Author Dana Schwartz explores the stories of some of history’s most fascinating royals: the tyrants and the tragic, the murderers and the murdered, and everyone in between. Because when you’re wearing a crown, mistakes often mean blood.
286 episodes transcribedWhile I seldom cover modern royals on this podcast, the recent announcement of Princess Martha Louise of Norway stepping away from royal duties in the...
King Pedro I of Portugal had one love of his life. And when she died, in 1355, Pedro would do everything in his power to make those who were responsib...
After the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers were desperate to prove America's strength on the world stage, especially compared to Europe. To T...
Procopius is considered the preeminent historian of the Byzantine age, writer of works that extolled the virtue and power of Emperor Justinian. But in...
Lady Mary Wroth is often considered the first female writer in England to publish a work of prose under her own name. But her romance, The Countess of...
Mansa Musa is often considered to be the richest man who ever lived. And, in the 14th century, he set out on a hajj to show his wealth and power to th...
In 1599, Beatrice Cenci, the daughter of a wealthy Roman nobleman, was convicted of her father's murder. She almost certainly did it—no one was arguin...
In 1841, it seemed inevitable that the small, impoverished principality of Monaco would be absorbed by one of its larger neighbors. But the new Prince...
To this day, no one knows who stole the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907, but in the years since a number of suspects have emerged, and the mysterious case...
Historian Helen Carr, author of The Red Prince: The Life of John of Gaunt, to talk about a key event in the life of the third surviving son of Edward...
King Philip IV had three sons, who he married to three girls (two of whom happened to be sisters themselves). In 1314, a group accusation of adultery...
It's a legend, nothing more, about the founding of Prague, but in the story of a woman allegedly from the 8th century, we see the power of myth and th...
The death of Queen Elizabeth is the death of a symbol: after 70 years on the throne, she is the only English monarch many of us have ever known. The s...
After Georgiana Cavendish gave her husband an heir, she was free to pursue extramarital lovers. But her affair with Charles Grey would leave her force...
When she was seventeen years old, Georgiana Spencer married William Cavendish and became the Duchess of Devonshire. Almost overnight, she charmed ever...
Two sisters raised an army in 1st century Vietnam against Chinese colonialists. Over the next two thousand years, their story would change and twist....
In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry a twice-divorced American woman named Wallis Simpson. Just a few short months later,...
William the Conquerer's youngest son, Henry, had to scheme and fight to become King of England. But his dreams of peacefully united England and Norman...
Even though King George III had 13 living children, in 1817, he only had a single legitimate grandchild: Princess Charlotte. And then the unthinkable...
Sophia Duleep Singh was the granddaughter or Ranjit Singh, the 'Lion of Punjab,' but she had been born and raised in England, a goddaughter of Queen V...
