5 Royal Scandals Throughout History

In 1313, Isabella, daughter of King Philip IV of France, gave her three brothers and their wives embroidered purses as a gift. This proved to be their undoing. 

The following year, she spotted two of those same purses in the possession of a pair of knights. Suspicious of her sisters-in-law, Isabella told her father, and Philip had his son’s wives put under surveillance. Two of the wives were found guilty of adultery with the knights in question, with the affairs primarily taking place in the Tour de Nesle, an old guard tower.

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The women were imprisoned for life, their heads shaved, while the knights didn’t get off so easily. Most historians agree that they were castrated and then either drawn and quartered or flayed alive, broken on a wheel, and hanged. Ouch.

With their wives imprisoned, Philip's sons didn't produce male heirs before their deaths, causing lasting repercussions for the succession of the French monarchy. The Hundred Years' War ensued when Isabella’s son, Edward III of England, attempted to press his claim to the French throne.

In August 2014, Barack Obama held a press conference on the subjects of terrorism and U.S. military operations in Syria while wearing a tan suit. In right-wing political circles, the "scandal" surrounding this fashion faux pas burned like wildfire, with one Republican House Representative saying, “There’s no way, I don’t think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday.”

While the scandal was purely manufactured and patently absurd, it was far from the first time that a sartorial choice has caused trouble for a political leader. In 1783, artist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted a portrait of Marie Antoinette wearing a garment called a robe en chemise, a loose muslin gown without all the structure popular among court attire at the time. Not only did this cause a scandal because it looked similar to the undergarments worn in the day, it was also seen as unpatriotic, and as destroying the “mystique of royalty.” Essentially, Antoinette looked too much like a regular person, so much so that Vigée Le Brun was asked to remove the portrait from the exhibition in which it debuted.

Related: The Affair of the Diamond Necklace Contributed To Marie Antoinette's Downfall

In what is perhaps a sort of grim irony, the muslin dress became a fashionable article of clothing for members of the French Revolution, who claimed Marie Antoinette’s head via guillotine within a decade of the unveiling of the infamous painting.

Born Rudolf Franz Karl Joseph, the Crown Prince of Austria was the only son and heir apparent of Emperor Franz Joseph I. Though he was married to Princess Stéphanie of Belgium, Rudolf drifted away from his wife, taking solace in drink and the arms of other women. 

The last of these was Baroness Marie von Vetsera, who the crown prince met when he was 30 years old and she was 17. According to her letters, the two were very much in love. So much so that they were driven to fulfill a suicide pact on January 30, 1889, in a hunting lodge that Rudolf had purchased just a few years before. However, because a suicide would have made a church burial impossible, it was officially declared that Rudolf had been suffering from “mental imbalance.”

The death of her only son plunged the empress into despair, and she wore mourning clothes for the rest of her life. Nor was she the only one drastically affected. With the line of succession thrown into chaos, rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire eventually fell to Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose own assassination in 1914 signaled the beginning of World War I.

Our records of the reign of Ivan IV Vasilyevich—better known to us today as Ivan the Terrible—are often spotty or incomplete. One particular scandal associated with the life of the Russian emperor, however, has gone down in history and been immortalized in a famous painting by Ilya Repin.

Related: How Ivan the Terrible Earned His Nickname

In 1581, the story goes, Ivan was beating his pregnant daughter-in-law because she was dressed in clothing that he considered immodest. This story is already not off to a great start. In fact, he is said to have beaten her so badly that she miscarried—thereby rendering Ivan responsible for the death of his own unborn grandchild. 

Things didn’t end there, though. Ivan Ivanovich, Ivan the Terrible’s son, took umbrage at his father’s treatment of his wife and, in the ensuing argument, Ivan struck his son in the head, fatally wounding him. Ivan the Terrible most likely earned his nickname from his fearsome conduct on the battlefield, but this incident probably contributed to his reputation.

The son of King George V and great-grandson of Queen Victoria, Edward VIII has the distinction of being the shortest-reigning monarch in the history of the United Kingdom. Indeed, he abdicated the throne in 1936, less than a year after he was crowned King of England.

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Edward had become smitten with an American socialite by the name of Wallis Simpson. There was just one problem: Simpson was a divorcee, twice over, and both of her ex-husbands were still alive, which was considered unacceptable for a queen consort at the time. Edward’s marriage to her would have sparked a constitutional crisis, so he opted to abdicate the throne. The two remained together until Edward’s death in 1972, and while other rumors—like that he was a Nazi sympathizer—would dog the rest of Edward’s days, as scandals go, it’s hard to top giving up the throne of the entire British Empire for love.

Sources: Fashion Institute of Technology, Racked