Category: Episodes

It didn’t take long for Edwina, young, rich, and alone while her husband Louis was away with the Navy, to begin flirtations and then affairs with various suitors. There were the young men of her social strata, to be sure, but there was also a scandalous rumored fling with the notably female American entertainer Sophie…

While Louis and Edwina Mountbatten would have a 38-year-long marriage, it isn’t quite right to say it was a happy union. That first six months or so though – when they traveled through Europe and the United States, meeting Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, and dining with President Warren G. Harding – was a magical…

As many will already know, it was the youngest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine who would become a prominent figure in the lives of the modern world of the Windsors. Young Louis Battenberg, later Louis Mountbatten, was known as Dickie to his confidants, and was stung…

Prince George of Battenberg, later the 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, was the third child of Louis Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, and was by all accounts a pretty good dude. Like his father, he set his sights on a naval career, and excelled at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth,…

The second child of Prince Louis of Battenberg (later, Louis Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven) and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine was Princess Louise, born July 14, 1889. While most royal were promptly shuttled into marriage, Louise was an independent, progressive young woman whose heart was set on marrying for love. There were…

After Louis Battenberg’s (later Louis Mountbatten) successful campaign to marry Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, the couple set about having babies. The first of these, Princess Alice, was born in 1885, and came into the world congenitally deaf. Given the era, no particular accommodations were made for her, and while her condition caused…

While royal houses are often insular and even incestuous (at least at the cousin-marrying level), new blood does manage to enter those gene pools from time to time. Meet the Mountbattens! The family’s story begins in Russia, circa 1850, where the orphaned daughter of a Polish general named Julia von Hauke was serving in the…

After the Henry the Impotent story a few weeks back, Stacie became curious about some of the other odd nicknames that have been applied to rulers and leaders over the centuries. Today, we take a look at Constantine V, the Dung-Named Emperor, and a former Spanish Prime Minister who became perhaps the most hated man…

The 15th century was a chaotic time the kingdoms that would eventually form modern Spain. Castile, Navarre, and Aragon – as well as Portugal – were constantly jostling for advantage, even though the rulers were generally all related to each other by blood, marriage, or both. For Castile, the last of these weak, bumbling rulers…

After escaping her abusive husband, Hortense spent some time on the lam. She published her memoirs, which made her a celebrated author, and then, at the urging of the English ambassador, headed to London to “see her niece” – and within months, was yet another mistress of Charles II. And soon after, Charles II’s eldest…