Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Royal Sibling Rifts

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Just in case you haven’t heard, a certain prince has released a memoir recently detailing a challenging relationship between him and his brother, the heir to the throne.But royal sibling rifts are nothing new, in fact we can trace it back centuries… and we’re doing just that on Betwixt the Sheets today.Kate is joined by Gone Medieval’s Matt Lewis to talk about royal spats in the middle ages and the Tudor period, involving everything from chamber pot pranks to house arrests.Kate is also joined by biographer Anne Sebba to talk about more recent regal rifts between the Duke of Windsor and King George VI, and of course, a bit about Prince William and Harry (not much, we promise).*WARNING there are adult words and themes in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound and an archive clip from a 1947 Coronet film. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Oh my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here to deliver your fair do's warning in case you are of a delicate constitution or in case you've just wandered here by accident. You don't quite know what we do on this podcast.

So fair do's, everybody. I am warning you that this is an adult podcast of an adult nature with adults speaking about adult content in an adultery way. There's just going to be a lot of adult content covered. Actually, really what we're dealing with today, it's probably the swearing, more than anything else that might get a few pearls clutched. And I should emphasise, it's me swearing. My guests are much more refined and restrained than I am. I keep trying not to, but I keep swearing. So therefore, we will have more fair dues warning. So if you're somebody that just doesn't like to hear obscene language in your ear, I understand that. I really do. And in which case, you should just turn this off now and go and do something far more wholesome. But for the rest of you, I am ready if you are, because fair-doos, you have been warned. The answer is it money or is it magic? Neither. It's something they worked out together.

When they woke up to the fact that they wanted their family life to be fun. Who doesn't? Liam Gallagher once sued Noel for apparently lying about why Oasis split. Hmm. The Dazler brothers fought so often while running their joint shoe company during World War II that they both quit and separately created new companies, Adidas and Puma. Yes, really. Britney Spears accused her younger sister Jamie Lynn of singing loads of her songs at an award show without her consent in a rather revealing social media post. What all these stories have in common? Well, they all involve a great big dose of sibling rivalry. But sibling rivalry doesn't affect just us mere commoners. and the odd celebrity, it also affects those of royal descent, as demonstrated by the news recently.

I don't know if you heard that a certain prince published a certain memoir with certain details about his family members in, if you've been living under a rock, you might not have heard. But even if you're not interested in the royal family, it's like tinnitus. It's everywhere. How could you possibly have missed it? But, as we are going to discover today, a sibling royal rifts are nothing new. Oh, no, no, no, no. In fact, we can trace that back centuries.

It almost goes with the job. And today on Betwixta sheets, we are going to find out just how far back Royal sibling rivalries can go. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs

by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful dam. Goodness has nothing to do with it, during. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. You may have missed it, I doubt that you have, but a certain memoir has been published recently,

which among other family disputes, detailed a rather challenging relationship between him and his older brother, the heir to the throne. And a dog bowl, but you'll have to buy the book to find out more about that one. You don't have to look too far to find information on this particular royal spat. So today, we thought that we would offer you something a little bit different. The history of royal spats.

Between brothers and sisters throughout the ages, and believe me, there is a lot of it. In fact, you could almost say it's part of the job description. First up, I'm speaking to Matt Lewis, who is the host of our sister podcast, Gone Medieval. He'll be talking to me about royal siblings from the middle ages right up to Tudor times, involving everything from church,

chamber pot pranks to house arrests. Then I'm speaking to the wonderful biographer, Anne Seber, about more recent royal spats between the Duke of Windsor and King George the 6th. And a little bit about Prince William and Harry as well. I mean, come on, we have to. First up, here's Matt. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Matt Lewis. How are you doing? I'm very good, thank you, Kate. Thank you very much for having me back again. Of course I'm going to have you back. Because we are being forced, I think, with current media fixations to talk about royal sibling relationships, aren't we? Is there any other news in the world? Is there anything that anyone is even vaguely bothered about?

Putin, no. National strikes, nurses out on strike, parametical. No, we are not. We are interested in what has been happening in one of the sons, wives of the kids. That's what we want to know about. Absolutely. I know I'm hooked. Are you hooked?

No. Yes, yes. For the purposes of today, I absolutely am. It's weird, there isn't it? We'll get to sort of the media obsession with it in a little bit and what we think that that's all about. But one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you is what's being sort of hyped up in the media

between Harry and William, and the whole thing, and Harry and his dad and all the rest of it, is that there's this awful feud, there's this terrible rift, and someone shoved somebody, and somebody gave someone the side eye, and someone was said something mean to somebody, And I'm like looking at it, thinking about some of the royal spats throughout history and thinking, this is not a spat.

I know, no, you ain't seen nothing yet. And I thought, well, get Matt on and we'll show you what a fucking royal spat is if you want to see one. Well, I will tell you on every available opportunity that anything that is happening in the world has always happened before. Everything is medieval. You can trace everything back to the medieval world. And if you know anything about medieval history, sibling rivalry is utterly predictable. And it's fascinating in the same way that I suppose our own royal family is, is that it's kind of gossipy fuel. Like, oh my God, he did what?

But also, in the medieval period, there was real consequences of this. Like, if brothers fell out, that could fuck things up spectacularly. Well, we have now a constitutional monarchy, but back in the medieval period, these people actually ruled countries, put armies in the field, frequently against each other, you know, brothers fighting brothers. And it had consequences for everybody for continental politics. you know, the entirety of European politics can be played out in a sibling feud between a king and his brother during this period.

