British royal feuds have been settled via murder, mayhem, or, in modern times, disapproving looks.
Here are just a few of the most notorious of the last 900 years.
Eleanor of Aquitaine's first contentious marriage to Louis VII of France ended in an annulment
sanctioned by the Church, based on the technicality that the pair were blood relatives.
A few months later, Eleanor married Louis' rival, the Norman duke Henry, never mind that
they were third cousins.
Within two years, he became Henry II of England.
Eleanor's second marriage did not fare much better than the first.
She and Henry had eight children together, but the king had a wandering eye.
Eleanor's patience ran out when Henry took the beautiful Rosamund Clifford as his mistress.
He even built her a rural retreat with a private bathing well of her own.
So the fed-up Eleanor returned to her lands in southwest France and began plotting her revenge.
She got her chance in 1173.
A dispute over Eleanor's lands in France exploded into a rebellion against the king led by his
son Prince Henry.
Eleanor provided him a base of operations, money, and supplies.
But the rebellion failed, and Henry imprisoned his wife in various castles for 15 years.
She was allowed out only on official excursions, during which she was closely monitored.
But Eleanor eventually got her revenge.
Her son Richard the Lionheart rebelled against his father in 1189, again using his mother's
lands as a base of operations.
Henry resisted until Richard and Eleanor convinced his youngest and favorite son, Prince John
of Robin Hood fame, to join the revolt.
Henry died, Richard became King Richard I, and Eleanor, whom he called "his much-loved
Mother," was released from custody and welcomed back to court, where she ruled England in
her son Richard's name while he was on the Crusades.
In theory, the ambitious French princess Isabella should have been thrilled with marriage to
the handsome and powerful Edward II of England.
But Edward enjoyed extremely close, public, and most likely sexual, relationships with
men as well.
At his own wedding, Edward sat with his alleged lover, a knight named Piers Gaveston, rather
than his new bride.
He gifted Isabella's jewelry to Gaveston, who humiliated the queen by wearing it publicly.
A series of other lovers followed, some of whom became very powerful – and hated – for
their closeness with the king.
Still, Isabella and Edward managed to have four children together.
In a letter to her father, Isabella wrote that she was,
She went on to tell him that her husband was,
In 1322, after being defeated by the Scots at the Battle of Old Byland, Edward left Isabella
at the mercy of the Scottish army while he, his lover Hugh Despenser, and the army retreated
back to England.
Meanwhile, Queen Isabella barely escaped capture.
That's when she began plotting Despenser's downfall.
In response, Edward took away her lands.
A furious Isabella had had enough.
If her husband was going to be an adulterer, so was she.
She openly took Edward's enemy Earl Roger Mortimer as her lover.
The ensuing revolt dethroned Edward II in favor of his fourteen-year-old son, who became Edward III.
Isabella and Mortimer ruled as his regents.
The feud could have ended there, but Isabella wanted personal revenge.
Hugh Despenser was hanged, drawn, and quartered as entertainment while she feasted.
The former king, Edward II, disappeared.
Reports of his death say he was strangled, but there was a rumor that Isabella had him
killed by sodomizing him with a hot iron rod.
Most historians, however, dismiss this story today.
Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, was devoted to her husband.
Yet, their once-happy marriage disintegrated into a one-sided feud that ended only with
her death.
The Spanish princess had given Henry six children, but five didn't live past infancy.
Only daughter Mary survived.
So when the young and stylish Anne Boleyn entered the scene, Henry decided he wanted
the youthful lady-in-waiting as a wife.
Catherine wouldn't go quietly.
She was a devout Catholic, and she had the Church on her side.
Catholicism forbids divorce, so Henry would have to get an annulment if he wanted to marry again.
The only way to do that was by proving his marriage to Catherine had never existed in
the eyes of God.
But Catherine had previously been married to Henry's late brother Arthur.
If the marriage had been consummated, Henry could get an annulment on the basis of Catherine's
physical relations with his blood relative.
Catherine insisted the marriage had not been consummated.
In fact, the pair were only married for six months before Arthur's death, and they were
both about 15 years old at the time.
But Henry's allies questioned and utterly humiliated Catherine about her sexual history
with Henry's brother anyway.
When interrogation didn't break her will, Henry expelled Catherine from court and denied
her contact with their daughter Mary.
This isolation did break Catherine, who died two years later.
According to imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, before her death, Catherine forgave her husband,
begging him to look after Mary and his own soul, lest his desires condemn him to Hell.
Henry's reaction to Catherine's death was to praise God, while Anne wore yellow in celebration
in a final post-mortem insult.
