Royally Screwed Up / Real Life

Every monarchy has something. Arranged (roughly) by country. Note that some of the countries mentioned here no longer exist, so it's best to put them under the heading of the country they're now part of. For examples specific to Chinese history see here.

Africa

• Ibn Khaldun, in talking about North African bedouins, made the observation that basically every monarchy is doomed to go through this, especially when they engage in conquest. The first generation is tribal and not quite civilised, but also tough and a natural leader. The second generation can see what made the first great, but growing up in a castle lacks a little perspective. The third generation goes soft, and subsequent generations get softer and softer until someone else sees an opportunity for conquest and takes over. He had the experience of being close enough to the Islamic dynasties of Spain, which were an excellent example of this paradigm, but it's a startlingly appropriate observation — practically every great dynasty was essentially started by a rough hick whose descendants became more and more educated.

Egypt

• Ancient Egyptian pharaohs made something of a habit of marrying their eldest sisters, to the extent that archaeologists thought for a while that the claim to the throne passed through the oldest daughter of the late king (keeping male primogeniture would thus have required marrying your sister). The current theory is that it was in fact male-line inheritance and many of these marriages were symbolic, meant to prevent princesses from marrying other men and establishing cadet branches of the royal family. But not all of them were — the Egyptians really wanted to preserve the bloodline and had a general distaste for putting non-Egyptians and insufficiently highborn Egyptians in the line of succession.
  • The canonical example of this is the Eighteenth Dynasty (1543–1292 BC), which ruled at the height of the New Kingdom.
    • Both Thutmose II and Thutmose IV had serious health problems from being the offspring of siblings. However, while both officially married their own sisters,^note Which in the case of Thutmose II was Hatshepsut, his half-sister. Her famous decision to take the throne for herself was mostly made possible by her marriage to the old king while being descended from another king (Ahmose I) in the female line, all the while her late husband's oldest son and male heir was just a toddler. they had no children (or at least no surviving children) from these unions; their sons and heirs (Thutmose III for Thutmose II, Amenhotep III for Thutmose IV) were both born of lesser consorts—still highborn, but not royal. In the case of Amenhotep III, his mother may have been an Egyptianized Nubian (or of Egyptianized Nubian ancestry); certainly, the statues of Amenhotep III^note Of which more survive than of literally any other ancient Egyptian monarch have stronger sub-Saharan African features than most other royal Ancient Egyptian images. Since these two kings were at the time and still are widely regarded as the greatest monarchs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (and are regarded as being in the Top 10 if not Top 5 ancient Egyptian rulers full stop), the Egyptians clearly didn't see this as that big an issue.
    • Tutankhamun, the last Eighteenth Dynasty king of the blood of Ahmose I, was revealed to be a petri dish of diseases, including the very rare Köhler disease II, which likely factored into his death. He was also said to have large front incisors, a trait passed down from the Eighteenth Dynasty royal family. He also had a cleft palate, which would've given him a speech impediment and caused difficulty feeding as an infant. Skeletal deformities afflicted the two stillborn fetuses, identified as his daughters, which were entombed with Tut as well. On the other hand, Tutankhamun gives every impression of actually having been a fairly active young monarch (albeit one with a limp): the chariots and throwing sticks^note Throwing sticks were a bit like non-returning boomerangs, used to flush game birds out of vegetation so one could shoot them with arrows with which he was buried clearly saw actual use (at least, the ones that weren't clearly ceremonial), and the armor found in his tomb, which would have fit his body, bears the distinctive marks of actual battle. It seems that whatever illnesses Tutankhamun suffered, they weren't enough to keep him from the traditional pharaoh's role as a hunter and warrior. Modern consensus is that his diseases did not kill him directly; rather, he died after breaking his good leg in a chariot accident, which caused an infection, and that infection (exacerbated by chronic malaria—which wasn't exactly uncommon in Egypt back then) is what killed him so young.
  • The Ptolemaic dynasty (which was ethnically Greek but very quickly assimilated to pharaonic tradition) in particular had a Möbius family tree, which showed in some of the later Ptolemies, Berenices, and Cleopatras^note Cleopatra VII, the one everyone remembers, was considered unusually charming and savvy by her family's standards, which had raised the odd eyebrow for centuries — genetic lottery win, a more distant Ptolemy than advertised, or an outside contractor entirely?. Some archaeologists and historians believe that the inbreeding was so severe that the Ptolemaic royal family was medically worse than the Habsburgs, with descriptions of obesity, swollen necks, proptosis (bulging eyes)^note These three sound like symptoms of some genetic predisposition towards thyroid disorders, and a recessive trait remarkably similar to the "Habsburg jaw". They were also morally screwed up in several ways:
    • Ptolemy VIII murdered his nephew to gain the throne, married the mother of that nephew, had an affair with his stepdaughter, and killed his son when the same mother proclaimed him the new Pharaoh. He was described by one Roman writer as having an unattractive face and a belly more like an "animal" than a man.
    • Ptolemy XI was forced to marry his stepmother and half-sister (also possibly his biological mother) and murdered her nineteen days later after the marriage.

Uganda

• Mwanga II of Buganda was furious when the male members of his harem converted to Protestantism and Catholicism and promptly refused to have sex with him. In 1886 he ordered all converts in his court to either renounce their new religion or die. At least thirty chose to die, and Mwanga had at least twenty-two of them burnt alive.

East Asia outside China

Japan

• Yoshihito, known as Emperor Taisho, was known for his bizarre behaviour in his later years, likely due to a combination of historic inbreeding and a bout of meningitis he suffered when he was weeks old and probably left him brain-damaged. During a parade, he reportedly hopped off the royal float and hugged a random trumpet player in the accompanying band, and also behaved rather weirdly during the inauguration of the Japanese Parliament in 1913. As a result, he was kept out of view of the public as much as possible.
• Over a thousand years earlier Emperor Yōzei was even more screwed up. His actions include feeding live frogs to snakes, chasing people while wielding a sword, and murdering one of his servants. In 884 his advisors decided to dethrone him. That didn't stop his insanity; during his cousin's reign, he started murdering women and trampling people with his horse.