And it has huge consequences, you know, beyond writing a book or making a Netflix series, people died because of this. Yeah, I bet William the Conqueror was kind of wishing that the worst thing that had happened was a Netflix special and maybe a chat to Oprah. I think he'd have loved that. He'd seen that as a result. If one of his sons had just gone away and told someone that he wasn't very happy about the way his dad had treated him, which frankly he would have known because he wasn't very nice to his oldest son, Robert. He'd have been fine with that. I think it's all the fighting that goes on the actual real fighting on battlefields that would have bothered him. That's a really good place to start. William the Conqueror and his family feuds.

He, well, he rowed with everybody, didn't it? He wasn't known as a particularly genteel person? Or maybe he was. But he rowed a lot with his sons. Am I right with that? He did. So they have a fairly abrasive relationship, particularly with his oldest son. So he has three surviving sons. He does have the oldest son. dies quite young. So there are three surviving sons who kind of enter the world of politics. The oldest of them is Robert. He's known as Robert Kurt Hoes because he wears quite short britches and stuff. So he's quite fashionable. And William doesn't like this. He thinks his son's just trying to be trendy and show off. Is there anything new under the sun? So he gets this nickname

for his fashion statements. And William and Robert just don't get on. They're quite different personalities. Robert is quite a nice guy. People like Robert in a way that they don't like William. William is quite an abrasive, hard character. He has his second son, William, who will go on to become William the second, William Rufus, the King of England. And he seems to be from what we can tell, William's favourite son.

So he gets on quite well with William. They are quite similar characters. Did they have like nice length short? He has the proper length of trouser of hose. If there's anything for a system of monarchy, it's trouser length and I'm going to stick to that. Yeah. It's like Goldilocks, you know.

Roberts were too short, probably Henry's were too long. Williams were just right. So Robert becomes Duke of Normandy. William Rufus, second son, gets on quite well with his father, is given eventually England. And then we have the youngest son, Henry, who essentially is given a pile of cash, no land, nothing else, a pile of cash to go make his way in the world. And so this is quite often seen as this being because William disliked Robert and favoured William. But it's also a case that succession wasn't really a settled thing at the start of the medieval period. It doesn't. doesn't become more settled until towards the end of the 13th century, really.

And the Norman tradition really was that the oldest son gets the father's land, so the patrilineal inheritance, which is Normandy. The second son gets whatever the father wins, which in this case is England. And the third son might get whatever he acquires by marriage, which there was nothing left, so Henry gets a big pile of cash instead. So there is a way in which it breaks down, which doesn't involve William the Conqueror actually picking favourites amongst his sons. Totally did.

But nevertheless, the throne of England is the big prize, and if you're the oldest son, you would want the big prize. That is shade, isn't it? You could sit down and rationally explain that, but that's quite a slight, isn't it? You can't have England because your trousers are too short. Yeah, he's not my favourite son. This is the real reason, with a little bit of a wink. Scandalous.

So was that news received well by his sons? I don't think anything was ever received well by William the Conqueror's sons. And, I mean, fascinatingly, so if we go back to the current, Spat, You know, there's lots of talk about Harry getting pushed over and landing on a dog bowl. There's this physical incident that is kind of symptomatic of the brotherly dispute that's going on. For us, talking about William the Conquerousuns, if we go back to 1077, there is a monk called Audric Vitalis who writes this history of Norman England. And he tells us that in 1077, so at this point, Robert, the oldest is about 26. William Rufus is about 21 and the youngest Henry is about 9.

And he tells us that the younger brothers play a prank on the older brother, Robert, that is. essentially results in them pouring a full chamber pot over his head. So they cover their 26-year-old brother in all the contents of a full chamber pot. And it was the littlest, the nine-year-old's idea? Probably, but William is also involved, who is 21 and probably old enough to know better. But they think this is hilarious. That's a good joke. Robert is obviously not very happy. No. He's a royal person, utterly embarrassed by all of this. So obviously what you do is you go and tell Dad. Yes. They have this massive fight. The conqueror kind of breaks it up, but he refuses to punish his two younger sons.

And I kind of imagine him laughing along with the prank while Robert is picking poo out of his hair and all that sort of stuff. Oh, God, that is humiliating, isn't it? So what Robert does is strops off and attacks the castle at Ruan in Normandy. No. And the dispute that follows lasted, Audric tells us, for four years of Robert being almost at war with his dad over the fact that he didn't tell his brothers off for putting poo in his head. When do you actually unpick our history It's like lives and fates And the country's future being directed

Because someone poured a chamber pot Over somebody else's head Yeah, four years of war and conflict And sieges and battles Wow Because I got poo in my hair And daddy didn't tell my brother's off I mean, I don't know if I can defend that

But I would be very cross with my brother and sister If they did that to me I don't know if I'd store my castle But I definitely tell my mum But I think these are The Medieval Royals and nobles and nobles equivalent of doing that, isn't it? You know, we don't have the scope to raise an army,

but if you want to make a point and you're a prince, you raise an army and you go and attack a castle and you fight your dad. Wow. So the responses just have to be magnified because of the resources that these people have at their disposal. This is their way of reacting to things. You know, you challenge Robert's manhood and make him look like a fool. He's got to prove he's a man by taking an army into the field and attacking something.

I mean, maybe Harry or William or whoever it was that fell into a dog ball should have done that. Maybe. You know, if you'd taken an army over to America and laid siege to Montecito. Maybe the Netflix special in the book is the modern equivalent of Storm in a Castle. It is, you know, it's using the resources that you have at your disposal to make your case and to fight back. Whether that's right or wrong, whichever side you agree with, what Harry is doing, I think, is exactly the equivalent of what Robert did, given the resources that are available and what's acceptable and expected today. And how did it work out for Robert?

