Sometimes when you live your life cooped up in a palace, you start to believe that
you swallowed an entire musical instrument. Some of these royals had mental struggles,
while others were just bucking societal norms, but all of them exhibited rather strange behavior.
If she lived today, Princess Isabella of Parma would be just another liberated
woman. But things were a little bit different in the 1700s. The limited
marriage market for royals often led to disasters. But Crown Prince Joseph of
Austria struck gold when he fell head over heels for his young wife. Alas,
Isabella was less interested in him, and it may have been because she was a lesbian.
According to the book A Treasury of Royal Scandals, she became obsessed
with her husband's sister, Christina. She sent her letters that said things like,
"I am told that the day begins with God. I, however,
begin the day by thinking of the object of my love, for I think of her incessantly."
Isabella was also unusually well-educated for the time,
and she was openly hostile to the idea that she existed just to have kids. Nevertheless,
she was pregnant quite often. This reportedly made her depressed and obsessed with the
belief that she was going to die, which she did, of smallpox at the age of 21.
There will almost certainly never be another British royal like Prince George,
Duke of Kent. Before World War II, there was still plenty of reverence for the Windsors,
and the newspapers covered up George's indiscretions, which there were plenty
of. He was known for being the smartest and most attractive of his family members,
as well as running with a fast crowd and enjoying fast cars. He also had
a penchant for drug use. His older brother, the future King Edward VIII,
reportedly had to wean George off morphine and cocaine after he became seriously addicted.
George married his second cousin, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, and by all accounts they
genuinely loved each other. But that didn't stop him from sleeping with plenty of other people,
male and female. And since he lived during a time of unreliable birth control,
it's believed that he fathered numerous illegitimate children.
George's longest extramarital affair may have been with the composer Noël Coward. They weren't
exactly discreet about their 19-year affair, as the British security services reportedly
knew all about them walking the streets of London dressed like women. George's
hedonistic life ended in 1942 at the age of 39 when he died in a mysterious plane crash.
"Conspiracy theorists have suggested that he was in fact assassinated. But why?"
Maybe Gian Gastone de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany's life would've been different
if his marriage weren't so terrible. The union was arranged by his father, and it was doomed from the
start. His bride Anna Maria was a widow with no desire to marry again, and the 26-year-old Gian
was undeniably gay. Within two years they were living almost entirely apart from each other.
And Gian didn't exactly spend his time constructively. He ran off to places like Prague,
where his lover would find poor students to frolic with the duke in exchange for cash. He
also got drunk and fought in seedy taverns, and lost much of his money playing cards.
Eventually Gian had to come back to Florence and take over for his
father. But instead of ruling over his people, he spent most of his days in bed,
where he would entertain various young men and women. He would occasionally leave his
room for official dinners, where he would get so drunk that he vomited in front of
the esteemed guests. This went on for almost a decade, until he died in 1737 at the age of 66.
There are plenty of reasons to feel bad for Marie Louise, niece of France's King Louis XIV.
To start, her mother basically ignored her from the moment she was born. She was married off at
14 and got pregnant five times over the course of ten years, with all of those babies dying.
Marie also reportedly had a disturbingly close relationship with her father,
Prince Philippe II of Orleans. It started when she was six and had a life-threatening
illness. After she recovered, she and Philippe were inseparable. He visited
her for hours every day during her first pregnancy, and rumors spread that they had
an incestuous relationship. It probably didn't help matters when he painted her in the nude.
Furthermore, the princess was reportedly a raging alcoholic. Her other vice was gambling,
and she lost obscene amounts of money in single games. She would also throw
scandalous dinners and invite her priest so that he could see everything she was
doing so that she wouldn't have to go to the trouble of confessing to him.
"It seemed to be a good idea at the time."
If you lived in northern Italy during the 14th and 15th century,
you were probably bending the knee to the Visconti family. They consolidated
their power through tight friendships with popes and various royal marriages. In 1412,
Filippo Maria Visconti took over from his brother Giovanni, who had been assassinated.
That might sound like a scary start, but Filippo actually did pretty well for
himself at first. He reorganized government finances, introduced the silk industry,
and waged successful wars against his neighbors. He eventually died of natural causes in 1447.
But according to the book A History of the Italian Republics, Filippo was so cartoonishly
ugly that he couldn't bear to have people look at him. He hid in his palace and never
showed himself to his soldiers. And when an emperor came by for an important peace talk,
he refused to meet with him, as he instead spent much of his time as a recluse.
Germans don't exactly have a reputation for being spontaneously passionate in the bedroom,
but there are often exceptions to any stereotype. And if police files
uncovered in the Prussian Secret State Archives are to be believed,
the German royal family got up to some freaky stuff in the late 1800s.
Princess Charlotte was the older sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, so she was very
well connected. In 1891, she invited a group of aristocrats, the kaiser's brother-in-law,
and a member of the government to a secluded hunting lodge. They drank,
danced, and participated in a series of orgies.