Korea

• The House of Wang practiced various forms of Royal Inbreeding. Brother–Sister Incest was the most common, but they also had Kissing Cousins and aunt/nephew and uncle/niece incest. Take for example King Gyeongjong. He was the result of a brother-sister marriage, and of his five recorded wives, only one of them wasn't related to him. His other wives were:
  • Queen Heonui, his first cousin, whose parents were half-siblings.
  • Queen Heonae, also his first cousin, whose parents were also half-siblings. (A different set of half-siblings to Heonui's parents. Yes, all of Gyeongjong's uncles and aunts married each other.) Gyeongjong had a child with her, and the poor kid had only one great-grandfather. (Normal, non-inbred people have four.) Amazingly the child appears to have been healthy. This is probably because the Brother–Sister Incest was between half-siblings rather than full siblings, and some genetic diversity got into the royal family through their different mothers. Still a terrible idea, though.
  • Queen Heonjeong, another first cousin and Heonae's sister. After Gyeongjong's death, Heonjeong had a child with her uncle.
  • Lady Daemyeong, another first cousin whose parents were also half-siblings.
• King Hyeonjong had the brilliant idea of marrying three sisters (among many other women, including his cousin). That's not really unusual in a polygamous society. What is unusual is what followed: when his children were old enough for marriage he decided to marry them to each other. And because of the aforementioned marrying-sisters thing, the children were both half-siblings and cousins.
• King Chunghye of Goryeo was infamous for his habit of abducting, raping, and murdering women. This made him very unpopular with everyone and ultimately caused his downfall. He raped at least two of his late father's concubines. One of them, Bayankhutag, was a Yuan noblewoman. After Chunghye raped her, the Yuan emissary arrested Chunghye and dragged him to Beijing, where he spent the rest of his life as a prisoner.
• King Gongmin, Chunghye's half-brother, was every bit as screwed up. He came to the throne by having Chunghye's fourteen-year-old son deposed and poisoned. During his reign, he raped five underage boys (that we know of). He finally died after he discovered one of his concubines was having an affair with another man; afraid of being executed, the concubine's lover murdered Gongmin in his sleep.
• Yeonsan-gun of Joseon had the dubious honour of being the worst tyrant in all of Korean history before North Korea became a thing. When he first took the throne, he seemed competent and mentally stable, but that quickly changed. Yeonsan had an obsession with restoring his late mother's reputation, which led him to launch two purges of the scholars who were even tenuously connected (if at all) to his mother's deposition and execution. He went as far as to punish officials who weren't in the palace when his mother died, on the grounds that they did nothing to stop it. Two of his father's concubines considered most responsible for his mother's execution were beaten to death. He fatally injured his grandmother during an argument and murdered an official who confronted him about his behaviour. In his later years, he drove people from their houses to build his hunting grounds, exiled a minister for spilling a drink, kidnapped a thousand women, and turned a former university into his personal brothel. His people finally had enough, staged a coup, and overthrew him. It's no coincidence that even though he reigned as king, he's remembered only as "Prince Yeonsan" (the literal translation of "Yeonsan-gun") and not as "King Yeonsan" (which would be "Yeonsan-wang").
• King Yeongjo and his son Crown Prince Sado had a difficult relationship, to say the least — Yeongjo was never happy with anything Sado did and went out of his way to publicly humiliate him. He was neurotically superstitious, forbidding The Unfavorite children from living with or even using the same roads as the ones he liked, but functional. Sado, for his part, was already mentally ill, suffering from hallucinations and a bizarre phobia of clothes. Over time, his mental state deteriorated, and he became violent. In 1757, he beheaded a eunuch and carried the severed head around with him. He started killing palace servants, raped ladies-in-waiting, was abusive toward his wife, threatened to kill his sister, and beat his concubine to death. In 1762, Yeongjo dealt with Sado by ordering him to climb into a rice chest, locking him inside, and leaving him to starve to death.
• King Dae Won-ui of Balhae ^note a Korean kingdom covering parts of modern China, North Korea, and Russia was assassinated by his ministers shortly after he took the throne — apparently because he was violent, though no information survives on exactly what he did.
• Injo of Joseon had a violent disagreement with his son Crown Prince Sohyeon. Sohyeon had spent years as a Political Hostage in China, and while there he encountered Europeans who introduced him to Catholicism and European science. He brought those ideas back to Korea, and his father disapproved. Shortly after returning to Korea Sohyeon was found dead of head injuries in his father's room. His death was never explained, but legend says Injo killed him by hitting him with an ink slab. Sohyeon's wife attempted to investigate but was framed for treason and executed on Injo's orders.
• Taejong of Joseon killed two of his brothers and all of his wife's brothers. Taejong's oldest son, Grand Prince Yangnyeong, got into trouble for having an affair with his uncle's concubine. Two years later he started an affair with another married woman and secretly brought her into the palace. This was discovered when she got pregnant, causing a scandal and forcing Yangnyeong to step down as crown prince.
• Yangnyeong's illegitimate daughter Yi Gu-ji married a slave after her first husband's death. A law had been passed forbidding widows from remarrying. The ensuing scandal resulted in her and her second husband being executed, and she was removed from the family tree, and her name was made taboo for the next four hundred years.
• North Korea officially doesn't have a monarchy, but for all intents and purposes, they are run by the Kim dynasty, which is a pretty damn messed up family. In accordance with their country's insane propaganda, all three Kims are portrayed as gods among men, who at various times are said to have magic powers, never urinate or defecate, have invented the hamburger, and have shot a perfect golf game. Their foreign policy amounts to extreme isolationism and desperate attempts to develop nuclear weapons to keep all the "enemies" at bay. And their fickleness certainly matches the extremes:
  • Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il both are known to have had children by multiple women. Il-sung at least has the excuse that his first wife died during World War II fighting the Japanese, but Jong-il was known to be a playboy who got into relationships his father disapproved. He was widely suspected of having sex slaves and could essentially summon any woman who caught his eye. One of those women, the mother of current leader Kim Jong-un, was born in Japan and was part-Japanese, a fact which is a state secret in North Korea because of how much they particularly hate the Japanese.
  • Kim Jong-il's succession wasn't entirely clear-cut. His original pick was his oldest son Kim Jong-nam, but Jong-nam turned out to be a bit more of a bleeding heart than Jong-il liked, and he eventually fell out of favour with his father in 2000 when he was caught using a fake passport to enter Japan so he could go to Tokyo Disneyland. Jong-nam eventually went into effective exile in Macau, while the succession filtered to Kim Jong-un, at that time a teenager who was a complete unknown. When Jong-il died in 2011, Jong-un became the leader and made a name for himself by assassinating everyone he perceived as a threat (including his own uncle, by some reports with an anti-aircraft gun), and in 2017 he had his own half-brother Jong-nam assassinated in broad daylight at the airport in Kuala Lumpur using VX nerve agent. Communism may have eliminated royalty, but it does nothing to court intrigues.