By dethroning Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn gained herself a new enemy – her stepdaughter
Mary Tudor.
Although Henry publicly ignored his daughter to placate Anne, he loved Mary and continued
to spend time with her in private.
Anne waged war against her teenage stepdaughter.
First, she demanded Mary give all her personal belongings to her new half-sister, Anne and
Henry's daughter Elizabeth.
After Mary refused, her father forced her to join Elizabeth's household and acknowledge
her half-sister – whom she viewed as illegitimate – as heir to the throne in her place.
Mary refused that, too, so her father took away her title of "princess."
Still, Mary refused to acknowledge Anne as queen.
"I recognize no queen but my mother."
But Anne Boleyn's days were numbered.
She was charged with adultery and beheaded after only three years on the throne.
Before she died, she sent Mary a message begging for forgiveness.
Mary's reaction is unknown, but we do know she bore no ill-will toward her half-sister
Elizabeth, suggesting that perhaps she forgave her stepmother in the end.
George II and his queen, Caroline of Ansbach, were strong-willed, somewhat arrogant types
who tolerated no disagreements.
Their characters led to a strained relationship with their son and heir, Frederick, Prince
of Wales.
George and Caroline are said to have hated Frederick, who had lived apart from them from
the age of seven to 21.
Part of the problem was that George II had enjoyed an allowance of £100,000 as Prince
of Wales but only gave his son £25,000.
Frederick demanded the same as his father, who denied him, compromising on £50,000.
This dispute undoubtedly led to the next one, where things went too far.
George refused to allow his son to marry until 1736, when he was 29.
He matched Frederick with Augusta of Saxe-Gotha.
Princess Augusta was to give birth before the family at Hampton Court Palace, as was customary.
But the prince lied about her due date and spirited her away to St. James' Palace, preventing
his parents from attending the birth.
The baby was a girl.
According to historian Tracy Borman's book Crown & Sceptre,
Apparently, George and Caroline really did loathe their son.
According to English Monarchs, she said,
"My dear first born is the greatest a--, and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille,
and the greatest beast, in the whole world, and I most heartily wish he was out of it."
The Queen did not live long enough to regret her words.
She died in 1737, but they did come true.
In 1751, Frederick died of a burst lung abscess, leaving his son Prince George as heir to the
British throne.
In 1784, notorious womanizer George, Prince of Wales, the future George IV, secretly settled
down with a 27-year-old widow – and commoner – Maria Fitzherbert.
When their lifestyle landed Prince George in £630,000 of debt, Parliament offered him
a way out.
If he married and produced an heir, Parliament would absolve his debts.
George was matched with what he described as the "short, fat, [and] ugly" Princess Caroline
of Brunswick.
While this description may be exaggerated, historian E.A. Smith's book George IV, notes
that, although Caroline was actually pretty with a good figure, she lacked any sense of
social propriety.
The fussy and fashionable George found her repulsive and humiliated her from the start.
First, he sent a mistress to receive her upon arrival in London.
He then spent three days before the wedding drinking and passed out on their wedding night.
After a year of marriage, he rejected Caroline and barred her from seeing their daughter Charlotte.
It was so bad that their relationship became the subject of political cartoons.
After Charlotte, their only child's death in 1817, George sought a divorce.
Divorce was only possible if Caroline's infidelity could be proven.
Fortunately for George, there were plenty of rumors circulating about her promiscuous lifestyle.
Despite there being witnesses to her immorality, Caroline survived the divorce proceedings
thanks to public support.
In revenge, her husband locked her out of their coronation at bayonet point.
She fell ill and died three weeks later.
With no heir, the throne passed to George's brother William IV, and eventually, their
mutual niece, Queen Victoria.
Queen Victoria arranged her daughter's marriage to German royalty to cement peace in Europe
through an Anglo-German alliance.
But her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II did not share her views.
And his anti-British sentiment irritated his grandmother to no end.
When Queen Victoria said he needed a "good skelping" to set him straight, Wilhelm called
his grandmother a "hag" whose time had come to die.
Victoria in turn disinvited her grandson from British social functions.
including her own birthday.
Once Victoria died, Anglo-German relations went off the rails.
Kaiser Wilhelm bankrolled a series of attacks in the British press calling Edward VII "satan"
and attacking his dissolute lifestyle.
"There are all these stories of him going off to Paris and going to brothels where there
were, you know, lovely ladies."
Thus began a war of insults between uncle and nephew.
When Edward called Wilhelm Europe's "enfant terrible," Wilhelm called him an idiot.
