History has a very weird way of playing out.
In the third century AD, a Christian saint named Valentinus was martyred for helping-
-Romans escape religious persecution,
and nowadays we choose to mark the occasion by buying flowers-
and procuring fancy dinner reservations by right of conquest.
There’s just something so romantic about dropkicking-
-a party of two along your quest for a candle-lit feast.
But even before our modern era of professing love through-
-culinary blood-sport, couples throughout history have had interesting and-
-varied ways of showing affection.
Which is my polite way of saying:
“unhealthy at best and deeply self-destructive at worst”.
My friends, we are in for a ride today, now Let’s Do Some History.
So as we know well — or in some cases, just discovered in the past decade —
Love comes in many forms, and always has.
And we know this for a fact because people specifically wrote about it.
“Sing, muse, of the Thirst of Peleus’ Son Achilles”.
And as soon as Greek culture invented first-person poetry it also invented-
-gay first-person poetry.
Now, this was going to be the part where I begin discussing the lyric poet-
Sappho of Lesbos, but as I did my research, I realized she’s actually-
-way too interesting for me to just breeze through in this hijinks roundup.
So, ya girl is getting promoted to a future History-Makers video,
and I’ll just skip ahead to the next item on my list which is dunking on Caesar.
We usually think of Caesar as the guy who conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon,
became Dictator For Life, and then very swiftly died,
but his personal life was arguably just as bonkers as his political career.
I like to joke about the sharp lines of ol’ Cheekbones McGee,
but Caesar’s friends and enemies alike had to concede that the man was handsome.
And his looks were most definitely not going to waste,
because Julius was a prolific flirt, and he used that as fuel for his politics.
In Rome, being a man of great manliness could be demonstrated by doing the sex,
and that in turn reflected well on their political abilities.
It’s a, uh, hm, you know what, no, I don’t think I’ll elaborate on that.
So in addition to his three successive wives-
-Cornelia (who died in 69 BC — nice),
Pompeia (whom he divorced after a political scandal),
and Calpurnia (who outlived him),
Caesar slept with every well-to-do woman he could,
including and not limited to:
the wives of Pompey Magnus (Mucia) and Marcus Crassus (Tertulla),
who were his political partners in the first Triumvirate.
In Rome, extramarital affairs weren’t particularly rare or even seen as wrong,
but what sets Caesar apart is his thoroughness.
For one brutally illustrative example, when the Senate was debating-
in the wake of the thwarted Catiline Conspiracy in 63 BC,
Caesar received a letter while in the middle of a speech.
Cato the Younger suspected the note was some evidence-
-of Caesar’s involvement in the plot and demanded that it be read out loud.
Caesar, to his credit, really tried to get Cato to back down;
but Cato insisted, so Caesar began reading an astonishingly inappropriate-
-and uncomfortably descriptive love letter from Cato’s own half-sister.
Servilla’s lustful missive may well have been mortifying-
-for Cato to read in a vacuum, but imagine the poor man’s misery to hear-
-the entire Senate just laughing at him about it.
Suffice to say he never lived it down, and neither did the young Marcus Brutus,
because Servilla was also his mother.
Caesar, however, was not immune from ridicule.
Because the young Julius once served as ambassador to the Bithynian King-
-Nicomedes IV, and as soon as he returned to Rome, the Rumor Mill spun into action.
The mockery he endured for getting frisky with a foreign king was so intense-
-that Caesar’s own legions sang saucy tunes about it decades after the fact.
And this actually brings up an interesting angle of Roman sexuality,
because in Rome as in Greece, the line between what we call-
-straight and gay was thin-to-nonexistent.
So if casual bisexuality was the norm, why all the jokes at Caesar’s expense?
Well, the thing with Rome is that everything has a power dynamic,
so it was fine to be gay, but only if you were the top —
which seems extremely arbitrary, but knowing the Romans:
that still somehow makes complete sense.
So although Caesar was better known for his womanizing,
the episode on the receiving end of Nicomedes earned Caesar the nickname-
-“Every Woman’s Man and every Man’s Woman”.
