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Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things — History
Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things

Expert history with a wicked twist: Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things is the podcast that goes behind palace doors and beyond the balcony smiles, to uncover the stories that the history books have politely skipped.

Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things reveals the schemers, lovers, plotters and even the pets who’ve made the British monarchy the world’s longest-running reality show.

Hosts, Royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams trace how power, passion and paranoia have shaped every crown. There are queens who ruled better than their husbands, and princes who partied harder than their people. We meet saints, sinners and those hovering somewhere in between – from the man formerly known as Prince Andrew to the less-vilified Richard III.

Sometimes we get reflective: how monarchy survives scandal, how image-making began long before Instagram, and why royal women have always been the best crisis managers in the room. Other times we’re just here for the gossip: who wore what, who slept where, and who accidentally started a war over breakfast.

Think of it as history with its crown slightly askew. If you like your royal stories with equal parts grandeur and chaos, step into the world of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things because behind every coronation lies a cover-up, behind every portrait a scandal, and behind every great monarch… a very patient servant wondering how to get the blood out of the carpet.

New episodes out every MONDAY, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Copyright: © Daily Mail

Latest Episodes:

Rotten Spares: The Prince Andrews & Harrys of History - Part 2 Oct 27, 2025

Show notes

Are Princes Andrew and Harry the most troublesome ‘spares’ in royal history?

You might think so — but buckle up, because history is littered with spares who partied harder, plotted darker and pushed the Crown to breaking point.

Welcome to Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things, where royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams take you inside the palace doors to meet the heirs… and the headaches. Every monarchy needs a backup but what happens when the backup goes rogue? From regency playboys who bankrupt the nation, to sword-swinging dukes suspected of murder, to princesses who perfected the art of rebellion, we reveal the royals who made even today’s headlines look tame.

Join us for the royal stories the courtiers hoped you’d never hear.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rotten Spares: The Prince Andrews & Harrys of History - Part 1 Oct 19, 2025

Show notes

Prince Harry may have put the word spare on the map, but he and his uncle Prince Andrew are not the first royal to grumble about being second in line.

In this week’s episode, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams dig into centuries of royal runners-up — from Elizabeth I to George V — the siblings who weren’t meant to rule, yet somehow stole the show.

From party-loving princes to quietly competent sisters, being “the spare” has always been a tricky business. Some plotted their way to the throne, some partied their way out of it, and others just got on with the job — usually in glorious frustration.

And as for Harry, is history repeating itself, or breaking the royal mould entirely? Who thrived in the shadow of the crown? Who went gloriously rogue? And could Harry himself one day surprise us all?

Tune in for a rollicking history of royal back-ups, brides recycled and brothers upstaged — only on Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things. LISTEN NOW

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Churchill & The Queen Oct 12, 2025

Show notes

Was Churchill her favourite PM — and who did the Queen secretly loathe?

Find out in this week’s royally revealing episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things!

Robert Hardman is joined by royal biographer Andrew Morton — yes, the man behind Diana: Her True Story — to spill the palace secrets behind Queen Elizabeth II’s fifteen Prime Ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss.

From Churchill bursting into tears during audiences to Thatcher trudging through the Balmoral mud in high heels, from John Major quietly becoming the boys’ guardian after Diana’s death to Edward Heath’s icy froideur over Europe, it’s a whistle-stop tour through seventy years of royal-political drama.

Who made her laugh? Who bored her senseless? And which PM nodded off next to her at dinner?

With anecdotes of horse talk, coronation nerves, backstairs gossip, and power struggles behind palace doors, this episode lifts the velvet curtain on one of history’s most enduring double acts — the monarch who never flinched, and the politicians who tried to keep up.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spies & The Crown - Part 2 Oct 05, 2025

Show notes

Royals in taxis, Groucho Marx glasses on ski slopes, and a Soviet mole hiding in the Queen’s drawing room — this episode has it all. Listen Now.