Was honour satisfied? Did anyone apologise for the Chamberpot joke? I don't know whether anyone apologise for that joke. I imagine that would have been kept in private. Ha, ha, ha. But, you know, eventually after the four years, they do sort of settle things down and get on. So that when their dad dies, we have the situation where Robert gets Normandy. But he doesn't seem particularly happy about that.

William gets England and Henry gets this big pile of cash. Robert tries to invade England because he's not happy with this arrangement and feels like he should have got the big prize. And I mean, this is probably an argument against this idea of kind of dividing up inheritances, isn't it? It doesn't work because no one's ever happy. happy with what they got, at least if you're in a situation where the oldest one gets everything. There's something to be said for that because everyone knows where they stand.

But they end up reaching an agreement by which Robert decides he wants to go off on Crusade, so he's going to go to the Holy Land. He mortgages Normandy to William Rufus, and they strike an agreement whereby if either of them die without an air, they'll succeed to the other one's land. So if Robert dies without an air, William will get Normandy. If William dies without an air, Robert will become the next king of England. And then Robert quite happily goes off on Cruces. And in 1,100, he's on his way back when he finds out that his brother William has died.

Theoretically, making him king of England because William doesn't have any children. But what happens when William Rufus dies, I'm sure it's a fairly well-known story, they're out hunting in the new forest and his little brother Henry is with him. So here's a William and Harry out hunting together. One's the king. And the king has a mysterious hunting accident. He's struck by an arrow. And there's been lots of talk about whether this was an accident, whether it was an assassination bid, whether this is Harry literally having his brother killed because he doesn't want him there. And Harry's response, Henry's response, kind of plays directly into that because what he does is leave his brother dying in the dirt in the new forest.

Nice. Hops on a horse, rides to Winchester, claims the royal treasury, rides on to London and has himself crown as King of England. So by the time Robert gets back, little brother Henry is sitting in the throne with a crown on his head. That's not helping the finger of suspicion not point at him, is it then? No, I mean, if ever there was, you know, motive means and opportunity, he takes the crown, he was in the new forest when it happened. So if we're playing Cludo, it's easy to see where we might point the finger. Yeah, my money's on him. How did that one end up? I mean, did the two surviving brothers just row for the rest of their lives?

I say row, I mean, like, wallop each other with armies. Absolutely. They very much rowed for the rest of their lives. So Robert again invades England in July 1101. He ends up meeting with his brother in Alton, in Hampshire. And they avoid fighting this time. And they essentially agree that Robert will drop all of his claims to England in return for Henry paying him 3,000 marks a year, which is a lot of money,

a couple of thousand pounds a year in medieval money, an awful lot of cash. And also Henry dropping any claim that he might have to Normandy. So permanently dividing the Anglo-Norman Empire. But almost immediately, as soon as Robert agrees, to this and goes back to Normandy, Henry breaks the deal and invades Normandy. And we get a situation there with several years of fighting, which comes to a head at the Battle of Tinch Brigh in 1106. Essentially, this is Robert and Henry in the field in battle against each other. And Robert loses and is captured as a result of this. So in 1106, he becomes the prisoner of his little brother.

Grim. Yeah. He's initially placed in Devise's castle. In Wiltshire, he's then moved on to Cardiff. and he actually develops a reputation for being quite a good poet during his time in captivity. I suppose you've got to use your time somehow. Well, absolutely. You've got to find something to do. And writing poetry is better than bashing people over the head, I would imagine. Did they just start with like, my brother is a massive dick? And then just carry on from there. Yeah.

It's a magical limericks about Henry. So he eventually dies in his early 80s. Wow. But he spends 27 years as his little brother's prisoner in Cardiff Castle. 27 years. Wow. So again, if you're looking for responses to a sibling spat, they literally fight each other on the battlefield, and the loser is a prisoner for 27 years until his death. I wonder what the press at the time made of it. I mean, there wasn't press, was there? I wonder what tapestries at the time made of it.

They were really upset. All the weavers were busy, trying to hit the morning deadline. I would class monks at this time as very much the tabloid press. They are incredibly gossipy. They are our medieval paparazzi and tabloid press. I love that, just like a headline in eliminated manuscripts about the latest that Robert and William have been doing. Yeah, because they're always looking to report something, but they're always looking for a moral story behind it. So obviously if something bad happens, God's not happy with you, so you have to find out why.

Maybe it was because Robert wore those short hoes. Showing a bit too much leg. God's not happy. The fate of England decided by trouser length. I love that. 27 years is a prisoner for you. Let's talk about some other. So they're pretty bad. Battlefield, wars,

God knows how many people died during this nonsense, chamber pots and trouser lengths. We've got to talk about Edward VIII and George Duke of Clarence because that ends up in, well, death, doesn't it? It does. This is a case of a brother literally killing his own brother because they fell out. I mean, the Wars of the Roses is my history home, so you'll have to reel me in here if I start waffling too much. I will.

But we've got, again, we've got lots of brothers here to deal with. So we've got Edward is the oldest, born in 1442. Then we have Edmund, who's born in 1443, but dies in 1460, so kind of isn't really part of this story. Then we've got George in 1449, so he's seven years younger than Edward. And then the youngest is Richard Duke of Gloucester, who becomes Richard III. Right. So we've got these three brothers, the Yorkists kind of rise to the throne. Edward becomes king in 1461 at the age of 18.

So he's unmarried, doesn't have any children. So at this point, George is the heir to his throne. And that situation lasts until 1471. So for 10 years, while he's growing up, through his teenage years and all those difficult periods, George is the heir to the throne. I should point out that Edward has three daughters by this point, but, you know, we're in the medieval period, so the daughters don't count. But I think George never really got over the fact that he spent 10 years as heir to the throne,

and that was always going to be taken away from him. But he grew up through his teenage years and into young adulthood as heir to the throne. And I don't think he ever came to terms of the fact that that that was never really his in the first place. He was always likely to be supplanted, and he always felt that he should have been next in line. And I don't know whether we see parallels there between William and Harry today. You know, Harry seems to be feeling squeezed out.

