Kings and Queens aren’t always the best of us. Sometimes they’re weak, pathetic, unimpressive or downright evil! Just as history has shown us a range of glorious and exemplary monarchs, it is also full of examples of the kinds of men and women who might have been better suited to obscurity – men and women whose brief chapters in the story of their kingdom is one of great embarrassment or misery. Donald Trump would probably call them “losers”, but we thought they deserved a backward glance in the last episode of the season…
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Reading list:
Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile – Julia Fox, Rosalyn Landor, et al.
Juana I: Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile – Gillian B. Fleming
Foundation: The History of England Volume I (King John) – Peter Ackroyd
Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser
Mary, Queen of Scots: The History and Legacy of Mary Stuart of Scotland – Charles River Editors
The Bad Popes (Pope John XII) – E.R. Chamberlin
Ivan the Terrible: A Life From Beginning to End – Hourly History
The Romanovs: 1613-1918 – Simon Sebag Montefiore
Ivan the Terrible – Robert Payne and Nikita Romanoff
Wikipedia: Mary, Queen of Scots, Ivan the Terrible, King John, Queen Ranavalona, Pope John XII, Joanna of Castile