When Wilhelm barred his son from visiting Britain, Edward barred his own son from attending
the German prince's wedding.
This feud truly went too far.
The dispute might have been comical had it not helped ignite World War I, which resulted
in over a million deaths.
Even after all the death and destruction, Wilhelm never got over his hatred for Britain.
According to historian John van der Kiste's Kaiser Wilhelm II: Germany's Last Emperor,
And that Britain had conspired to bring war and ruin upon Germany.
Edward VIII and his brother George were close growing up.
A letter unearthed in Australia proved that Edward had even helped his brother sleep with
a married woman in 1919 by keeping her husband occupied with golf.
But the relationship soured in 1936.
Edward was a good-looking and charismatic man who had his pick of women.
To his family's horror, he fell for twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson, an unacceptable
candidate for queen consort, they thought.
So Edward abdicated the throne to marry her.
The terms of his abdication sparked a feud with his brother, now George VI.
George refused to grant Simpson any sort of title or increase Edward's allowance.
As it turned out, Edward had lied about his financial situation, claiming to be much poorer
than he actually was.
Queen Elizabeth, mother of Queen Elizabeth II, referred to Simpson as "that woman."
Simpson returned the favor by calling the queen "the fat Scottish cook."
Meanwhile, Edward referred to his nieces and other female relatives as "thin-veined ice-b—--es."
The feud got worse once politics became involved.
The former king courted Nazi Germany and other European fascist states, possibly with treacherous intent.
So George exiled him to the Bahamas, a punishment that Edward compared to Napoleon's imprisonment
on Elba.
Eventually, George died in 1952, a national hero for his wartime conduct, but burned out
from the stress of the monarchy.
Queen Elizabeth II blamed her uncle, who despite attending the funeral, did not exhibit a shred
of grief for his former closest companion.
It's well known that Princess Diana was not happy in her marriage to Charles.
In a bombshell 1995 interview with BBC's Panorama, she leveled veiled criticism at her husband's
affair, the stress of which resulted in her eating disorder, depression, and resorting
to self-harm.
The interview was considered a PR disaster for the rest of the Royal Family, which sought
to maintain a clean, dignified public image.
As soon as word got out that Diana's interview was hitting the national media, Elizabeth
the Queen Mother tried to get ahead of any potential scandal.
The 95-year-old matriarch scheduled hip surgery for the day before the interview was set to air.
At her age, any invasive surgery naturally carried risk of death.
But she took things a bit too far, reasoning that if she died on the operating table, she
could knock Diana off primetime television and the front pages of the tabloids and lessen
the effect her revelations had on the royal image.
Her plan was foiled.
She survived the surgery and the interview blew up the next day.
Princess Diana's death in 1997 only served to divide the family further and pitted her
brother Charles, Earl Spencer, against her ex-husband Prince – now King – Charles
and the rest of the family.
The two Charles hated each other.
According to journalist Emily Andrews , then-Prince Charles couldn't help but insult the dead
Diana over the phone to her brother while making preparations for her funeral.
Spencer slammed the receiver down in response.
Having seen the way his sister was treated while alive, it must have hurt to hear such
disrespect even in death.
"This is a young girl, in her mid-thirties, who has lived this extraordinarily turbulent
and difficult time in the public eye."
But he got his revenge.
Spencer decided to avenge his sister in her eulogy.
According to Town and Country,
While these words were undoubtedly true, given Diana's charity work and devotion to her children,
it was also a dig at the royal family.
He implied that Diana the commoner had more nobility than the blue-blooded British royals
ever would – despite their fancy titles and wealth.
"I wasn't trying to attack anyone else.
I mean, I just wanted to stipulate what a thoroughly wonderful person we had just lost."
The rift has never healed.
The two Charles refuse to even sit near each other at official functions.
Today, the tabloids have extensively covered the ongoing conflict between princes Harry
and William.
But it remains unclear what this feud is about.
Tabloids such as The Express have speculated that the problems originated with Prince Harry,
Duke of Sussex's decision to break with the family over his marriage to American Meghan Markle.
"I love him dearly and the majority of the stuff is prob- well, the majority of the stuff
is created out of nothing."
But there is also perhaps the presence of second-son syndrome.
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge will one day be king, while Harry likely never will.
It's not impossible, but there would need to be one heck of a tragedy considering he's
currently 5th in line.
Observers assumed that an early interview with both princes and their spouses showed
signs of trouble.
At the Royal Foundation Forum in 2018, they chalked up their differences to "healthy disagreements,"
but their awkwardness suggested that there is something more that, as of 2022, has still
not been resolved.