Trashy Royals - Hemlock Creatives

Latest Episodes:

172. Charles II Restored | 1660-1662, Featuring Barbara Villiers Palmer and Catherine of Braganza Feb 19, 2026

Show notes

Welcome to the Restoration! Charles has officially made it to his King Era, coming on back to England to claim his crown, with his latest mistress at this side. Her name is Barbara Villiers Palmer, and the court is about to get very steamy indeed. Barbara, a married lady, will create quite a stir at court, and just continue to stir that noble pot. Intersecting into this time period is a newly acquired cuckquean wife, Catherine of Braganza. It is only just a couple of years we explore in this naughty ride, but these years are action-packed with so much trash at the court.

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171. Caroline of Brunswick | Rebel of the Regency with Vulgar History's Ann Foster Feb 11, 2026

Show notes

In this special trashy crossover episode, Vulgar History’s Ann Foster joins Alicia to talk about her new book, Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Queen Without a Crown. Caroline’s life was pretty incredible and she should be remembered much more in history. This one has everything – a plucky heroine and a trashy king, marital misadventure, affairs, fashion, riots, scandal and everything else there is to love about the Regency Period.

Learn more about Ann at her website!

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170. Charles II in Exile | Jane Roberts, Elizabeth Killigrew, and Catherine Pegge Feb 05, 2026

Show notes

This week, we follow Charles II across Europe with 3 more ladies and 3 more babies - all before he finds himself back on the throne of his kingdom!

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169. Frances Howard and The Murder of Thomas Overbury Feb 01, 2026

Show notes

In this wild Trashy Divorces crossover episode, Stacie takes us back to the court of King James I of England, where a young noblewoman, Frances Howard, was desperate to escape her arranged marriage to marry another - and found her paramour's best friend to be a highly problematic obstacle. What to do, what to do?

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168. Charles II in Exile | Lucy Walter Jan 29, 2026

Show notes

As the English Civil War ground on and the tides began to turn against the Royalist forces, Charles II decamped to Europe for his own safety. His mother was in Paris, but he also spent a lot of time in The Hague, where his sister Mary was the wife of William II, Prince of Orange.

Charles, then still just the Prince of Wales, met a Welsh lass there named Lucy Walter. Lucy had skipped out on the UK to get away from her parents, whose ugly divorce had risen to high scandal, and was hoping to find her fortune - via a husband or lover - in the English Court-in-exile.

In May of 1648, Lucy met Charles, and a relatively brief romance transpired, but one that produced Prince Charles's first child. Happily, Charles eagerly acknowledged his son, who would go on to become the Duke of Monmouth. Less happily, agents of English dictator Oliver Cromwell kidnapped the boy for 10 days, and years later, long after the romance was over, his own father would successfully kidnap him to hide him from Cromwell and other dangers.

Sadly, Lucy died some time in 1658, and never saw her old flame on the English throne, or her son as a Duke.

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167. Charles II | His Merry Beginnings Jan 22, 2026

Show notes

History includes a lot of highs and lows, but England's Interregnum period was a particularly low low. King Charles I had been defeated in the English Civil War and was tried and beheaded in January 1649. For the next eleven years, various flavors of religious extremists, mostly under the sway of Oliver Cromwell, governed the realm (badly).

Cromwell died in 1658 and his successor, his son Richard, proved a more miserable leader than even his predecessors, which led to the restoration of the monarchy and Charles II strolling into an eager London on his 30th birthday. By then, his reputation as a ladies' man was already well established, and for a grateful nation, it was time to let the good times roll once again.

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166. Princess Haya of Jordan, Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, and The #FreeLatifa Movement Jan 15, 2026

Show notes

Stacie has the gobsmacking escape of Princess Haya of Jordan, whose decade and a half of marriage to Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was heading south by the time he became embroiled in yet another scandal for kidnapping one of his 26 children. Again.

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165. Dido of Carthage Jan 08, 2026

Show notes

The city-state of Carthage, on the coast of modern Tunisia, was the product of a flight from tyranny. Dissidents from Tyre fled by ship and ended up building something enduring - for seven centuries, anyway. Slightly older than the city of Rome, Carthage's wealth came from a broad trade network that encompassed the entire Mediterranean Sea.

But as the Roman Republic's fortunes rose, conflict with their southern neighbor seemed to become irresistible, setting off a series of wars that would end in the total destruction of Carthage, its culture, and its people. But Rome's victory, apparently, wasn't quite enough. It turns out that Rome's first emperor also wanted to capture and transform the story of Carthage's founder, Dido, an early act of propaganda intended to knit together the nascent Roman Empire.

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164. Zenobia and the Palmyrene Empire Dec 18, 2025

Show notes

Between the years 235 and 280 AD, the Roman Empire was a basket case. Emperors were dropping like flies, succession fights were common, pretenders routinely declared themselves Emperor, and whole regions broke away. It was not the most prestigious period for Rome.

In Roman-controlled Syria, a fully Romanized city-state called Palmyra had become a wealthy and prosperous destination on various trade routes, as well as the last bulwark on the eastern frontier between Rome and the Persian Empire. As the Roman crack-up proceeded, the city appointed its first-ever king, Odaenathus, who ruled alongside his wife, Zenobia. When Odaenathus was assassinated in 267 - we don't know by whom - Zenobia took the reins of Palmyra and led it through an audacious territorial expansion, until Palmyra controlled basically all of the Eastern Empire, including Egypt.

And then, as more Emperors bumbled through the halls of power in distant Rome, Zenobia gave up on them entirely and declared herself Empress of Rome, and her domain, the Palmyrene Empire, the equal of Rome itself.

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163. The Dowager Lady Glenconner, Anne Tennant | The Merry Widow, Part Two Dec 11, 2025

Show notes

Today is second part of the incredible story of Lady Anne Glenconner. This episode is full of the stories and spiderwebs of Anne's third act, having incredible success with her memoirs. So many people show up in this one - with stories and a little tea-spilling too - including Princess Margaret, Lord Snowden, King Charles III, Queen Consort Camilla, Mel B., Mick Jagger, and even Graham Norton too.

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