Trashy Royals - Hemlock Creatives

Latest Episodes:

Introducing: Psychedelic Women May 09, 2025

Show notes

Hey friends, Alicia and Stacie here to tell you about a new show that we're really excited about. Our friend Rainbow Valentine has been collecting the stories of the first generation of women to have access to The Pill, Rock n Roll, and LSD.

In her podcast Psychedelic Women, Rainbow talks to the women who lived and made the counterculture in 1960s San Francisco and, eventually, the world. It's a fascinating, beautifully crafted show featuring real-life stories that'll blow your mind.

Coming up is the trailer for Psychedelic Women, and Episode 1 lands today. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening.

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112. Mary, Queen of Scots | Exile, Imprisonment, Execution May 08, 2025

Show notes

In this final installment of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, we follow Mary's flight from Scotland into England, the domain of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, in 1568. Historians believe that Mary thought - or at least hoped - that her cousin would assist in returning her to the throne in Scotland, but instead, Mary and her retinue would spend a strange decade and a half imprisoned - in some of the finest homes in England. In the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, Bess of Hardwick, Mary gradually became a unifying figure for English Catholics chafing under the rule of a Protestant queen.

A prolific letter writer throughout her time in the custody of Elizabeth, she became enmeshed in the Babington Plot to assassinate her cousin in 1586. She was convicted at trial and sentenced to death; a situation that Elizabeth struggled with. She feared the precedent it set and certainly the impacts on her conscience and her relations with James VI of Scotland, Mary's son and Elizabeth's eventual successor, but in the end, she signed the death warrant of her cousin. Mary, Queen of Scots, one-time Queen of France, and aspirant to the English throne, was executed by beheading on February 8, 1587.

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111. Mary, Queen of Scots | Queen of Scotland, Wife of Darnley, Wife of Bothwell May 01, 2025

Show notes

In this second installment of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, Alicia follows Mary back to Scotland after her tenure as teenaged Queen of France. A young widow, she returned to a Scotland that had gone through the Reformation, making her Catholicism a notable feature.

In 1565, after about four years back at home, she married her half-cousin, the ambitious Lord Darnley, which produced a son the following year. The marriage was troubled, with Darnley openly seeking to become King and not just the Queen's consort, and to succeed Mary should she - and he certainly was not plotting to make this happen, no no - die.

The problem resolved itself in February of 1567, when the home that Darnley was staying in suddenly exploded and his body, and that of one of his servants, was discovered nearby, seemingly untouched. It was speculated that they had been smothered, and suspicion soon fell on James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, a confidant to the Queen and an ambitious climber himself. The whole thing was hugely suspicious, and Mary's reign fully fractured just months later when she married Bothwell.

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110. Mary, Queen of Scots | Her Childhood to Widowed Queen of France Apr 24, 2025

Show notes

This week, we begin our Trashy Royals journey into the life and times of Mary, Queen of Scots. She has been a long time coming as a missing link on our ride of the naughty nobles in her time.

In this episode, we journey from Mary’s birth in 1542, with her becoming Queen of Scotland at the tender age of 6 days old to Mary, three days before her 18th birthday as a widow of the King of France. Her first husband, Francoise II does pass away just as the couple's reign was beginning, leaving Mary with an uncertain future with not much else to do but come on back to the country that is rightfully hers in 1560.

In the middle of Mary's lifepath from 1542 to 1560, there are so many European power plays and plots, trashy uncles on all sides, a girl squad forming, religious strife in all the ways, an evil Mother-in-Law, and a little astrology too. Mary’s story really does contain multitudes. Her story begins here. Get ready for a very trashy ride as this one has everything you adore in a royals romp!

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109. Arbella Stuart | A Tragic Tale of Tudor Times Apr 17, 2025

Show notes

Come with us this week as we take a journey into the Tudor Court with perhaps the most tragic story of the time. Arbella Stuart is our focus this week, and her tale is ever so tragic. It could have been a regular life for this girl, except that she was related to every single person in the royal line-up, and that makes for very dangerous times to be a girl in the 16th century.

So many connected players, so many spiderwebs in this one – buckle up for some Big Royal Energy!

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108. Happy Valley Set: The Life, Loves, and Murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Lord Erroll Apr 10, 2025

Show notes

Good nobles, we have a real treat for you this week as we journey down into Africa - Kenya specifically - to begin the trashy tales of the Happy Valley Set. This group of self-absorbed, wealthy British expatriates is legendary in history for all of the sins that occurred in their heyday, from the 1920s to the 1940s.

Today’s episode serves as a great introduction to this heap of hedonism, as we explore the life, the loves, and the mysterious murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll. After a life of great debauchery, he is found dead at a lonely crossroads near Nairobi on January 24, 1941. There are no lack of suspects in this case, as mostly everyone would like Josslyn more dead than alive. The is an arrest and a trial though of a jealous husband, Sir Jock Delves Broughton. It doesn’t go how you think it might.

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107. Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione | The Too-Much Countess Apr 03, 2025

Show notes

Turns out that selfies aren't really a new phenomenon, and as cameras emerged as a new technology in the 19th century, there was a nearly perfect subject who made the form her own. Meet Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, spy, diplomat, model, courtesan, art director, and one-time mistress of Emperor Napoleon III. It's quite a resume and a heck of a story - a minor noble whose beauty was legendary but whose arrogance and self-importance certainly rubbed the Parisian upper crust the wrong way.

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106. Stanislaw II August, the Last King of Poland Mar 27, 2025

Show notes

As a young man, Stanislaw Poniatowski arrived at the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia, a Polish noble in the service of an English diplomat. An affair commenced with the future Catherine the Great, whose affection (and malign influence in the politics of Russia's neighbor) resulted in Stanislaw being elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania in in 1764.

It was a good news/bad news reign for Stanislaw, who saw his country partitioned not once, not twice, but three times, by the greater powers on his borders. His efforts to modernize and liberalize Poland - including the creation of an American-style constitution in 1791 - were all for naught, as his former lover finally annexed what remained of Poland in 1795. It would be more than a century before Poland re-emerged as a nation, and one which views Stanislaw II August in an understandably mixed way.

Thanks to listener Ray for contributing this banger of a tale.

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105. Persephone and Hades, ft. Alicia King Anderson Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

This week, Alicia invited Alicia King Anderson Ph.D. to talk all things Persephone and Hades, the Queen and King of the Underworld.

We unpack the myth of this royal couple down below. How does a young girl, Kore, complete the transformation into Persephone? Who is Hades and why is he messing with his niece, Kore? How does the whole snatching of the beautiful maiden go down, and what happens in the Underworld?

It's a story with complicated supernatural family ties, a kidnapping, a mother's grief, famine, a marriage, and - big headline - the introduction of seasons into the human world. And this myth was a foundational piece of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which helped initiates of the cult of Demeter and Persephone abandon their fear of death.

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Explore More with Alicia King Anderson

Alicia King Anderson Ph.D.'s website

Join Alicia's Patreon community, Myth and Fairy Tale Nerds Unite!

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104. The Wives of Julius Caesar: Cossutia, Cornelia, Pompeia, and Calpurnia Mar 13, 2025

Show notes

As we roar towards the Ides of March, it just makes sense to spend a little time with Rome's OG, Gaius Julius Caesar. But since it's also Women's History Month, we're taking stock of his life and times through his marriages, both the ones we're sure happened, the one we aren't sure happened - and of course, Cleopatra makes an appearance.

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