When he called his memoir spare, didn't he? So there's got to be something weird about growing up with this kind of like, whoa, will you, won't you, will you, won't you? Yeah. Sort of thing hanging over you. But it's kind of, it's a weird thing. So most jobs you would like to think you go through your career and get promoted. Yeah.

George starts this job at the age of, what is he, he's 12 when his brother takes the throne, and then he gets from that point on continually relegated. He can only go down. He starts off as heir to the throne. As soon as Edward has a son, he's now third in line to the throne. And every time Edward has a son, you know, you're just getting further and further away. It must be really, like, when he was stood at the christening's for those boys, I'd be like, fucking, yeah, really dappy for your fucking brilliant.

Amazing. He's giving a really shit Christmas presents. And it's almost like starting your career as just. Jeffrey Bezos and then working your way down to working in an Amazon factory. Yeah, it is, isn't it? That'd piss you off. That would cost some issues, wouldn't it? Yeah, and it really, really does with George. So he falls in with their cousin, the Earl of Warwick, who's famously known as Warwick the Kingmaker. Warwick falls out with Edward IV, and he sucks George into his conspiracies, and they end up rebelling against Edward to the point where they drive

Edward out of England in 1470. And they put the Lancasterian King Henry VI on the throne, who's been booted off for 10 years, been a prisoner in the tower for the last five or six years, and he's suddenly wheeled out to be king. So George has joined a rebellion that has kicked his entire family off the throne because he's in a bad mood with his brother. Right. In 1471, Edward comes back from exile, so he ends up in Burgundy, where his brother-in-law is Duke. I always like to imagine there's some kind of rocky training montage that goes on here. He's getting himself back in shape. He's running up and down cathedral steps. He's punching the sides of beef and all that kind of stuff.

Lifting his crown, up and down. Getting himself back in training. Heads back over to England in 1471, and we get the Battle of Barnet where Warwick is killed, and then Chukesbury, where the Lancasterian heir is killed, and Henry VI died shortly afterwards. But as part of this arrival back in England, there's this big spectacle of a reconciliation with George.

So the family has been working behind the scenes to get George back on side. Lots of their sisters and their mother have been working on George, and when they get back to England, it's the littlest brother Richard, who has a meeting with George. and kind of seals the deal to bring George back into the Yorkist camp. So they go back on then and win the throne back.

Okay. That could be the end of it. It could have been a little hiccup, but George just is never, ever satisfied. So George is married to one of the Earl of Warwick's daughters. Richard, the younger brother, then marries the younger sister to the other daughter of the Earl of Warwick. So then because Warwick is killed at the Battle of Barnet,

they have this massive fight over the inheritance. Essentially, George seems to want it all, and he doesn't want Richard to have any of it. I'm sensing some inferiority complexes with George. Yeah, but again, I think you can see George worrying about being relegated. So he's married to Warwick's daughter and stands to inherit all of that as long as the other sister isn't married, essentially. Yeah, okay.

And there's no man to claim it. Yeah. So there's even stories that George and Isabel keep, and the younger sister, as a kind of prisoner in their house to stop anyone, you know, marrying her. There's lots of stories that she's put to work in the kitchens and all of this sort of stuff. So I think you can see George being effectively relegated again. So he's going from having all of this Warwick inheritance to having half of it. He's pushed down in the line of succession, and now everything that he's acquiring from his marriage is getting smaller as well.

He's very triggered. Easily, I think, very, very easily. And they have, you know, a couple of years where Richard and George are almost coming to blows in the streets of London. The men are on the brink of fighting in the streets of London every time they're both in London together. And Edward kind of has to bang their heads together and force them to come to terms. and this all ends up being settled in Parliament in a really, really messy way. Part of what they do is declare Warwick's widow to be legally dead so that George can have all of her lands and properties without her being able to claim them.

Is she dead? No. That's really shit. She outlives all of them. Well played. But Edward declares a legally dead so that George can have her stuff. But it really all comes to her head in 1477. So George's wife, Isabel, dies, probably from complications after childbirth,

tuberculosis are the two things that are diagnosed there. But about six months later, George goes on this huge rampage down to the southwest and arrests a woman named Ankarat Twineau, who was a lady in waiting to his wife who he accuses of having poisoned her to death, drags her back up to Warwick, puts her on trial, finds her guilty and hangs her in Warwick. This seems quite random. Why is he doing this? Nobody is quite sure. Nobody knows, I mean, whether he's had some kind of complete breakdown at this point, the loss of his wife and a child. And building into that all of his issues with Edward and his own position and his own lot, I don't know. And a bigger Wars of the Roses question, there is a query about whether he's threatening to expose Edward the Force

bigamy, which becomes an issue in 1483, and that perhaps that's the reason he has to be dealt with, but that's a story for another day. But George is arrested because what he's done is effectively taken royal authority. He's not allowed to do what he's done. And he's put on trial in Parliament, and his brother Edward acts as the prosecutor. So Edward is now standing up in Parliament, prosecuting his own little brother for high treason. And the only outcome of a trial for treason in Parliament is ever going to be a guilty verdict. So George is found guilty.

He's executed in February 1478. And it's done in private and we have no record of his execution. Oh, do we not? No, there's no official record of how he was executed. But the story very quickly emerges and takes hold that he was permitted to choose the method. of his own execution and chose to be drowned in a vat of Malmsey wine, which was Edward IV's favourite kind of sweet wine. Interesting.