South-East Asia

Thailand:

• Before the twentieth century the Chakri dynasty was right up there with the Pharaohs for the title of "most in-bred royal family". Not only were they polygamists, they practiced Brother–Sister Incest. The first king, Rama I, had thirty-two consorts (it's unknown how many were his sisters or cousins) and forty-two children. That's a Tangled Family Tree all on its own, but it just got worse from then on.
• Amarindra/Amarinthra, Rama I's wife, was furious when her husband paid more attention to his concubine Khamwaen than to her. So she beat Khamwaen with a wooden stick. Rama I threatened to murder Amarindra for this, forcing her to flee for her life.
• Rama II married fifty-three women, including his cousin and at least one of his half-sisters, and had seventy-three children. Three of his sons became kings after him. Rama III had forty-two consorts and fifty-one children but didn't choose any of his children to be successors. So when he died the throne went to his half-brother Rama IV (better-known as Mongkut; yes, the King in The King and I), who chose another half-brother, Pinklao, to be vice-king. Pinklao had fifty-eight children to an unknown number of consorts. Mongkut outdid him and all of his other relatives: he had sixty-one consorts, including three of his great-nieces, and eighty-two children.
• Rama V (better known as Chulalongkorn) had ninety-two consorts, including five of his half-sisters and three cousins, and seventy-six children.
• Things became slightly saner when Vajiravudh took the throne as Rama VI. He only had four consorts, three of whom were his cousins, and only one child. Prajadhipok, AKA Rama VII, was the first monarch in the dynasty who wasn't a polygamist. His only wife was also his cousin, and they had no children — probably a good thing considering the amount of incest in their family tree. After that, the Thai royals stopped marrying such close relatives. Unfortunately, some of them became screwed-up in other ways; Rama VIII died under very suspicious circumstances, in what looked like a murder clumsily disguised as a suicide. And Vajiralongkorn, the currently reigning king, is notorious for being the most unpopular king Thailand has ever had. Among other things he has a history of marrying women then divorcing them acrimoniously, and in the 1990s he abducted his own daughter after her mother took her to live in Britain.

Laos:

• Nang Keo Phimpha — an epithet meaning "The Cruel"; her real name has been lost to history — spent ten years ruling Lan Xang through a series of Puppet Kings who she murdered. Out of seven kings who ruled under her, all of them were assassinated and none ruled longer than three years. After the seventh king's death, she decided to rule the country herself. A few months later she was overthrown and executed at the age of ninety-five.
• Lan Xang faced a Succession Crisis in the late 17th century. King Sourigna Vongsa/Suliyavongsa had two sons, but one of them was executed for adultery and the other was caught having an affair with his half-sister and fled to avoid being executed too. When Sourigna Vongsa died a nobleman seized the throne. He was deposed a year later by Sourigna Vongsa's cousin, who in turn was overthrown and executed by Sourigna Vongsa's nephew Setthathirath II.
• Prince Souphanouvong became a communist and in 1975 he led a coup against King Sisavang Vatthana. The king, queen, crown prince, and the king's brothers were imprisoned in a camp where they disappeared, presumed murdered.

Vietnam:

• Prince Mỹ Đường of the Nguyễn dynasty was accused of sleeping with his mother. As a result, he was banished and his mother was imprisoned for the rest of her life. The accusation was probably a lie; the emperor at the time, Minh Mạng, was Mỹ Đường's uncle, some people thought that Mỹ Đường had a better right to the throne than Minh Mạng, and the scandal guaranteed that Mỹ Đường would never become emperor.

Southern Asia

Nepal

• The country doesn't have a monarchy anymore because of this. The Nepalese monarchy had lasted 240 years when in 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra went Ax-Crazy, gunned down most of his relatives — including his parents the king and queen — and then shot himself. By law, Dipendra was crowned Nepal's new king, despite being comatose and accused of multiple murders. Dipendra quickly succumbed to his injuries, and his uncle Gyanendra was crowned king, despite being widely suspected of having orchestrated the massacre — so whether it was Dipendra or Gyanendra, Nepal made at least one mass murderer its king. Gyanendra went on to become particularly authoritarian and tried to abolish the Parliament, which so pissed off the Nepalese people that they abolished the monarchy and established a republic (making peace with the Maoist rebels to do so).

India

• Tukojirao Holkar III of Indore had a concubine named Mumtaz who wanted to escape his harem. So she fled to Bombay and took shelter with a man named Bawla. Holkar's men tracked her down, murdered Bawla, and tried to abduct Mumtaz. She testified against Holkar in court, and he was forced to abdicate because of the ensuing scandal.

West Asia

Israel

• Some Biblical scholars believe that King Saul may have been schizophrenic. He shows a jealous obsession with his eventual successor King David and tries to kill him several times, and he throws a spear at his own son Jonathan for merely asking why his best friend David had to die (1 Samuel 20:30). The text also suggests that he had severe migraine headaches, which can cause memory loss and very irrational behaviour — it especially dovetails nicely with the idea that his doctors prescribed music to help him relax (1 Samuel 16:23), which is why David was brought there, and ancient Israel would have seen the headaches as a sign of their king's prophetic power rather than a medical condition.

Turkey

• The Ottoman Empire was known for this not because of genetics, but rather because of their upbringing. It started with Sultan Ahmed I, who decided to protect his heir, his younger brother Mustafa, from potential threats to his ascension — by locking him in a corner of his palace. This took an enormous toll on the young prince, who by the time of Ahmed's death was a psychological wreck with severe neurosis and hallucinations. He lasted barely a year before the courtiers locked him up again (only to bring him out a second time, again lasting barely a year). He was succeeded by Ahmed's sons, who were barely saner, heavily paranoid Mood Swingers. Ahmed's first son Osman was a Royal Brat who used courtiers for target practice with his longbow. His second son Murad was a choleric Knight Templar who had almost all of his viziers executed and imprisoned a lot of Istanbul's population for trivial offences like drinking coffee. His last son Ibrahim was straight-up nicknamed "the mad", not for being Ax-Crazy but for how many women he impregnated (which was better than the alternative, because Murad had no children and slaughtered almost all of his half-brothers during his reign). Most historians today consider this one of the main reasons for the gradual collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
• Another grisly Ottoman practice: abducting (mostly) Eastern European women and keeping them as Sex Slaves. They actually hired the armies of neighbouring countries to carry out these abductions. Of the thirty-six official Ottoman sultans, more than twenty of them had non-Turkish mothers. These women were kidnapped, forced to convert, and spent the next twenty years or more in the imperial harem. If they were lucky their son would become Sultan and they would be able to influence him. If they were unlucky their sons would be murdered by whichever stepson managed to get the throne.
  • One of the most famous victims of this practice was Roxelana, renamed Hürrem. She was born in Ruthenia (now Ukraine) and kidnapped as a teenager. Suleiman's mother chose Roxelana as a gift for her son, and she became first Suleiman's favourite concubine and then his official wife.
• The Empire of Trebizond was notable for a high turnover rate among its emperors. Between 1330 and 1349, it had seven emperors (or five emperors and two empresses), and only two of them stayed on the throne for more than two years:
  • Andronikos III had three brothers, and his first action upon becoming emperor was to kill two of them. The third, the future Emperor Basil, fled to Constantinople. Andronikos was succeeded by his eight-year-old son Manuel II, but the people of Trebizond decided Basil would be a better ruler and invited him to return from Constantinople.
  • At first Basil had Manuel imprisoned in a monastery. But one of Manuel's supporters attempted a coup, and Manuel was executed as a result. This and later events proved the empire might have been better off if they hadn't invited Basil back; he was unable to restore order among the nobility and had to hire foreign mercenaries as bodyguards. In the end, he was poisoned by his wife Irene Palaiologina.
  • Irene took the throne herself, and a civil war promptly erupted between her supporters and everyone else. She was deposed and replaced with her sister-in-law, Anna Anachoutlou. Anna's uncle Michael also claimed the throne. He arrived in Trebizond and the nobles pretended to welcome him, then murdered his retinue and took him prisoner. He was exiled, and Irene was sent back to Constantinople.
  • Anna ruled for only a year. Her economic policies angered her supporters, so she was overthrown and strangled. She was replaced by Michael's son John III, who immediately purged Anna's remaining supporters.
  • John III proved to be weak and selfish, more interested in entertainment than ruling the country. He also did nothing to help his father, who was still a prisoner in Limnia. Niketas, one of Michael's supporters, marched on Limnia, freed Michael, then marched back to Trebizond to depose John. Michael took the throne and John was sent to a monastery.
  • Michael repaid Niketas by arresting and imprisoning him, apparently because he thought he might be a threat. When Niketas was freed he deposed Michael and imprisoned him in a monastery.

