Trashy Royals - Hemlock Creatives

Latest Episodes:

56. The William Shakespeare Mystery (Trashy Divorces Crossover) Apr 21, 2024

Show notes

It's a big week for Tortured Poets, so we decided to take a long look at history's most famous one: William Shakespeare himself. Alicia explores the mystery around the true identity of the author of some of the world's most famous pieces of literature. Was it really the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon penning Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and all the sonnets, or was that a convenient pseudonym for someone else, or a group of someone elses?

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55. The Tortured Tudor Poet: The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn Apr 18, 2024

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As Taylor Swift launches her latest era with The Tortured Poets Department, Alicia dives into her favorite era: Tudor England. We explore the 17 surviving love letters that King Henry VIII penned during his courtship and early relationship with Anne Boleyn in the latter half of the 1520s, particularly noting that for quite a long time, it seems like Anne wasn't really that into him.

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54. Elisabeth of Wied, First Queen of Romania, and Literature's Carmen Sylva Apr 11, 2024

Show notes

However much 'protocol' may attempt to intervene, the truth is that eccentricity is a trait that even royals have. This is certainly the case for Elisabeth of Wied, a German princess who became Romania's first queen, wife of Romania's King Carol I.

Politics in Europe were extra complex in the latter half of the 19th century. In Russia, Tsar Alexander II had concluded his father's Crimean War in 1856, but even with the defeat of Russia in the conflict, the Ottoman Empire was in retreat. As Ottoman influence waned, former vassal states, including what would become modern Romania, were shaped by the other great powers and their own internal politics, which led to the unification of several formerly Ottoman principalities into what is now Romania.

And what does a newly independent player on the European stage need? A royal house, of course! And wouldn't you know it - the Germans had so many of those lying around that it was easy pickings to find some stuffy but qualified guy to 'elect' king. King Carol I was both a liberalizing influence on the new nation's politics, as well as personally fastidious and, according to accounts, quite humorless.

Which must have been tough on his wife, Elisabeth, a flamboyant writer with an artist's temperament who is better known by her nom de plum, Carmen Sylva. She was enough of a handful in the Romanian court that her husband once exiled her back to Germany for a couple of years, from which she sent letters to the Romanian Crown Prince's wife, Marie of Edinburgh, that she hoped Marie's forthcoming baby would turn out to be a girl!

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53. King Pedro I of Portugal and Inês de Castro Apr 02, 2024

Show notes

The fourteenth century was full of challenges to marital bliss, especially for nobles. Travel was complicated, especially during times of war, but royal houses still needed to cement alliances through marriage - often among woefully young princes and princesses who, again, were separated by vast distances and perhaps had never met.

So it was for Portugal's young prince Pedro, born 1320. Proxy-married to Constanza Manuel, a Castillian noblewoman, the union was made so Portugal's king, Alfonso IV, could register his disdain for the ruler of Castile, King Alfonso XI. Yes, it's a little confusing. And also, there was a war on in Europe, so it would be five long years before young Constanza could safely make the journey to Portugal to meet her young husband. For Pedro, encountering his bride for the first time was an experience of fireworks and butterflies - because of the presence of her lady-in-waiting, Inês de Castro, a Galician noblewoman with whom he fell madly in love.

This was obviously not an ideal situation for anyone, and while various machinations were tried to end the affair between Pedro and Inês, it was genuinely true love, with an extremely tragic and violent eventual outcome that lives on as a story of deep cultural resonance in Portugal to this day.

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52. Caroline of Brunswick, featuring Sam from I'm Horrified! Mar 28, 2024

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We touched on England's King George IV in our episode about Queen Victoria's Trashy Hanoverian Uncles (episode 17), but there's so much more to the story of his misspent youth and his cataclysmic marriage to Princess Caroline of Brunswick. To help out, we asked our friend Sam from the podcast I'm Horrified!, who recently delivered this banger of a story over there.

The daughter of King George III's eldest sister, Caroline was raised in the German duchy of Braunschweig, or Brunswick in English. Her family situation was fraught; while her parents remained married throughout their lives, her father's undisguised and longstanding mistress made for difficult family dynamics, where a kind interaction with one parent led to rebuke and allegations of disloyalty from the other.

Upon meeting her soon-to-be new husband, Crown Prince George of England, the antipathy was mutual. Not only was George already illegally married, he also openly brought his mistress (to be clear, these are two separate women) to their introductory dinner. That would set the stage for the rest of Caroline's life.

They managed to have one child, Princess Charlotte, but quickly agreed to live separate lives at separate residences due to their mutual disdain. George seems to have spent a good amount of time trying to dirty his estranged wife's reputation, but she was quite popular with the public, especially balanced against his poor reputation as a drunkard and wastrel. Propaganda campaigns were waged against one another in the press and in Parliament, and as King George III's health deteriorated and Crown Prince George's power grew, Caroline left the country.

Her travels across Europe and the Holy Lands with a handsome Italian servant set tongues wagging everywhere, but when George III died in January 1820, Caroline realized that she had to return to England if she had any hope of blunting her husband's power - he was king now, and she was queen - and asserting any of her own. But it didn't go that way; George's mission with his new throne was to exclude his wife from everything and try to formally strip of her titles. Because of his own rampant infidelity, divorce was out of the question, but perhaps poisoning wasn't?

