How did the most violent feuds between members of royal families in world history arise and what ended?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Even ordinary people, members of the same family, doing a common cause, may well get entangled in intra-family conflicts and squabbles. When it comes to things like the throne and crown, things get much more complicated. In royal families, all strife, as well as manifestations of affection, cannot be hidden, everything almost instantly becomes the property of the world community. Some royal feuds remain minor, others were so destructive that they eventually led to large, sometimes world wars. About the most violent and bloody of them, further in the review.

Family feuds of Cleopatra

By the time the legendary Cleopatra VII was born into the ruling Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt around 69 BC, the family already had an incestuous and bloody history. For generations, sisters have killed brothers, mothers have fought their children, and sons have killed their parents.

“After a while, the massacre began to feel like a certainty,” writes Stacy Schiff in her book Cleopatra: A Life. "Cleopatra's uncle killed his wife, thereby destroying her stepmother and half-sister." Cleopatra, her brothers and sisters, became worthy successors of this bloody family tradition. After the death of his father around 51 BC. Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII got married and took the Egyptian throne as co-rulers. This forced partnership quickly disintegrated, and by 48 BC. both were involved in a brutal civil war against each other. In the midst of this madness, their younger sister Arsinoe IV found the moment to be right to lay claim to the throne.

Cleopatra was very upset by her sister's betrayal. “She hardly underestimated her seventeen-year-old sister,” Schiff writes. "Arsinoe was simply obsessed with ambition and lust for power." She soon allied with Ptolemy XIII, and together they began the siege of Alexandria in the winter of 48 BC. But Cleopatra was able to get a secret weapon - the support of the almighty Roman emperor Caesar. Together, they defeated all of her relatives at the Battle of the Nile in 47 BC.

Ptolemy XIII drowned in the river shortly after his defeat. Arsinoe was seized and sent across Alexandria in chains of gold, and then exiled to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Her triumphant sister Cleopatra, who now ruled both Egypt and the heart of Caesar, soon married her younger brother Ptolemy XIV. He died in 44 BC, probably poisoned by Cleopatra, and the queen made her young son a co-ruler like Ptolemy XV Caesar.

Arsinoe's problem has not gone away. Cleopatra's younger sister gathered enough support in Ephesus to proclaim herself Queen of Egypt. "Her actions speak of both the fortitude of Arsinoe's spirit and the fragility of Cleopatra's position outside her country," writes Schiff, "undoubtedly the two sisters despised each other."

This long-term family feud finally ended only in 41 BC. Cleopatra's lover, Mark Antony, ordered the assassination of Arsinoe on the steps of the Temple of Artemis. "Now," wrote one chronicler, "Cleopatra has executed all her relatives, no one is left alive."

Sons of William the Conqueror

There is only one civil war in history, with its roots in the chamber pot. When William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England, died in 1087, he left Britain to his middle son, William Rufus, in place of his eldest son Robert. William was in conflict with his brother for a long time. Robert was incredibly charming, but at the same time slightly absent-minded and very belligerent. He is known as Robert Kurtgoz.

According to a story by a Benedictine monk who chronicled the 11th and 12th centuries, Robert had been at odds with his father since 1077. Then William Rufus and their younger brother Henry threw a chamber pot full on his head. A fight ensued, their father separated the boys, but refused to punish William Rufus and Henry. Robert was furious and in revenge organized an attack on the castle of Rouen.

This family feud lasted for years. Robert even fled to Flanders after fighting his own father. They finally made up in 1080, but it's no surprise that their relationship was strained. Robert spent most of his time abroad. When his father died, Robert was left with Normandy. He raised a rebellion against his brother, now King William II of England, but failed. After that, he went on a crusade to the Holy Land. On the way back in 1100, he was informed that King William II had died and that his younger brother Henry I had taken the throne.

In Normandy, Robert gathered an army and marched across the strait in July 1101. “Robert headed for London and was intercepted by Henry at Altona in Hampshire,” writes historian Richard Cavendish. Henry persuaded Robert to give up his claims to England in exchange for a pension of 3,000 marks a year and renounce any claims of Henry to Normandy. It was decided that no action would be taken against the Duke's supporters."

