Farquhar - A Treasury of Royal Scandals

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Table of Contents

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 Capitals Newspaper, and his work has been published in The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, Readers Digest, and Discovery Online.

Henry VIII

This book is dedicated with love to my grandmother, Claire ODonnell 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 individualno matter how stupid or depravedshould by some fluke of birth hold dominion over all others is ridiculous and well past its prime. Still, theres a void now. People with unlimited power and an inbred sense of their own superiority tended to misbehave. Royally. Democratically elected presidents and prime ministersnot to mention constitutionally constrained monarchssimply cant 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 treasurya 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 generations royals cant 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

Lusts 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 royaltythat it conferred a certain exalted status over ordinary mortals; a place closer to God in the hierarchy of the universewas 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.

From Russia with Lots of Love

Catherine 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, 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. Shes no woman, exclaimed one, shes 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 empresss bed brought ample rewards, not the least of which was an intimate proximity to power, but getting there wasnt 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-waitingtest drivers of sortswhose job it was to ensure that all candidates for their mistresss bed were up to the highly demanding task of satisfying her.

The applicants were most often supplied by the empresss one-eyed ex-loverthe man many assumed to be her secret husbandGregory Potemkin. She had fallen in love with this rough, hulking officer relatively early in her industrious sexual career, overcome by his brash courage, quick wit, and almost primitive sexuality. Wasting little time disposing of Alexander Vassilzhikov, her boyfriend at the time, Catherine was delighted the first night Potemkin came to her bedroom, naked under his nightshirt and ready for action. I have parted from a certain excellent but very boring citizen, the empress wrote to a confidante, who has been replaced, I know not how, by one of the greatest, oddest, most amusing and original personalities of this Iron Age.

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