Afterwards, someone sent the attendees blackmail letters that included descriptions
of their behavior, along with helpful illustrations. Historians believe that
the scandal-loving Charlotte sent the threats and that she might have invited people in the
first place just to entrap them. The controversy resulted in one person
being arrested and another being killed in a duel. Meanwhile, Charlotte got off scot-free.
As of 2023, Princess Srirasmi of Thailand is still alive, but she's never going to become queen,
as her ex-husband, Maha Vajiralongkorn, divorced her before he ascended to the throne. But that
fate couldn't have been too much of a surprise to her, considering that she was his third wife.
"Her family's under a cloud of scandal and corruption allegations."
Before they broke up, they lived an interesting life together. That was
perhaps best illustrated by their relationship with their poodle Foo Foo, whom they seemed to
be weirdly obsessed with. Opponents of the then-prince released a video of a bizarre
party that they threw in 2001. Sirasmi was completely naked except for a g-string,
while plenty of courtiers watched. She even got down on the floor and ate cake next to the dog.
The video caused a sensation, but not in Thailand itself, where there are strict laws prohibiting
saying anything bad about the monarchy. Srirasmi didn't get custody of Foo Foo in the divorce,
though the dog's weird journey was far from over. He was made an Air Chief Marshal,
and after he died, his funeral lasted four days.
Countess Elizabeth Bathory was the niece of the king of Poland,
and she was also reportedly one of the most notorious sadists of all time. When she was young,
her uncle taught her about Satanism, while an aunt instructed her in the pleasurable
side of pain. By the time that she was 15 and married off to a Hungarian nobleman,
her dark personality was already well-established. She asked her
new husband to build her a torture chamber to her exacting specifications, and he delivered.
The countess then proceeded to torture her servant girls. She stabbed pins under their fingernails,
or she tied them down, covered them with honey, and left them to be attacked by
insects. Eventually she moved on to abducting peasants, and then even the daughters of nobles.
Elizabeth believed that human blood would keep her young and healthy, so she would do things
like bite off chunks of the poor girls' flesh. Her connections protected her for a long time,
but eventually she was tried for 80 counts of murder. She was ultimately
convicted and locked in a windowless room, where she died three years later.
Spanish Crown Prince Don Carlos never ascended to the throne,
though his life did inspire the story of a famous opera. He had it tough from the very beginning,
as he was born with serious physical deformities. Among other things, he was hunchbacked, and one
of his legs was much shorter than the other. As he grew up, he developed slower than he should have,
both mentally and physically. This might have had something to do with the fact that
his family was so inbred that he only had four great-grandparents instead of the usual eight.
Don Carlos' mental problems led to serious behavioral issues. When he was just a child,
he developed a propensity for hurting animals and girls. He
once maimed more than 20 horses and was also known for roasting rabbits.
"What's the matter?"
"There's a rabbit in there!"
Don Carlos also enjoyed whipping women, some of whom were paid off afterwards.
He would reportedly attack anyone, with his victims including servants, court officials,
and a cardinal. He even once made a cobbler eat a pair of boots that he decided weren't
good enough. Don Carlos' behavior only got worse after he suffered a head injury,
as his tantrums became infamous at court. So it was hardly a shock that he never
found anyone who would marry him and that he died before he could produce an heir.
Princess Alexandra Amalie's Bavarian family was well-known for their mental struggles.
Her father was famously eccentric and liked to write poetry about the most
bizarrely trivial things. Meanwhile, her nephew Ludwig II was obsessed with
building castles to the point that he basically bankrupted the country.
As for Alexandra, when she was young, she was reportedly obsessed with cleanliness. She would
only wear white so that she could see any dirt that got on her. Then one day when she was 23,
she was walking around her family's palace on tiptoes and moving sideways through doorways
while avoiding touching anything. She then told her family that she'd just discovered
that as a child she managed to swallow a full-size grand piano made of glass. She
also believed that it was still inside her, so she needed to be careful that it didn't break.
Weirdly enough, Alexandra wasn't the only noble in history who thought they were
made of glass. It was such a popular delusion that it appeared in medical
books and plays. Contemporary psychologists think it might have been a way for powerful
people to express how they felt fragile in their important roles.
Research about 18th-century Korean Crown Prince Sado has posited that
he suffered from bipolar disorder. His symptoms included depression, anxiety,
suicidal and aggressive behavior, and feelings of delusion that began
when he was just 13. He also exhibited signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
According to Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary, when Prince Sado went off on an
unauthorized pleasure trip, his enemies at court told the king what his son had
been up to. The allegations included tales of assaulting palace women, seducing nuns,
and killing eunuchs, among other horrible crimes.
When Sado returned, his father ordered him to kill himself by drinking poison. The prince refused,
but the king wasn't finished, as he also ordered that his son be confined without food or water in
a rice chest, where he died eight days later, most likely of dehydration or possibly of starvation.