Do you think that's true? Or is that just like one of those myth stories? It could well be true. I mean, there's a portrait that's believed to be of his daughter, Margaret Pohl, the Countess of Salisbury. And if you look at that portrait, she's on her wrist, she's wearing a little charm with a barrel on it. And it suggested that that's a reference to her father that she wore for the rest of her life.

So possibly? I quite like, I mean, if you're going to go, That's a hell of a way to choose, isn't it? And drowning was a way of executing people for treason. It was actually more common in Scotland than anywhere else. And there are concerns around executing royal princes that, you know, who gets to lay a hand on them or cut their head off or anything like that because you don't want to set the precedent that people can lay hands in violence on members of the royal family.

So drowning them is a way of doing that without necessarily causing them physical harm. And yeah, but I quite like the idea that George was like, do you know what, if I'm going, I'm taking a barrel of your favourite wine with me. What a legend. I'm going drunk. Okay. I suppose we should talk about Mary and Elizabeth, shouldn't we? Yeah.

I mean, another massive sibling rivalry this time between sisters. So all the ones we've spoken about so far are brothers. So just to prove that women can do anything that men can do, Elizabeth and Mary have a set to as well. So Mary is the first surviving child of Henry VIII with his first wife, Catherine of Arrigan. So she's born in 1516. and until her dad's marital shenanigans of the 1530s. I love that, marital shenanigans. Yeah, it's the easiest way of explaining it at this point, I think.

But again, she grows up into her late teens as heir to the throne. So there is nobody else. There's no other child. She's liable to be queen after her father passes away. But then we get all of those shenanigans in the early 1530s. And Henry divorces Catherine. I'm using the word divorce for the sake of ease here. Some people shout at me in a medieval context.

But kicks her to the curb. Marys Ambelin, the Great Whore, and the Great Whore has a little whore, Elizabeth, in 1533. So then you're polarising the kingdom almost completely between the supporters of Catherine of Aragon and the supporters of Henry and Ambelin and Elizabeth. And unfortunately, it's to young people who end up being the figureheads of this argument, the teenage Mary and the baby Elizabeth. And Mary finds herself supplanted. so she's gone from being heir to the throne

to now being forced to bow to this baby who is her little half-sister who's 17 years younger than she is. And it seems to have really fucked Mary up, doesn't it? I mean, like, from the records that we've got, she was quite, I don't know what we'll say, high maintenance, very highly strong. I think it's easy to see why

when your dad essentially ditches you at 17, you know, your dad remarries and is all about the new wife, showers favour on the new child, and Mary wasn't allowed to see her mother ever again. She was sort of pushed away from court. She wasn't given any kind of dignity or anything like that. So having grown up to the age of 17 with all of this, again, she's seeing herself demoted and relegated because someone else has come along who's taken all of that. She must have hated Ambelin. I think she must have, not least for what Anne did to her mother,

as well as what she did to her. But what I think is interesting is that after the death of Ambelin, you do see Mary becoming quite maternal to Elizabeth. Okay. So while Elizabeth is young, you do see Mary wanting to take care of her little sister, and they do seem to become quite close, because very quickly then, Elizabeth is also dumped from the line of succession by the arrival of Edward V. So then I think perhaps Mary has some empathy for Elizabeth at that point. They've both kind of gone through the same thing now.

So for all she might have resented Elizabeth before, now Elizabeth's in the same position, and she can feel some kind of sympathy for her. but after Henry the 8th then dies, Edward the 6th dies, 1553, Mary becomes queen, and the next year we get Wyatt's Rebellion. So this erupted in protest against Mary's plans to marry Philip of Spain, but their plan was to make Elizabeth Queen. Whether Elizabeth was involved in this or not isn't entirely clear, to what extent she wanted anything like that.

But Mary now feared that her sister was a threat to her. So initially she throws Elizabeth into the tower, which to some extent is a little bit cruel. because that's where a mom was imprisoned and executed. And it kind of must have had a fairly heavy shadow for Elizabeth to be chucked in there by Catherine of Aragon's daughter. And we get a letter that Elizabeth writes to Mary,

which is quite desperate. I mean, if we think of Elizabeth being quite a composed and together person while she's queen, this is her absolutely terrified that she's about to die and her sister's going to kill her. So she writes this letter, if anything, it seems to wind Mary up even more. But she does seem to relent in terms of the tower

and she moves her to Woodstock Palace, whether Mary realized how cruel she was being and relented a little bit, I don't know. And eventually Elizabeth is pardoned. And the two have a pretty strained relationship for the rest of Mary's life then. They nominally get on, but it's hard to say that they're close. And then 1558, Mary dies and Elizabeth becomes queen.

And I think the slightly funny postscript to this is that James I first ends up having Elizabeth and Mary buried together. So if you go and visit Westminster Abbey, they're in the same tomb with each other. Scrapping and rowing for forevermore. If ever there was a cold tomb, I'd imagine there's a cold atmosphere inside there. But he has an inscription put on it saying

partners in throne and grave, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters in hope of the resurrection. Wow, they would have fucking hated that. I imagine they are, silently fuming in there. See, all of this makes writing a book and doing a podcast and a Netflix special

seem quite tame, doesn't it? It does. And again, I think we're back talking about the resources that are available and what's expected. If you're slighted in the 11th century, you're expected to raise an army and push the matter on the battlefield. I think if you're slighted in the 21st century, you're expected to write a tell-all book and do some interviews on the telly.

Why do you think? I mean, listening to your talk now, it's very obvious by people would care what was going on in royal families and who hated who and whose trousers were with what length and who was pissing who off. That makes perfect sense, because if they have a fallout, they can have a war and then that can directly affect you. They are absolute rulers.