Saudi Arabia

• The country is run by the House of Saud. It's one of the few countries named after a guy, said guy being Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. Every king of Saudi Arabia since then has been one of Abdul Aziz's many many sons, reflecting the country's peculiar succession laws that more or less require going through all the sons before going to the grandsons. The last few kings have all been increasingly aging and haven't lasted that long, which is why they agreed in 2017 on one of Abdul Aziz's grandsons, Mohammad bin Salman (popularly known as "MBS"), to be the new heir. The Saudi monarchy has had a reputation for being startlingly backward and promoting religious extremism — the country was long known for its frequent public executions for trivial offenses, its mutaween or religious police, and its bizarre religious prohibitions — women famously weren't allowed to drive. All of Abdul Aziz's sons had their own levels of extremism, leading to factionalism among them — for instance, in 1975, King Faisal was assassinated by his own half-nephew (ostensibly for being too progressive — this four years before a group of extremists invaded the Grand Mosque itself seeking to overthrow the House of Saud for still being too progressive). MBS, for his part, was widely lauded as the young, progressive world leader who would bring Saudi Arabia into the 21st century — he championed legislation that allowed women to drive, for instance. But then he turned around and arrested and tortured most of his rivals in an "anti-corruption" campaign^note They were all probably guilty as hell — the boundaries between "state assets" and "royal family's personal bank account" are pretty blurry — but MBS was clearly being selective in whom he chose to pursue, imprisoned women's rights activists, engaged in an ethnic cleansing campaign in Yemen, and was likely responsible for the gruesome murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, so it's likely he's not going to be much of a change. But hey, oil money buys you a lot in this world.

Jordan

• Talal, the second King of Jordan and grandfather of the current King Abdullah II, had a severe case of schizophrenia that led him to almost kill his wife and children, but he repeatedly refused to step down for the sake of the monarchy. Knowing just how dangerous he could have become if let loose, the Parliament forced him to abdicate after ruling the country for only a year, to be succeeded by his son Hussein. Talal spent the rest of his life in a sanatorium in Istanbul.

Northern, Western and Central Europe

Britain

• Henry VI had a mental illness of some sort which left him near-catatonic for long periods. It may have been hereditary — his grandfather Charles VI of France is also on this page — but some theories suggest his mental health declined significantly as England's losses mounted in the final stages of The Hundred Years War, culminating in the loss of Bordeaux in August 1453, to which he responded with a complete mental breakdown that left him totally unresponsive for more than a year. Henry's madness in turn led to the Wars of the Roses, which effectively purged the English royal line of insanity by almost exterminating it.
• Henry VIII started out as a good king — tough and ambitious, which people liked in a monarch back then. However, as he got older, he grew more cruel and egotistical (as many of his wives discovered). Theories differ on why, but they generally point to something happening to him that pushed him off the deep end, whether it be illness, a Career-Ending Injury (he's often portrayed as a large man but was very fit in his youth), or his inability to produce a male heir.
• The sanity of Henry VIII's daughter Queen Mary I (the historical "Bloody Mary") is a question historians have never settled. She sought to re-establish the Catholic church after her father had dispensed with it in the English Reformation as a way of divorcing her mother, who was then dying of cancer. She responded with a campaign that led to an unusually large number of brutal executions in her six-year reign and brought the country to the point of outright rebellion. She may also have had a "hysterical pregnancy" — i.e. she was convinced she was pregnant when she really wasn't — which makes sense, because she was 38 and desperate to produce an heir to head off her very Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I. For centuries it was assumed to have been extreme wishful thinking, but evidence now suggests she had ovarian cysts, or possibly uterine cancer.
• George III is considered the archetypal "mad king", although the exact extent of his madness is now disputed. It is believed that he suffered from porphyria, based on contemporary accounts of his urine being bluish-purple, but some modern scholars attribute this to a herbal sedative (the kind of thing that passed for medicine back then). Porphyria is hereditary, and although its onset often occurs late in life, there was no evidence of it in any of George's Hanoverian ancestors. He certainly wasn't always mad; he was considered quite charming and reasonably well-adjusted when he was younger, so his "madness" may have just been garden-variety dementia. The famous incident where he conversed with a tree thinking it was the king of Prussia was isolated, happened late in his life, and could well have been made up by his son George IV, who resented having to rule as prince regent in his father's latter years (and had his own share of issues what with the incessant partying and gambling — Blackadder the Third's portrayal of him isn't that exaggerated). Thankfully, by this time, Parliament had enough power that a "sane-ish" monarch was good enough.