Thanks so much to Sam for sharing this banger of a story. Listen to new episodes of I'm Horrified! every Tuesday!

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51. Two King Frederiks of Denmark (Frederik VII and Frederik X) Mar 21, 2024

Show notes

This week, we take a look at a different European monarchy, that of Denmark, through two King Frederiks of Denmark. Frederik VII held the throne from 1848 to 1863, and was the last absolute monarch of the country, bowing to calls for reforms and signing Denmark's constitution, which implemented the constitutional monarchy that persists to this day. He was also a terrible husband, was divorced by two wives, and appears to have been part of a throuple with his third wife and their male lover for the last decade or so of his life. He died without legitimate heir, leading to a succession crisis and the reign of Christian IX, who became known as "the father-in-law of Europe."

Then we fast forward to this very year, when Christian IX's fifth-generation descendant - and Queen Victoria's, too - became King Frederik X of Denmark, succeeding his mother Queen Margrethe II after her surprise abdication. A one-time Playboy Prince, Frederik has matured into a down-to-earth leader with strong military credentials and a passion for the outdoors, but his recent history is not without a hint of scandal. Cheating rumors swirled last fall, a situation that seemed to deeply pain his wife, the Australian-born Mary Donaldson, who has since become the first Australian to become a European queen. Was the abdication an attempt to save Frederik and Mary's marriage?

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50. Louis and Edwina Mountbatten | Dickie Solo Mar 14, 2024

Show notes

After the death of Edwina Mountbatten in 1960, Dickie still had another 19 years of living to do, and while he was single, he was in no way alone. He had romances with plenty of women in his later years, and according to many, he had male lovers - including, it is alleged, boys - as well.

A mentor to Prince Charles, his advice to the young man may have contributed to what turned into the tragic marriage, divorce, and untimely death of Princess Diana, who was exactly the sort of woman that Dickie encouraged the playboy prince to settle down with. The men remained close through the end of Dickie's life, and Charles delivered the eulogy at both of Dickie's services in 1979.

Dickie was clearly a charming older man who counted Shirley MacClaine, Barbara Cartland, Christina Ford, and Sacha Hamilton, Duchess of Abercorn, who was also his god daughter, among his paramours. Let's say it was all pretty complicated, but that would only be keeping with rest of his and Edwina's history.

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49. Louis and Edwina Mountbatten | Comrades in Arms Mar 07, 2024

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As Edwina took pains to lay low in Malta after the scandals of her affairs, Italy decided to exit the League of Nations and invade Ethiopia. To protect their children, she took them to Budapest and installed them in a hotel with their nanny and governess... and then forgot which hotel they were in. For months. As the summer of 1935 turned to fall, and then winter, they just stayed in their hotel until Edwina finally came across the paper she'd written the hotel's name on, tucked into the pocket of an outfit she hadn't worn in a while. Careless people.

But then World War II came, and with so much asked of ordinary Britons, the privileged were required to step up. For perhaps the first time in her life, the skills and networking that Edwina had spent her life developing could suddenly be applied to a grand purpose: fundraising, organizing, lobbying for help in the United States. Louis was in the fight as a Naval officer, but Edwina was equally engaged, and the experience brought them together as never before.

They would have further adventures together in India, overseeing the end of the Colonial period there, and form a distinct attachment to Indian Prime Minister Nehru that would last to the end of her life in 1960.

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48. Louis and Edwina Mountbatten | Careless People Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

Programming note: This episode is a bit more explicit than most, including strong language and descriptions of sex. If you listen with wee ones, use your judgment.

The early '30s were a roaring time for Edwina's various romances, though two in particular would have far-reaching implications for her lovers. The first, with American actor Paul Robeson, caused scandal in the London tabloids because Robeson was Black. The Royal Family considered the situation dire enough that they demanded that Louis and Edwina sue the tabloid that wrote it about for libel, and saw to it that the court would handle the case... carefully. An early morning hearing, of which no notice was given to anyone but the Mountbattens, resulted in a quick ruling in Edwina's favor, though the couple notably did not ask for damages. Paul Robeson himself was apparently quite wounded by the whole incident, having been close to Edwina and left to deal with the fallout on his own.

The second notable affair was with Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson, a Grenada-born musician whom Edwina had met in New York City. She encouraged him to bring his talents to England, where he became a bona fide star of the 1920s and '30s, entertaining royals and society patrons, and his work gained national prominence with frequent airings on the BBC. During his dalliance with Edwina, there are rumors that the two became "stuck" in flagrante delicto, requiring transportation by ambulance in the pose that was causing them troubles.

Louis was outraged especially by Edwina's affair with Hutch, and as the scandal grew, Hutch found that his royal and society patrons had abandoned him. In spite of his celebrity, the Mountbattens appear to have had a role in his near erasure from history. It's all reminiscent of Fitzgerald's line in Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

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47. Louis and Edwina Mountbatten | Unconventional Marriage Feb 22, 2024

Show notes

As the Roaring '20s turned into the '30s, Edwina's appetite for other lovers showed no sign of diminishing, and eventually led to a breaking point with her long-suffering husband, Louis. At one point, they decided that divorce was the best option, but quickly reconciled with new rules for their relationship: Edwina would be more discreet in her dalliances, which had previously been headline news, and Louis would be free to take lovers of his own. But a funny thing happened when he finally did - Edwina was jealous!

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