquis might have added that this relentless vice has always been oblivious to social status. So, the whole theory behind royalty--that it conferred a certain exalted status over ordinary mortals; a place closer to God in the hierarchy of the universe--was compromised somewhat by the fact that kings and queens proved themselves to be every bit as sex-driven as the peons who served them. The only difference was that, from their positions of power, royal folk were able to serve the demands of lust more creatively and energetically than most. Henri III preening amongst his minions. 1 From Russia with Lots of Love C atherine the Great loved horses. She also loved sex. Contrary to popular legend, however, she never managed to unite the two passions. Still, the autocratic empress of Russia brought all the enthusiasm of a vigorous ride to her extremely busy bedroom. After ridding herself of her imbecile husband Peter III in 1762,1 Catherine grabbed the Russian crown and came to dominate her kingdom for the next thirty-four years. Boldly indulging herself as she grew more secure in her position, the empress consumed handsome young lovers with an appetite that sometimes shocked her contemporaries. "She''s no woman," exclaimed one, "she''s a siren!" The empress relished her weakness for men, abandoning herself to a giddy romanticism that belied her cold and pragmatic rule. She loved being entertained, even into old age, by a succession of well-formed young studs eager to please her. "It is my misfortune that my heart cannot be content, even for one hour, without love," she wrote. Sharing the empress''s bed brought ample rewards, not the least of which was an intimate proximity to power, but getting there wasn''t easy. A good body and a pleasant face, combined whenever possible with wit and intelligence, were merely starters. Potential lovers also had to have the right pedigree and pass a crucial test. Catherine had several ladies-in-waiting--test drivers of sorts--whose job it was to ensure that all candidates for their mistress''s bed were up to the highly demanding task of satisfying her. The applicants were most often supplied by the empress''s one-eyed ex-lover--the man many assumed to be her secret husband--Gregory Pot

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