But now we don't have that. I mean, thank fuck. But we have constitutional monarchy. Nothing these people can do can affect you realistically. I know there's like theoretically, Charles could raise an army, but the chances are remote. So why do you think that we're still so invested in these stories? Because for me, like I look at it and it's like ever, it's like tinnitus at the moment, isn't it? is Harry and William, Harry and Megan,

and it's like everything I know about this, I've kind of learnt against my will. And I genuinely, I'm like trying to fathom what the obsession is. The only thing I've come up with is it's like the Kardashians, but for people who are too snobbish to admit that they won't watch the Kardashians, so they're now obsessed with this.

But what do you think as a historian of royal spats? Why are we still so fascinated with this family and their fallouts? I mean, if you look at what we watch on TV, you know, there's so much reality TV around. People watch the only way is Essex. This is just the only way is Windsor. You know, we're essentially looking in through a window, watching people have real-life arguments and spats and sort of going, ooh, ah ha, ha, ooh, pick aside. Are you team William or team Harry, team Megan or team whoever else? And I think it just plays to something inside us. So we've seen our medieval

tabloid chroniclers telling us all the juicy bits of gossip about the royal family. And that hasn't changed. still do that today. They tell us the juicy bits of gossip because we're the idiots who make them go out and find it because it sells newspapers, it's clickbates that people click on links to read this stuff. And as long as they do that, these people will keep doing it. So if we wonder why this stuff is so prevalent, it's because of us. We're to blame. Every family has dramas. Theirs is just more public than anybody else's, which I think is an absolute shame. I mean, most families don't have to air their laundry in public, do they? The royal family have nowhere else to do it. Everybody looks at everything that's on their washing line to

binoculars and a zoom lens. And they can't raise an army now. Well, no, they can't, but what they can do is write a book, do some interviews on the TV. It's almost an exact equivalent of what would have happened a thousand years ago, given the resources and expectations of 2023. And I think, just looking at it from a historical point of view, I would say these sibling rivalries never turn out well for somebody. Somebody always loses. And I think that's the sad thing, because you've got two brothers today who could have been such an incredible force who had the entire country behind them for the last 25 years, willing them to succeed to be great, to be brilliant people and to get on. And to watch that fall apart over the last few years and watch them

now at such loggerheads is a shame. But I also think we have to look at ourselves because we're fueling this. We're reading the papers. We're buying the books. We're watching the news. we're lapping it all up and therefore we're fueling all of this. The best thing we could do is stop paying attention to it and let them sort it out in private. Are you going to read his book? I haven't read it.

No, I'm not going to read it. No, that's for historians of the future to read. Give it 100 years and then we'll care. If I'm still around in 500 years' time, I will read it. Oh, Matt, you've been so much fun to talk to. Thank you. And if anyone wants to find out more about you and your work, where can they find you?

On the Gone Medieval podcast from History Hits, I occasionally make films for History Hit as well, mostly about medieval history, and I have several books that are available in no good bookstores, but they are available online. Thank you so much. You've been wonderful. Thank you very much for having me. I'll be back with Amseba to talk more recent royal risks in just a moment. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we're here to spoil you with the biggest names. Chingis Khan, the thing that really galvanised his wars of conquest was his belief

that he had been given a mandate to have dominion over the entire planet. We explore new archaeological finds. After the Viking Age, lots of medieval artefacts coming out of the site as well. And delve into the lives of those you might never have heard of. He's not a bad and evil king-like King John. I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis, from surviving everyday life in the Middle Ages to dynasty-shattering events.

Gone medieval is the place to quench your thirst for history. Now to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So we are back from our break, and I am here talking to the rather marvellous, Anne Seba, about a more modern royal rift. The relationship between Edward, who ended up abdicating, and Bertie, who became King George. Hello, and thank you for joining me and talking to me about this today, Anne. It's a great, great pleasure, as you say, Edward is. only one of his names and his younger brother Bertie is only one of his names. So I'll try and be clear about what names they both chose because it's relevant. It gets very confusing, doesn't it? But let's

talk about these brothers and what kind of relationship they had growing up and what ultimately what led to one of them abdicating one of them becoming king and what I can only assume is a rather fractured family relationship. Yes, it certainly became very fractured. well, Bertie was the second son. There were four brothers. Actually, there were five because there was a much younger brother called John, who was epileptic, who nobody talked about for years, who was hidden away. But when Edward talks about his brothers, he's talking about his second brother, who, as you say, was Bertie, but became George the sixth. Now, that is interesting. When he became king, he deliberately chose the name of his. father who'd been George the 5th because he wanted to show some sort of continuity. But it's confusing. You know, why does somebody called Bertie, who was born Albert, suddenly become George the 6th? Well, it is relevant. There was a reason behind it, and perhaps we'll get back to that. So you asked about growing up. Well, they grew up in a family that, if you listen to Edward,

was shown no love from his parents. So George V and Mary were distant, they were cold. Edward ended up saying that he believed his mother had ice in her veins. That was because Mary refused ever to meet Edward's wife, Wallace, who she always referred to as that woman. If the family called her anything, they called her Mrs. Simpson, but actually calling her the Duchess of Windsor was, never on. So Mary, he believes, had ice in her veins. What did George V do? Well, he liked shooting and

hunting and he collected stamps, but did he have time for his children when they were little? No. That was not the ideal of modern parenting. So they were brought up by nannies. I think arguably you could say that they were just typical Victorian parents to have a nanny. But why do we all the children appear to have this difficulty informing other relationships. Now, famously, Bertie, who became King, stammered. But Edward, too, had a certain stammer. I didn't know that. Yes.