France

• Philip IV "le Bel" was famous for effectively disbanding The Knights Templar, and much of the misfortune that visited the French monarchy since then (note that it no longer exists) is said to be the result of a curse by the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who was burned at the stake in 1314. Philip himself perished in a hunting accident eight months after the execution, and none of his three sons would succeed him as king for long enough to produce a surviving son. By 1328 Philip's house was extinct in the male line, laying the foundations for what would become the Hundred Years' War.
• Charles VI, called at first le Bien-Aimé ("the Beloved") and later le Fou ("the Mad"). was commonly said to have been Driven to Madness by two traumatic events: the first a case of sunstroke, and the second was the notorious "Ball of the Burning Men" in which he was almost set on fire. His illness was characterized by psychotic episodes in which he lost touch with reality and forgot most of the details of his life; most famously, he would come to believe he was made of glass, and take steps to keep himself from breaking (e.g. by having iron bars sewn into his clothes). He was the grandfather of Henry VI of England, and Britons tend to blame Henry's madness on Charles, but Charles's French offspring was quite rational and intelligent (at least by the standards of the day).
• The Duke of Angoulême, son of Charles X, is more on the pathetic side. Unlike his father and his more charismatic brother, the Duke of Berry, he was frail, prone to nervous tics, and probably impotent, which at least prevented him from having even more screwed up offspring with his wife and first cousin, Marie-Thérèse, daughter of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. He did ascend the French throne during the July Revolution... for all of 20 minutes, and even then most Legitimist partisans refused to acknowledge his claim to the throne.

Germany and Austria

• Austria's most famous emperors came from the House of Habsburg, which was notorious for Royal Inbreeding:
  • Ferdinand I wasn't the head-choppy kind of crazy, but he was definitely epileptic and had a hydrocephalus. They called him Ferdinand der Gütige, or "Ferdinand the Kindly" — or more accurately "Ferdinand the Benign". Much of the work was done by his Magnificent Bastard Prime Minister, Prince Metternich. Austrians famously consider him to have made one coherent order in his entire reign: "Ich bin der Kaiser und ich will Knödel!" ("I am the Emperor and I want dumplings!")^note They told him he couldn't have them because he wanted Marillenknödel, which requires apricots, which were out of season. He was eventually forced to abdicate in the Revolution of 1848^note leading to a variant of his nickname, Gütinand der Fertige — "Goodinand the Finished" — legend has it that when told that the people were revolting, his response was, "Yes, but are they allowed to do that?" (in a distinct Viennese dialect that Germans often associate with amiable cluelessness). As Ferdinand had no children (and again may have been incapable of it), his disabilities didn't continue down the line, and he abdicated in favour of his saner (and workaholic) nephew Franz Joseph, who would reign until 1916.
  • Franz Joseph, meanwhile, married his first cousin Elisabeth, popularly known as Sisi. She is speculated to have suffered from some sort of anorexia nervosa — not a good combination with a workaholic husband. Their only son Rudolf was a total playboy — which, given the famous Habsburg restrictions on marriage, did not sit well with his parents. Rudolf was reported to keep a carefully detailed ledger of his many sexual conquests, brought a lover to his wedding, and asked at least three women to die with him in a Suicide Pact. One of them, his lover Mary Vetsera, eventually obliged him, and they were both found dead in the Mayerling Incident. It devastated his parents' marriage, in part because they were already split on the question of whether Hungary should be allowed to split, and Rudolf's death accelerated nationalist sentiment in the Empire. Meanwhile, Rudolf had left no heir, and the heir-presumptive became Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, who himself had a falling-out with Franz Joseph over not marrying a royal in the Habsburg tradition (he married a Czech countess). Franz Ferdinand never got to be Emperor, as he was famously assassinated in 1914 in an event that triggered World War I.
• Modern Germany is made up of different places that used to have kings:
  • Ludwig II of Bavaria was considered by many to be mad. He was known as the "fairytale king", in part because his particular brand of "insanity" was an obsession with building elaborate castles, swans, opera music, and beautiful men (he was believed to possibly have been gay). His brother Otto was also considered mad and institutionalised — some Bavarians claim they inherited their madness from their Prussian mother Marie, pointing to the case of her uncle Frederick William IV, also commonly believed to have been mad^note Modern scholarship suggests he was not mad, but rather suffered a stroke in his later years, which his Bavarian consort Queen Elisabeth tried to hide from the public. Ludwig was the last "real" King of Bavaria — he was deposed by his government (based on a "remote diagnosis" by Bernhard von Gudden, the validity of which has since been drawn into question), then mysteriously died the next day (along with Gudden). This left his brother Otto king, even though he had already been institutionalised — he spent his entire "reign" in an asylum.
  • Frederick William I of Prussia had porphyria and also liked to carry a wooden cane, much to the regret of everyone around him (who naturally couldn't defend themselves without being accused of treason). He was known for chasing his children around the palace and randomly attacking commoners in the streets of Berlin, hollering, "You're supposed to love me, not fear me!" This seems to have had a negative effect on his relationship with his son Frederick the Great, although the mutual intense antipathy between the two surely didn't help.
  • Countess Anna de Coligny (1624-80) was distantly related to the Kings of England and Prussia. She suffered from an illness of some sort, although it's not certain what it was. Her problems started young, when was reported to have tried to climb up the tapestries hanging from a wall after a seizure, and she did not get better. Four of her five daughters also went crazy (one had to be locked up in an apartment with padded walls). Her surviving son, while not insane, was very promiscuous and thought it would be a good idea for some of his illegitimate children to marry their half-siblings.
• John George IV, Elector of Saxony, began a relationship with Magdalena Sibylla ("Billa") of Neidschutz. Officially Billa was the daughter of Colonel Rudolf of Neidschutz and his wife Ursula Margarethe of Haugwitz; however, Ursula Margarethe had been the mistress of John George IV's father, so Billa may have been his half-sister. John George IV's mother, Anna Sophie of Denmark, forced her son to marry Princess Eleonore Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach in an attempt to separate him from Billa. It didn't work. Not only did John George IV continue to live with Billa, he attempted to murder Eleonore Erdmuthe. In the end, he had a rather ironic death: Billa caught smallpox and passed the disease on to him. She died in his arms, and he died twenty-three days later.

Scandinavia

• Denmark gives us the Oldenburg dynasty. It was fine until Christian VII, who suffered from mental illness, hallucinations, and paranoia. He had to rule by proxy for long periods of time, and his illness led to the Struensee affair, in which his own physician took control as his proxy and turned out to be the most sensible ruler Denmark had had for decades — until he was toppled in a coup and executed. Christian's son Frederick VI had to rule as regent from that point onward, and he was basically set up for failure, having to steer Denmark through The Napoleonic Wars and screwing up enough to be partly responsible for the Norwegian Constituent Assembly. The dynasty died out with Frederick VII, and the Glüksborg branch turned out to be a lot more sensible, but then they were constitutional monarchs.
• Sweden gives us the Wasa family, and in particular Eric XIV. He started out okay, if kind of bloody and super-efficient at consolidating power from the factionalistic Swedish nobles. Then he got more and more Ax-Crazy, finding more and more enemies to execute, culminating in the Sture murders, after which he was effectively deposed and imprisoned, where he died shortly thereafter. Interestingly, when he was exhumed centuries later, his bones were found to have been loaded with arsenic, which was a sign that he may have been poisoned — but arsenic was also a traditional component of the green dye used to make Scandinavian pea soup. So he may have been murdered, or he may have been suffering lifelong arsenic poisoning to explain his erratic behaviour.
• Norway has seen enough of it that King Harald V was widely suspected of having married a commoner in part to head off the prevalence of this trope. His parents and paternal grandparents were first cousins, and his maternal grandparents were first cousins once removed. When a journalist innocently asked him if part of his desire to marry a commoner included expanding the family's gene pool, Harald responded, "Well, haven't you noticed that everyone in this family is a little weird?"