And that’s the love life of Julius Caesar, who banged his way through-
Rome, Gaul, Anatolia, North Africa, and Egypt —
heck, I haven’t even mentioned Cleopatra, but I’m out of time!
Suffice to say the only thing Caesar couldn’t smash-
-was Parthia, am I right lads?
(Breathes) Oh that was dumb.
But not untrue.
Anyway;
If Caesar was an example of how to build a political career on pure thirst,
this story from medieval China shows how lust can be the undoing-
-of not just one ruler, but an entire empire.
This tale is immortalized in Bai Juyi’s poem The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,
so you know right off the bat this one’s gonna go great.
But let’s start with the history and hop into the Tang dynasty-
-during the reign of emperor Xuanzong.
During the early part of his reign, the emperor is rightly credited-
-with improving foreign trade relations along the silk road and at sea,
reforming the military to become a professional force instead of-
-a conscript army, and generously subsidizing literature and artistry.
But apparently, working one’s butt off for a decade and a half-
-to lift China into a golden age of-
prosperity and culture can get a bit tiring,
so starting in 734 the emperor began delegating more responsibilities-
-to his wife, the Empress.
She appointed Li-Linfu as chancellor, and when she died 3 years later,
Li found himself as the acting head of state.
SO, what do you do when you need to keep an emperor entertained-
-for basically the rest of his life?
You import a palace-full of women.
But, of these 3,000-odd concubines, the emperor only had eyes for one person:
his son’s wife.
… That’s a Yikes.
Nevertheless, in 741 this Yang Yuhuan was branch-transferred-
-from wife of the prince to Imperial Consort.
And the emperor doted on her incessantly, granting what began as small requests but-
-steadily ballooned into appointing her entire extended family-
-to high positions in government and the military.
While the Yang family slid comfortably into-
-profitable posts that they proceeded to completely neglect,
Li Linfu was busy appointing foreign loyalists to beef up his power base.
For you Political-Corruption-stans in the audience,
the former is Nepotism while the latter would be Cronyism,
but both of them are still very bad.
And even worse was the development that these two camps did not like each other.
This came crashing down in 755 when the foreign-born general An Lushan-
-escalated a local spat with the Yang family-
-into a full rebellion against the Emperor.
And you thought this was a love story.
Hah, You Fool!
The REAL sorrow here is the decline of good governance!
An Lushan’s rebellion didn’t quite work out how he wanted,
as he died just two years in, but it would ravage China for-
another several years, and this is where our lovers enter into the picture again.
The emperor and Lady Yang were forced to flee the palace by the rebelling army,
and the Tang soldiers complained that this was all lady Yang’s fault —
— which, mmmmm? —
— and they forced her to kill herself.
Technically the Emperor was consulted beforehand, but clearly in a-
“hey just so you know, we are doing this”
-kind of way as opposed to asking permission.
So lady Yang died and the emperor was heartbroken, so he abdicated to his son,
who spent the rest of his reign fighting the rebellion.
This marks the second worst thing Xuanzong ever did to his son aside from, y’know,
the inciting incident.
As I mentioned at the start, this story is most famously recounted in poetry;
but weirdly, the story is set all the way back in the Han dynasty?
In that version of the story, the systemic corruption is glossed over,
and Lady Yang dies to motivate the emperor to focus on winning his battle,
and after the victory everyone is just sad for 100 lines-
-without stopping to note that the couple brought this all on themselves.
It would seem the poet was uninterested in the long-term consequences of-
-severe government neglect, which is precisely why I don’t write love stories.
Okay, now that we’ve just witnessed a debacle, let’s take a look at a tragedy.
We all know that arranged political marriages were rarely fun for anyone-
-involved, but nothing tops the marriage of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
The first two tales in this video were not what I could consider “fun”,
but this story is just Awful Everything.
So after the 7 Years War shuffled the diplomatic map of Europe,
France and Austria found themselves needing to forge an alliance,
so the sitting royals arranged for princess Marie to marry-
-into the French monarchy via Dauphin Louis.