Well, if you listen to his abdication, there is a little bit of a stammer in that famous speech. So they all felt that they hadn't been shown the love that they needed from their parents. But I think to look at Edward, because he's the one I know best, he has these suicidal cries that he makes several times in his life. He wants to fight at the front in the First World War. Now, because he's the heir, they don't want to send him to the front. So they keep him back. And that's always something that really nags at him. He feels he didn't do his duty in World War I.

and what he says in arguing that he should be sent to the front is, look, I've got three more brothers. What does it matter? If I'm killed, it really doesn't matter. I've got three brothers. So that's the first time you see a suicidal cry. The second time is in 1920 when he's sent around the world to proclaim to the world. Look, the Bolsheviks have killed their rulers, the Tsars, but don't worry,

the monarch is really safe in our hands. and he writes to his lover at the time, a married woman called Frida Dudley Ward, and he says, I'd rather die than take on the throne and be like my father. Wouldn't it be dippy to die together? So he's sort of threatening suicide then. And the third and most serious time is when Wallace Simpson, his mistress at the time, in 1936, threatens to give him up. And he says, if you try and leave me, I will slit my throat.

And one of the courtiers, Helen Harding, talks about him sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow. So here is obviously a troubled young man who doesn't want to take on the burdens and the duties of being king and seems to think, well, I don't need to do this because I've got three brothers. So I think you see there the root of the sibling difficulties, because Edward has been brought up with all the privileges and money and everything of the heir to the throne. And he thinks this is something you can just throw away and that one of his brothers will be there to pick up the burden.

Now, why should they? And that's really the root of the difficulty. And that's how it actually plays out in 1936, when he's not allowed to marry the mystery. he wants to, Wallace Simpson, because she's at the time married. She's got two living husbands. That's the key to it all. And when it is made clear to him, look, you can't just marry a divorced woman and expect her to be queen because the dominions and the Commonwealth won't have Queen Wally, as they called her, Queen Wallace. He says, okay, well then I'm going to abdicate.

and there's my younger brother, Bertie, he'll become king. He's really dumping it on his younger brother in a way that is destined to cause the most terrible sibling difficulties and relationship. Do you have a sense of what Albert was like growing up? I always think it's such a strange dynamic to grow up in. I mean, like the firstborn's like, right, you're going to be king. I don't want to be king. Tough, you're going to be king.

But then like the brothers and the other siblings, they're like, well, I might be king, I might not be king. And it's this sort of weird, it's no wonder they all turned up with a lot of issues later in life. That must be a very strange environment to grow up in. But do you have a sense of what Albert was like growing up? So they were all raised by nannies. But what was he like? Much more shy.

He really suffered from this stammer. He could barely make a speech. So he married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. And by all accounts, she resisted two of four. his proposals, but accepted on the third. Who knows why? But she did. And I think she genuinely wanted a quiet life. They had two daughters. She just wanted to be in the background because she knew how Bertie suffered when he had to be in the limelight. And she tried to coax him and coach him out of that. But they'd been married for a long time when suddenly, within a week's notice,

they were told you've got the number one job, you're going to be king and queen. And she hadn't wanted to be in the limelight. She'd wanted her daughters to grow up with some sort of privacy, and mostly because she felt Bertie wasn't up to it. He wasn't up to giving these speeches, being in the limelight. And so she accused Wallace of causing this rupture, and she accused Edward, of course, her brother-in-law. and ultimately she accused them both of causing her husband's early death

because he died of lung cancer. Now, he did smoke a lot, but according to Queen Elizabeth, who became Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, this stress was what precipitated the early death. Was there any sense from Bertie that this was heading down the line towards him? I mean, it would still be an almighty shock to abdicate the throne. and just go, there you go, yours now. But did he have any sense of, because like when you were saying about his older brother

with this kind of suicidal ideation thoughts, like going off to war, was there any sense that Bertie sort of suspected that this might happen he'd been preparing for it? I think the royal family knew that Edward had some instability. He couldn't settle with a woman. He had married women as mistresses repeatedly. But two of his mistresses, Frieda Dudley Ward, and Telma Furness, when they were at the fort,

had established a sort of forsoom with Bertie and Elizabeth. They'd gone out together. There'd been a real rock-solid relationship of the quartet. It was only when Wallace was introduced that the dynamic changed. Now, if Edward had remained with Wallace as his mistress, he could have become king, but it was Edward's insistence that he had to marry Wallace, and that became more and more pressing after George V died in January 36,

and Edward had not had time to get all his ducks in line. He hadn't had time to marry Wallace, to organise her divorce. That was the problem. So I don't think Bertie realized until the last minute, even though there was an acknowledgement in the royal family that Edward was a bit of an unknown quantity, he was certainly unstable, he hadn't settled, What was he going to do?

You know, in his abdication speech, I think one of the most telling lines is where he says, I didn't have the matchless blessing that you, his brother, Bertie, have of children and a family. So he believed that because Bertie had a wife who was stable and children, he'd be fine. He'd just pick up the pieces. And it was that line that caused their mother, Queen Mary, such anguish, you know, to say that, he hasn't got the matchless blessing of children. Well, he could have done if he'd wanted, was the belief. I mean, there's another school of thought that says possibly he was infertile

and he couldn't have done and he knew that. So we'll never know. But that line really, to me, says it all. He thought Bertie would be fine. He thought he would come back to England and they'd establish a rapport. And, of course, the war changed all that. I think the hatred becomes worse during the war because Elizabeth shows herself as courageous and she may be dowdy and not fashionable. At one point that worried her that she had this glamorous sister-in-law across the water who might form a king's party.