Southern Europe

The Roman Empire

• The Romans absolutely had their share of lunatic emperors — everything we saw in I, Claudius was just the tip of the iceberg. But historians are split on exactly why they were nuts. Was it inbreeding? Was it a lust for power? Was it well-seated paranoia for fear of being offed in a Klingon Promotion^note Only 29 out of 88 Byzantine Emperors died of natural causes, and at least a dozen were murdered by their own relatives? Was it exaggerated -- or even invented — by much later historians like Tacitus and Suetonius as a sort of historical revisionism? Were they the victims of undiagnosed lead poisoning that gradually eroded their mental faculties? All this is a matter of debate, although it is interesting how relatively few Roman Emperors inherited their job; Romans were so acutely aware of the possibility of the natural heir being completely off their rocker that they often adopted someone they preferred as their successor (or the army installed someone they liked).

Spain

• The Trastámara family was known for its history of oddballs, although they had a lot of enemies who were prone to exaggerating the family's eccentricities. Peter I was known in Old Spanish as Iusteçero, roughly meaning "bringer of justice", which had a double meaning of excellence in execution of policy and of people. As The Cartoon History of the Universe put it: "I'm Pedro el Cruel! What can I do to you?" He wasn't actually a member of the House — it was founded by his half-brother, who was sane but illegitimate — but he still gets lumped in with them.
• The by-word for Spanish royal insanity is Queen Joanna of Aragon and Castille, commonly known as "Juana la Loca" — "Joanna the Mad". The extent of her madness is a matter of debate. Scholars suggest it derives roughly equally from genetics (she is theorised to have at least some form of hereditary depression) and her unhappy life with her husband — which, given the nature of royal families, is heavily intertwined with politics.
  • Joanna was the product of a very strategic political union. Her father Ferdinand was King of Aragon and from the House of Trastámara (which was closely related to the aforementioned Peter I). Her mother Isabella was Queen of Castille in her own right and also from the House of Trastámara, and Joanna inherited both and was a legitimate queen. However, being a woman, she became a catalyst for all the men in her life trying to exert power through her. Ferdinand basically considered himself king of both Aragon and Castile and was particularly intent on exerting power.
  • Joanna's husband was Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. Philip was from the House of Habsburg, a famous and powerful royal family — so much so that they engaged in extensive Royal Inbreeding to prevent power from falling into the wrong hands. They wouldn't marry non-royalty (it was beneath them) unless absolutely forced, they wouldn't marry their enemies (of course) unless they dictated the terms, and after The Protestant Reformation, they wouldn't marry non-Catholics either unless they converted. All of this drastically reduced the pool of possible marriage partners, so they kept marrying their cousins as the only people they could trust. Philip's marriage to Joanna was a strategic union, and a politically shrewd one, but it only bought them a little time (especially as the Trastámara family was already pretty inbred, so it wasn't a great source of genetic diversity).
  • As it turned out, it was a Perfectly Arranged Marriage, and much of Joanna's "madness" can be traced to Philip's untimely death. Philip provided ample competition for Ferdinand in the game of "Control the Damsel", and "husband" usually trumps "father" in that game — Philip declared himself King of Castille jure uxoris (by right of marriage) to try and talk some sense into Ferdinand but to no avail. Joanna much preferred Philip to Ferdinand, and when Philip died, she kind of lost it. After several attempts to reopen her husband's casket, and a few political and military defeats, Ferdinand had her locked up in a nunnery and exercised as much control as he could. That lasted until Joanna's son Charles I — who was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V — was old enough to exert himself in his own right. Charles' successors split into Austrian and Spanish branches, who kept intermarrying, leading to problems down the line.
  • There's a sort of interesting divergence point in history here. Joanna's younger sister was Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England. Their daughter Mary, in the grand Habsburg tradition, married her cousin Philip II, Charles V's son. They never had children (and Philip eventually remarried his niece Anne of Austria) — but if they had, and England had managed to stay Catholic, that could have given the Habsburgs control of damn near half of Europe if things had shaken out right — but perhaps at the cost of the integrity of the English royal bloodline.
• Don Carlos the rebellious son of Philip II and grandson of Charles V, was insane to the point of being physically dangerous and would take swipes at passing servants with a knife. He once tried to stab The Duke of Alba for supposedly stealing his mission to the Netherlands, attacked John of Austria with a sword for refusing to help him escape there, and one day, when chasing female servants, he had an almost fatal head injury that caused his madness to spiral even more out of control, even trying to assassinate his own father. Philip ended up removing him from the line of succession on the basis that he was unfit for the throne, and he spent the last six months of his life under house arrest before starving himself to death.
• Charles II of Spain was the last Habsburg King of Spain. They called him "Carlos el Hechizado" or "Charles the Bewitched", and it's not hard to see why — that's his portrait in the page image, and that's as flattering as they could make it. He was severely physically disabled, mostly as a result of the extensive Royal Inbreeding practised by the Habsburg family, and may have not been entirely right on his head either — he was descended from "Juana la Loca" fourteen times, with less than two centuries separating them. That chin is the most prominent example of the famous "Habsburg lip", which he had so prominently that he couldn't masticate or close his mouth (that's why his tongue is poking out). The Other Wiki describes Charles as "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before 35, always on the verge of death but repeatedly baffling Christendom by continuing to live." Since Charles had no heir (and possibly was incapable of reproducing)^note The contemporary autopsy report is very revealing — it claims that Charles' body "contained not a single drop of blood, his heart looked like the size of a grain of pepper, his lungs were corroded, his intestines were putrid and gangrenous, he had a single testicle which was as black as carbon and his head was full of water." The accuracy of that report is disputed, but he never did produce an heir, so maybe it was, his death sparked the War of the Spanish Succession, where two competing branches of the family in Austria and France^note Dynastically, the French branch was more closely related, but through a female line, while the Austrian claimant was more distantly related but in an exclusively male line. (The Austrian Habsburgs were even more closely related than that, having married their Spanish cousins a few times, but none of their female-line connections were closer than the French branch. So a big chunk of their legitimacy was that at the end of the day, they were the seniormost male-line descendants of Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile.) Legally, the issue was that the Spanish realms had used male-preference primogeniture (allowing not only inheritance in the female line but women to rule in their own right if they had no brothers) before Charles V's succession as Carlos I; however, the fact that the Habsburg house law traditionally followed Salic law muddied the waters as to whether succession in the female line was still permitted. Politically, the French branch was represented by Charles' grand-nephew, Philip V, who also happened to be the grandson of Louis XIV of France—so most of Europe basically ganged up on the French to prevent them from gaining control of Spain as well and becoming a unified, Catholic super-superpower fought for control of the Spanish crown. About the only non-Habsburg genes Charles had received in the last four generations were from his father's syphilis, which by then was like throwing swamp water up a backed-up sewage line.
  • Charles II's mother, Mariana of Austria, was first betrothed to her cousin Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias. Balthasar Charles died when he was only sixteen, so his father Philip IV decided to marry Mariana instead. Mariana was fourteen. Philip IV was forty-four, triple as old as she is. They had five children, only two of whom survived: the aforementioned Charles, and a daughter named Margaret Theresa.
  • Astonishingly, Margaret Theresa was relatively healthy in spite of the ghastly amount of inbreeding in her ancestry, and the portraits show her as a beautiful little girl. But she ended up marrying the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who was her mother's brother and her father's nephew. That's right: her husband was simultaneously her uncle and her cousin. The couple had four children, only one of whom survived infancy. Margaret Theresa somehow got the idea that Vienna's Jewish population was responsible for her children's deaths (and not, y'know, the fact their parents were related so many times over that they had a family tangleweed instead of a family tree), so she tried to make Leopold expel the Jews from Vienna. The constant pregnancies took a toll on her health, and she died at 21 during her fifth pregnancy.
  • Maria Antonia of Austria was the only surviving child of Margaret Theresa and Leopold I, and was also the most inbred member of the entire Habsburg family, with a consanguinity coefficient of over 0.30 (for comparison, Charles II had an inbreeding coefficient of .254, and Daenerys Targaryen is at .375 and a child from Brother–Sister Incest or Parental Incest is at 0.25), due to her parents and grandparents being uncle and niece. Despite that, somehow, Maria Antonia was relatively healthy, lived to adulthood, and married someone who was not in her family or a relative, but the marriage was unhappy, and after three pregnancies, she died at the age of 23, a couple of months after her final child was born due to her body being weakened. Her surviving child died at seven from smallpox, and one year later, his great-uncle Charles II died as well, extinguishing the Habsburg of Spain forever.