The pairing was an immediate disaster, as a firework display on their wedding night-
-blew over from stiff wind and caused the crowd,
whom the rockets were now firing into, to panic and stampede,
killing anywhere from a couple hundred to a few thousand people.
The couple went out of their way to financially compensate families affected-
-by the tragedy, but man that’s a rough start, and it did not get better.
Thing is, neither Louis nor Marie wanted anything to do with this situation.
When he was born, his grandfather Louis XV was still king, and his older brother was-
in line for the throne; by 1774 his brother, father, and grandfather died,
leaving this poor 20-year-old as King Louis XVI when the shy,
indecisive homebody would have been much, happier just reading and locksmithing.
Marie, by contrast, was social, showy, and ‘spensive,
having a taste for fine clothes, sprawling gardens, and chocolate.
She started every day with a cup of hot chocolate and whipped cream,
which is a powerful morning routine.
Well, “morning” is a stretch, because she woke up around noon-
-after spending every night on the town.
So there was a pretty clear disconnect between the pair, and the conspicuous-
-lack of a child fueled 7 years of gossip since their marriage in 1770,
on top of the garden variety complaints that anything and everything was her fault-
-because she was an icky gross foreigner who went to parties.
And of course, rumors of Marie’s infidelity circulated from the start,
but come on, who did they think she was, Caesar?
Heh, roasted.
Now, the lack of an heir could have been for a lot of reasons,
and remains the subject of far too much speculation.
Contemporary accusations that Louis suffered from “PP Too Small”-
-were a result of the perceived connection between weak political performance-
-and insufficient manliness.
But if the uncomfortably thorough court records on the subject-
are anything to go by, — sigh— Louis was more likely afflicted with:
“Ouch, PP too big”.
Yup.
This was not made better by the fact that the King and Queen slept in separate rooms-
-connected by a very public corridor that passed right in front of the royal court,
who would have known exactly what Louis was up to at that hour of the evening.
7 years into this nightmare, the Queen of Austria sent Marie’s brother to give-
Louis the pep talk and/or surgery that he needed to begin having children with Marie.
Coooool, awesome, just fantastic,
I hate everything about this.
Why can’t you people just let this poor library-ace just live his life?
Sickos!
Anyway, as if this situation couldn’t get worse,
then the French Revolution happened.
Faced with colossal state debt and factionalism in the court,
Louis was beset by interlocking problems that even a much more capable monarch-
-would crumble under.
One thing leads to another, I’m not getting into it,
and soon Louis was public enemy #1.
Eh, #2, people still hated Marie Antoinette more.
And for what it’s worth, the “Let them eat cake”
business was a misattribution from one of two earlier sources.
In 1792 the royals attempted to sneak out to Austria and lead an army in-
to reinstate the authority of the monarchy, but it failed,
allegedly because Marie’s perfume was so strong it gave them away.
The monarchs were tried for treason, which, to be fair,
yeah that is kinda treason,
and they both met their ends at the guillotine the next year.
These two definitely were not saints, but man did history do them dirty.
What a mess.
Though we’ve been talking about the joyful subject of love,
I would still like the record to show that I distinctly did not have fun today,
so I’m firmly marking these tales as “Blursed”.
But that aside, what can we learn from all this?
Well, that’s tough, but let me try to spin this.
First: Don’t have affairs —
— you never know when your mistress’ son might just Stab You.
Second: Maintain a healthy work-life balance, and while you’re at it-
-maybe don’t steal your child’s spouse.
And Third: Uh, recognize when a pairing is just…
not good,
for anyone.
Truly, every detail I learned while researching this video made me wish-
I had never started, and I’m frankly shocked that our Disaster Species was-
-ever allowed to make it this far.
Thank you for watching.
Researching this video forced me to actually Google search the phrase:
“Louis VXI Penis”
and no amount of therapy can make that un-happen.
I now consider myself burdened with forbidden knowledge and will-
-very much need a year of psychological cleansing-
-before I attempt this again for next Valentine’s Day.
Special thanks to the patrons for subsidizing my suffering,
and I will see you all in the next video.
… Thank god that’s done.