In their second episode of Spies & The Crown, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman go full cloak-and-dagger as they unmask Anthony Blunt — the Queen’s own art adviser turned KGB spy — and dig into the bizarre world of undercover royals.

From Princess Elizabeth sneaking into the VE Day crowds, to Prince Harry insisting he was just “Bob” in a nightclub, history proves the Windsors have never been short on disguises.And then there’s the bombshell: how close did treachery really get to the heart of Buckingham Palace? And could it happen again?

Listen now to Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things — where the palace walls whisper, and the spies are sometimes already inside.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spies & The Crown - Part 1 Sep 28, 2025

Show notes

From the Tudors to King Charles III, the royals have always been close to spies. Listen to find out!

Today’s monarchs get discreet MI5 briefings — but back in Elizabeth I’s day, her spymaster Francis Walsingham was inventing the modern secret service with beer-barrel dead drops, forged letters, and a plot that sent Mary Queen of Scots to the block.

This episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things dives into the wildest tales of royal espionage: Christopher Marlowe, the playwright who may have been a double agent; John Dee, the Queen’s astrologer signing his reports “007”; and Queen Victoria’s Indian confidant Abdul Karim, hounded as a foreign spy by jealous courtiers. Fast forward to World War II and you’ll find Hitler’s agents scheming to kidnap Edward VIII and put him back on the throne as a Nazi puppet.

Plots, paranoia, and velvet cushions hiding sharpened daggers — when royalty meets espionage, the truth is stranger than any Bond film.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can Royals Be Jailed? Sep 21, 2025

Show notes

“Off with his head!” may be the most famous royal sentence ever passed — but what happens before the axe falls? Can kings and queens actually be locked up like the rest of us? Listen to find out!

On today’s episode of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things, Kate Williams and Robert Hardman dig into the murky history of royal captivity — where velvet cushions meet iron bars, and sovereign immunity doesn’t always save the day.

We’ve got Charles I, the would-be master of disguise who chopped off his beard, called himself “Harry,” and still managed to end up wedged in a castle window like Winnie the Pooh after too much honey. We’ve got Mary Queen of Scots, forever scheming her way out of tower rooms and washer-woman costumes, until Elizabeth I finally lost patience. And we’ve got Marie Antoinette, who began her confinement with upholstered chairs and charity visits, but ended it humiliated, stripped of dignity, and walking towards the guillotine while the crowd jeered.

Not all prison stories end with a block and blade. Some are quieter — and crueller. George III was never convicted of treason, never even plotted escape, yet he spent his last years effectively locked up in Windsor, a prisoner of his own mind and his doctors’ brutal “cures.” And in the 20th century, Hitler’s Colditz Castle became a surreal jail for royal hostages — cousins of the Queen turned into bargaining chips in the dying days of the war.

So — can royals be jailed? History’s answer is complicated. Some lost their heads. Some lost their freedom. And some, like poor Princess Alice, were locked away simply for being inconvenient.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trump Royale Sep 14, 2025

Show notes

Trump’s coming to town — welcome to the towers of Windsor Castle. Hope you like ghosts!

Royal biographer Robert Hardman and Prof. Kate Williams whisk us through the protocols of a state visit, Windsor-style: Air Force One → helicopter → the quadrangle, where (yes) the guest correctly walks in front of the monarch for the Guard of Honour. We peek into that turret guest suite with the Long Walk view, the St George’s Hall mega-table laid to the centimetre, and the post-1992 kitchens that keep 130 plates piping hot.

We’ve the gossip: the day the Secret Service gave way and allowed Prince Philip to drive Barack Obama. Kate pits today’s three courses against Tudor 20-dish feasts (whale and dolphin, anyone?), and Robert explains why Windsor beats Buckingham Palace for security — and for dodging protests. We even invent a house cocktail: blood-red, jewel-bright, mildly dastardly.

Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things now drops every Monday — Royal etiquette decoded, history demystified, and just enough hauntings to keep you peeking over your shoulder.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monstrous Royals: Bloody Mary v The Serpent Queen Sep 10, 2025

Show notes

Who was the most monstrous queen — England’s Bloody Mary or France’s Serpent Queen? Listen to find out!

This week on Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things, royal historian Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams pit two formidable women against the seven deadly sins.

Mary I of England, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, fought her way onto the throne and set out to restore Catholicism by fire. Three hundred Protestants met their end at the stake, earning her the chilling epithet “Bloody Mary.” Catherine de Medici, the Italian-born queen of France and mother of three kings, gained her own dark reputation as the “Serpent Queen.” Legend has her inventing high heels, perfecting the poisoned glove, and masterminding the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.

From pearls and palaces to phantom pregnancies and poisoned perfumes, the judges weigh whether these reputations were deserved or distorted — and whether misogyny shaped how history remembers them.

It’s England versus France, pyre versus poison, bonfires versus bechamel. Which queen was the deadlier sinner?

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monstrous Royals: King John v Richard III Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

Who was the most rotten king of all — treacherous John of England or Shakespeare’s wicked Richard III? Listen to find out!

This week on Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things, royal historian Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams drag two of England’s most notorious monarchs into the dock of history.

Armed with the seven deadly sins as their scorecard, they weigh up pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Richard III — the hunchbacked villain of Shakespeare, buried for centuries under a Leicester car park — is accused of dispatching nephews in the Tower and grasping for the throne at any cost. King John, youngest son of Henry II, nicknamed “Lackland” and “Softsword,” loses battles, loses crown jewels, and nearly loses his kingdom through arrogance, greed, and disastrous quarrels with the Pope.

The judges weigh sanctuary ignored at Tewkesbury, excommunications, ill-fated marriages, and even a death by peaches and cider. From Robin Hood cartoons to scoliosis scans, this is royal villainy at its most grotesque — and occasionally absurd.

It’s England v England, Plantagenet v Plantagenet, Shakespearean bogeyman v medieval tax-collector-in-chief. May the worst king win.

And the royal rumble continues: next week it’s Bloody Mary v Catherine de Medici — a deadly contest of queens.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Monstrous Royals: Henry VIII v Louis XIV Aug 27, 2025

Show notes

Who was history’s most monstrous monarch — Henry VIII of England or Louis XIV of France? Listen to find out!

This week on Queens, Kings, and Dastardly Things, royal historian Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams sharpen their quills and their wits.

Armed with the seven deadly sins as a scorecard, they put these two titans of royal misbehaviour through their paces. Pride? Henry struts about in padded sleeves and bans the middle classes from wearing fur. Louis builds Versailles — all 2,300 rooms of it — just so the Sun King can bask in his own reflection. Greed? Henry smashes up the monasteries and pockets the loot; Louis keeps ledgers in his pocket as if they were sweet wrappers. Lust? Both monarchs are formidable contenders — one leaves a trail of wives and mistresses (and the odd execution), the other an entire shadow dynasty of illegitimate children.

From whale meat and beaver tails to an autopsy revealing a stomach three times the normal size, gluttony is not in short supply either. And when it comes to wrath, Henry’s temper ensures that being “close to the king” could mean being close to the executioner.

It’s England versus France, Tudor versus Bourbon, axe versus wig — with laughs, learning, and a dash of horror along the way.

And the royal rumble doesn’t stop here: next week it’s King John v Richard III, followed by Bloody Mary v Catherine de Medici.

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams

Series Producer: Ben Devlin

Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini

Content Editor: Joseph Palmer

Executive Producer: Bella Soames

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.

Sign up to Palace Confidential, the FREE royals newsletter from the Mail's top experts. Delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday, it's the smartest way to stay in the royal inner circle. Just head to dailymail.co.uk/palaceconfidential to sign up today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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