Italy

• Vittorio Emanuele III was the product of generations of Royal Inbreeding (his parents being first cousins, with three of his grandparents being also first cousins), owing to his short stature and poor health. In addition to this, he suffered from the traditional spartan education of House Savoy, severe parental neglect, and at nine he saw the prime minister getting seriously wounded when he put himself between his father and a would-be assassin. As a result, he grew up shy and withdrawn, and somehow missed that, in an effort to keep his descendants from being inbred, every single royal house in Europe agreed to set him up with Elena of Montenegro, that wasn't related to the House of Savoy in any way, eventually resulting in appointing one Benito Mussolini as his prime minister and twenty years of dictatorship. His saving grace was that he was conscious of his flaws, and purposefully caused the failure of his betrothal to a German princess out of fear of inbreeding (resulting in the "conjure" to get him married to Elena of Montenegro) and let his wife raise his son less harshly than he himself had been.

Greece

• Prince George of Greece and Denmark had a bizarre, possibly incestuous relationship with his uncle Prince Valdemar of Denmark. When George was a teenager his parents arranged for Valdemar to raise him (even though Valdemar was only eleven years older than him). George and Valdemar promptly became unhealthily co-dependent. George visited Valdemar every year, and when he had to leave he would cry and Valdemar would be so upset he became ill. Valdemar also had an affair with George's wife, and George would sit or lie beside them during their trysts. And as if the whole mess wasn't twisted enough, George's wife may have also had an affair with Valdemar's son.

Eastern Europe

Tsarist Russia

• Ivan IV "the Terrible" had at least six and up to eight wives. Three were poisoned by rivals, and Ivan himself banished two to nunneries. Ivan also kept divorcing and remarrying his eldest son Ivan if his wives didn’t get pregnant almost immediately after the wedding. When his third wife did get pregnant, she wore some immodest clothing and Ivan ruthlessly beat her, which caused her to miscarry. When his son got angry, Ivan beat him severely causing his death in a fit of rage. Ivan IV’s second son Fyodor had some sort of mental disorder, as he walked around ringing bells (hence his nickname, ‘The Bellringer’). Fyodor was effectively a Puppet King under his brother-in-law Boris Godunov. When Fyodor’s eight-year-old brother Dimitri died in suspicious circumstances, Boris was blamed for his death. Fyodor and his wife Irina’s only child had died young, so after Fyodor’s death, Irina quickly abdicated to Boris.
• Boris Godunov was a generally reasonable monarch, despite laying the groundwork for Russian serfdom. However, in 1604, a young Polish man claimed to be Dimitri. Boris was already unpopular for his weak claim to the throne and a recent famine gave Dimitri peasant support. Boris probably would have won the war if he hadn’t died in 1605, leaving his sixteen-year-old son Fyodor II in charge. Due to his youth, many boyars defected to Dimitri’s side and Fyodor was murdered.
• Dimitri only lasted eleven months on the throne until he alienated the Russian boyars so much (by marrying a Catholic, being friends with a Catholic country, and wanting to make Russia Catholic) that they murdered him and shot his ashes out of a cannon back to Poland. They then put the old Vasily Shuisky on the throne, however soon another imposter emerged claiming to be both Tsarevich Dimitri and the Dimitri they shot out of a cannon. He also made it to Moscow before being killed by one of his supporters. A third Dimitri emerged who never had much support before being murdered. In 1613 the ‘Time of Troubles’ ended with Mikhail Romanov’s election as Tsar.
• Peter the Great and his son Alexei never got on. Alexei opposed Peter’s reforms and he eventually tried to flee. Peter interrogated and tortured his own son until he died. Catherine the Great had a notoriously Awful Wedded Life with her husband Peter, a Manchild and Russophobe and Prussophile. Within a year of his ascension, she deposed and probably murdered him. She also had a very contentious relationship with her son Paul, who was an extraordinarily difficult person himself (he would exile officers to Siberia for a misplaced coat button) and likely organised his assassination to ensure the throne to her favourite grandson, Alexander I. (Alexander probably consented to all this, at least tacitly, but he did feel horrendously guilty about it and perhaps never intended for him to be assassinated outright.)
• The latter years of the Romanov dynasty were notable for the prominence of haemophilia, a hereditary trait which could be traced back to the British Queen Victoria — she was a carrier, three of her children got the gene, and from there it spread to many other European royal houses. Nicholas II's son Alexei, the last legitimate heir to the Romanov dynasty before they were all executed, was a notable sufferer, and the faith-healer Rasputin the Mad Monk quickly built his reputation on his ability to "treat" it. The haemophilia gene would become such a prominent genetic marker of royalty that the 1950s B-Movie Queen of Blood decided that the extraterrestrial must be royalty solely because she was a haemophiliac. That is one impressive little allele.