But actually, during the war, it becomes quite clear that Edward and Wallace, Duke and Duchess of Winthrop as they were, had let their country down. and that King George the 6th and Elizabeth were the couple for the hour, the couple that Britain needed. So the war changes the talk. The other thing perhaps we should just talk about is money. Because the application happened in such a hurry in December,

I mean, Baldwin was brilliant. He knew that it had to be sorted before Christmas. He couldn't send everyone home or his MPs home without sorting it. So it was sorted, but in a hurry, without either the title, which we have discussed, the money sorted out. And Edward then told what historians have called a suicidal lie. He said, look, I've got no money. Well, of course he did. He had some money in Alberta. He had all sorts

of pockets of money. But he forced his brother to pay him out of the privy purse, his own money, because there was no way the British public could pay Edward £25,000 per round. And that was quite a lot of money. And interestingly, his daughter Elizabeth stopped that when she took the throne from 1953 onwards. There was no more 25,000 coming your way. But that suicidal lies saying he had no money and forcing his brother to pay him. On top of his defeatist attitude during the war, saying that he thought Germany was better and Germany would win, all of those things combined to make this relationship go really from bad to war. worse. I'm starting to dislike him quite a lot now. I mean, yeah, he was messed up, obviously,

had a very strange upbringing, but to like just assume that it's all right to just dump all this on a younger brother and then go cozy and up to napsies and tell people lies and demand money and all of this stuff. I'm struggling now. I'm starting to think he's a bit of a weasel. We got the better brother. I mean, I like Noel Coward's view that there should be a statue to Wallace Simpson in every market town in England. because she facilitated the abdication, and boy, did we need George the Six during the war? Because George the Six, because he recognised his limitations,

was prepared to listen to advice. One of the problems of Edward was that he was a bit like a bull in a China shop. He believed, on the basis of no research, that he knew, and he wasn't good at taking advice from his ministers. So in the end, Churchill had a very... good working relationship with George the 6th and Elizabeth. And that wasn't a given at the beginning, but they established it. And that relationship was key to winning the war.

I mean, God, that's a fascinating point. And I'd never thought of that before. I mean, I knew that Edward had a sort of a favour for Germany and was kind of cozying up with Hitler. But when you think that if he had been king during that, what might have happened, that's... Absolutely. So the older brother is sent off to the Bahamas as governor of the Bahamas, which he hates. He feels, you know, he's been pushed out. Does he hate that?

Yes, he hated it because the Bahamas wouldn't mind being exiled to the Bahamas. The Bahamas today is very different from the Bahamas in those days. It wasn't a millionaire's playground. It was just becoming one. So they thought they'd been exiled to this backwater, which indeed they had. Churchill wanted him as far out of the way as possible where he could do no damage. And, you know, Wallace made a decent fist of being a governor's wife.

She established a canteen and all the rest of it. But it wasn't the key role he'd expected. Did they have a kiss and make-up? Was anything sort of cordial, or was it the kind of the rift between the brothers? Don't forget he died in 1952. You know, that's why Queen Elizabeth celebrated her platinum jubilee because of his death. So, no, they did not kiss and make up.

And Queen Elizabeth never had a good word to say for Wallace. That woman. So before I let you go, I mean, I've got to ask you, haven't I, is what is your take on the current Royal Brothers fighting? Because that's all in the news. And there's somebody that has written so extensively on royal families and relationships and someone who knows so much about this. What's your thought on the current spat?

I think it's really... difficult because, you know, there are so many variables in the mix, such as Camilla, is she the wicked stepmother or is she the woman who has brought peace to Charles? Well, I don't think you can expect Harry to take the latter view. And I see where Harry is coming from, but to see the brothers fall apart is arguably inevitable. What role was there for Harry? so he's trying to carve out a life for himself. I think he's got to move on from here.

I hope he doesn't make the mistakes of Edward and live permanently in the past. I understand why he's tried to set out his story. He doesn't want other people telling his story. Okay, perhaps we can draw a line under it. And who can foretell whether they do make peace in the future? I should think it's unlikely. I think they'll have to carve out a very different line.

And William has decided I'm the heir to the throne. I'm going to take on the crown. And if Harry can't play ball with that, it's desperately sad, but I think their paths probably will have to separate. It's strange because I don't know them. I've never met them. Most people haven't.

They have no clue I even exist. And even I feel a little bit of like, oh, they've fallen out. Oh, because I guess I've grown up with them and then, you know, this kind of, so I sort of feel oddly invested in it, even though it's nothing to do with me whatsoever. I think you've hit upon one of the huge differences between then and now. Then the royal family still had this mystique. There weren't interviewers prying into every aspect of their life.

We really didn't know. So we held them on a pedestal. They really were, if not invested with the divine right of kings pretty close. to it. Well, now we do know almost every aspect of their lives and nobody sees them as divinely inspired. You know, they've married ordinary people, commoners, if you like. So they are at one level like you and me, but they're different. So we've got to somehow come to terms with that. It's only Edward had released a Netflix special and spoken to Oprah instead of going over to Nazi Germany. We'd have been much happier with him then. And you've just been amazing to talk to

about this. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work, and they should, where can they find you? I've got a website, www.annsever.com, and I've got lots of books, and my book about Wallace is called That Woman. So please read it, and please let me know what you think about it. And I love hearing from my readers or listeners. Thank you so much, Anne. You've just been wonderful. Thank you. I've loved talking about this. I hope that you've enjoyed this special episode and thank you so much to my two guests today, Matt and Anne. We love hearing

your thoughts so if you like what you've heard, please do follow along, drop us a review we do read all of them. And we've got loads of great shows coming up including episodes on the Blues, Unix and the History of Porn. So make sure you follow along so you don't miss out. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.