ON THIS DAY THIS HAPPENED · THE ARTICLE COLLECTION
Royal scandals, forgotten lives and moments that changed everything. Take a little longer with the stories behind them.
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151 articles
4 MIN READ ·
Hungary had no provision for a female ruler. They crowned her King instead. She rode up the coronation hill three months after giving birth, holding herself with such superb military precision that from a distance she looked like a man, and swung a sword at the four corners of the earth.
3 MIN READ ·
She had replaced a seven year old Spanish Infanta and she gave him ten children. When she finally said no more, his mistress sent her flowers.
2 MIN READ ·
The city had been preparing to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Two days later it was mourning her death. On the twenty-fourth of June 1878 the Cardinal Primate came to the Royal Palace of Madrid and anointed the dying Queen of Spain with holy oils. She had been married for five months.
3 MIN READ ·
Her mother wrote within a week of her birth that God had chosen to give her a daughter, contrary to all their wishes. When Napoleon Bonaparte died on Saint Helena in 1821 with one word on his lips. It was not France. It was not glory. It was her name.
3 MIN READ ·
She arrived in England to find her husband's mistress waiting to be installed in her bedchamber. She would bring Bombay and Tangier and two million Portuguese crowns as her dowry. The treaty that decided her life was signed in London on the twenty-third of June 1661. She was in Lisbon at the time. Nobody had asked her.
3 MIN READ ·
It was the day Edward V was supposed to be crowned. "Bastard slips shall not take deep root." That was the sermon text chosen for the twenty-second of June 1483.
3 MIN READ ·
Henry VIII's solution was to give her son to her sister. She had been his mistress. Her husband died of the sweating sickness on the twenty-second of June 1528 and left her destitute with two small children, and that was what Henry was going to do about it.
3 MIN READ ·
The Pope made him a Cardinal to save his life. Henry VIII said he would send the hat to Rome without a head to wear it. On the twenty-second of June 1535 he kept his word.
3 MIN READ ·
Thomas Cromwell wrote the document that called her a bastard. Mary Tudor signed it without reading a word.
3 MIN READ ·
His father had declared his sisters illegitimate. His father's will had restored them. As he lay dying he removed them again. A hundred men signed the document.
2 MIN READ ·
She was expected to defend herself through her lawyers. Instead she walked past them, crossed the room, and knelt at her husband's feet. She spoke. When she finished she stood up and walked out. The crier called her name three times. She did not stop.
2 MIN READ ·
His wife had been watching for weeks. She finally wrote to her ambassador about what she could see. Four days later Henry VIII sent her away.