Georgia (Europe):

• George II of Kakheti (modern-day eastern Georgia), nowadays known as George the Evil, really wanted to go to war against the neighbouring kingdom of Kartli. So in 1511 he murdered his father, blinded his younger brother, seized the crown, and immediately declared war on Kartli. He was promptly defeated. But George wouldn't let a little thing like that stop him. He declared war again two years later. Once again he was defeated, and this time he was imprisoned and killed.
• George II's son Levan was a good king but a very poor father. His eldest son Alexander should have been his heir, but Alexander was The Unfavorite and his half-brothers were treated better. When Levan died Alexander and his half-brother El-Mirza both claimed the throne, leading to a civil war that ended with Alexander's victory and the deaths of El-Mirza and two of his brothers. Alexander later faced yet more family troubles. His son David seized the throne and forced him to abdicate. David died a year later, Alexander took the throne again... and three years later was murdered by his younger son Constantine. At the same time, Constantine also murdered one of his brothers and several nobles, but he never got to rule because he was killed in the ensuing rebellion.
• Darejan of Kakheti wanted to hold onto her power as Queen of Imereti after her husband's death. To do this she had to deal with her stepson, Bagrat V of Imereti, who didn't want to share his power. First she arranged for him to marry her niece Ketevan. Soon that wasn't enough for her, so she forced Bagrat to divorce Ketevan and attempted to marry him herself. Bagrat refused, so Darejan had him arrested and blinded. It didn't end well for Darejan; Bagrat survived the blinding and eventually regained his throne, and he may have personally killed Darejan and her new husband.
• King (yes, King) Rusudan was more interested in sleeping around than ruling her kingdom. This led to trouble for her kingdom (repeated Georgian defeats when the Khwarezmids and Mongols invaded, and Rusudan was forced to pay tribute to the Mongol Khan) and her family (her husband objected to her adultery so she exiled him and she was afraid her nephew would overthrow her).
• Ghias ad-Din, Rusudan's husband, was a Seljuq nobleman who converted to Christianity when he married her. Records disagree on the circumstances but he probably had no choice in either the marriage or the conversion — one account says he was a Political Hostage and Rusudan ordered him to marry her, while another says the marriage was arranged by his father who ordered him to convert. Whatever the truth, though, he was a teenager at the time and at least twelve years younger than Rusudan. The marriage was a disaster. At some point in the 1220s, Rusudan sent Ghias ad-Din away from the royal court, reportedly because he walked in on her in bed with a slave. When the Khwarezmids invaded Georgia he defected to their side and reconverted to Islam. When the Khwarezmids left, he redefected to the Georgian side and reconverted to Christianity. He disappears from history after this, and some historians believe he was killed on Rusudan's orders.
• Tamar/Gurju Khatun, Rusudan and Ghias ad-Din's daughter, was married on her mother's orders to her cousin Kaykhusraw II of Rum but falsely accused (by her own mother!) of an affair with another cousin, David VII of Georgia. Kaykhusraw believed the accusation and as punishment, he beat Tamar then forced her to convert to Islam. When Kaykhusraw died, he designated Tamar's son his heir, but the boy died young — possibly murdered — and a succession crisis ensued. It was resolved when Mu'in al-Din Suleiman Pervâne seized the throne by murdering Tamar's stepson and marrying Tamar. History doesn't record if she had any choice in this. Pervâne was later executed by the Mongols in 1277 (one account claims that the Mongol khan ordered his subjects to eat Pervâne's corpse) and Tamar's fate is uncertain.

Bulgaria

• Ferdinand I wasn't quite the worst European royal husband ever (though only because other candidates for that title include Henry VIII and George IV of England), but he was certainly near the top of the list. He was determined to secure his dynasty's claim on the Bulgarian throne.^note Somewhat understandable, since he was actually a German who became Tsar because he was the only person willing to accept the job. So when he married Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma — who, incidentally, he'd never even met before their engagement celebration — he insisted on having a child as soon as possible. Then another one, then another one, then another one... Poor Marie Louise gave birth to four children in only five years, which took a dreadful toll on her health. She died after giving birth to her fourth child. Then Ferdinand decided to remarry, and when choosing a new wife he explicitly stated that she mustn't expect affection or attention from him. He finally settled on Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz, who he ignored after their marriage. Finally, years after Eleonore's death and after the monarchy's collapse, the 86-year-old Ferdinand married his 26-year-old assistant.

Serbia

• Alexander I fell in love with Draga Mašin, one of his mother's ladies-in-waiting, who was considered an unsuitable match for several reasons including being twelve years older than him and possibly infertile (a big deal since Alexander was an only child and really needed an heir). The engagement was unpopular with everyone, including Alexander's parents, but he insisted on marrying Draga anyway (and banished his own mother for opposing the marriage). Then a rumour started that he was going to make one of Draga's brothers his heir. This gave a group of Army officers an excuse to arrange a coup^note Incidentally they were helped by the Black Hand society, which later assassinated Franz Ferdinand and started World War I. The conspirators murdered both Alexander and Draga.
• Katarina Konstantinović became the mistress of Prince Mihailo Obrenović, her first cousin once removed, when she was a teenager and he was in his forties. Mihailo wanted to divorce his childless wife so he could marry Katarina, which made him extremely unpopular. In 1868 a conspiracy was formed, possibly influenced by the rival Karađorđević dynasty who wanted the throne for themselves, to assassinate Mihailo before he could get the divorce. Mihailo and Katarina's mother Anka were killed while Katarina was injured.

Armenia

• Leo III of Armenia and his uncle Hetoum II were pretty unpopular with everyone because they wanted to unite the Armenian Apostolic Church with the Roman Catholic Church, so someone from the opposing faction decided to get rid of them. They went to the Mongol general Bilarghu, who was allied with Armenia but had converted to Islam, and told him Hetoum was planning to attack the Mongols. Bilarghu already disliked Leo and Hetoum because Leo had vetoed his plan to build a mosque. So Bilarghu invited the two of them to a banquet, then murdered them and their retinue. (Incidentally, the other Mongols were so disgusted at this breach of Sacred Hospitality that a Mongol ruler executed Bilarghu for it.)

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