But Robert was deceived. His brother stopped sending pensions and invaded Normandy, worried about Robert's long years of mismanagement. In 1106, Heinrich defeated his brother at the Battle of Tinchebre. Robert spent the next 28 years in prison. “Woe to him who is not old enough to die,” he wrote during this long captivity. Robert died in 1134 at Cardiff Castle at the ripe old age of 80. Henry I died the following year, defeating his brother even in death.

Elizabeth I and Mary I

When Mary I finally inherited the English throne in 1553, she experienced a series of disappointments, grief and resentment. The only child of King Henry VIII and Catholic Saint Catherine of Aragon, she was her father's favorite heiress for most of her childhood. But after Henry's passionate romance and subsequent marriage to Protestant Anne Boleyn, her world was destroyed. She was torn from her mother, stripped of her royal title and forced to curtsy about her new half-sister, a little red-haired beast - Princess Elizabeth.

The new stepmother was especially cruel to young Maria, and the impressionable teenager kept these insults for the rest of his life. After the execution of Anne Boleyn in 1536, Mary's status was restored, and she even fell in love with her now motherless, half-sister Elizabeth. But their harrowing family history was only part of what made the truce temporary. “The relationship between older and younger sisters is often difficult, especially when the age gap is seventeen years, as was the case between Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth,” writes David Starkey in Elizabeth: Struggle for the Throne. "Fate ordered to make them opposites even in appearance and character, as well as opponents in religion and politics."

With the coming to the throne of Mary, a fierce Catholic, in 1553, all her former bitterness surfaced. Although Elizabeth came to London with Mary for her coronation, their relationship quickly soured. Elizabeth has now become the "second person" in the kingdom - young, charismatic, self-confident and … Protestant.

In 1554, the Wyatt rebellion was raised in response to Mary's plans to marry the Catholic king of Spain, Philip. The leaders of the rebellion were planning to put Elizabeth on the throne, and Mary believed that her sister was involved in the conspiracy. Elizabeth was arrested and sent to the ominous Tower of London, the same place where her mother was executed decades ago. "Oh Lord!" - she exclaimed, - "I never thought that I would get here!" Once in the tower, Elizabeth wrote to her sister a very emotional, even insane, incoherent letter, her usual self-control left the woman:

The letter did not have the desired effect. Maria was even more furious with him, feeling that he lacked the respectful tone she deserved. However, three weeks later, she released her sister from the Tower, and Elizabeth was sent to Woodstock under house arrest. Here she engraved with diamond a short poem in the window of her prison:

A year later, Elizabeth was finally pardoned, and the sisters resumed a strained, but quite warm relationship. Just four years later, in 1558, Mary died during a flu epidemic and Elizabeth ascended the throne.

Cruelty at Versailles

Since childhood, the clumsy and well-meaning Louis XVI was often overshadowed and overplayed by his vicious younger brothers. Frozen and bored at the Versailles court, the Comte de Provence and Comte d'Artois spent most of their time spreading dirty gossip about their unfortunate older brother.

Left to themselves, the brothers often got into petty arguments, sometimes in front of the entire court. Soon after Louis's marriage to young Marie Antoinette in 1770, the former Austrian Archduchess from a large family of brothers and sisters began to often break unpleasant quarrels between brothers.

“With the experience of family life,” writes Antonia Fraser in the book Marie Antoinette: The Journey, “the young princess became a peacemaker between the warring brothers. Once, when the clumsy Louis Auguste broke a piece of porcelain belonging to Provence, and his younger brother ran into him, Marie Antoinette actually interrupted the fight …"

With their accession to the throne in 1774, the failure of Louis and Marie Antoinette to produce an heir became food for the ridicule of his brothers. But after Provence himself got married and also remained childless, the ridicule stopped. The brothers also encouraged rumors that the graceful and cheerful Marie Antoinette had an affair with Artois, which was a complete fiction. These attacks ended after Princess Maria Teresa was born. Fraser said that when the child was baptized, the Comte de Provence claimed that the "names and titles" of the parents were incorrect. “Under the guise of concern about the correctness of the procedure, the Count made inappropriate allusions about the child's questionable paternity,” Fraser writes.

As tensions grew in France, the increasingly conservative and reactionary policies of his brothers caused constant problems for Louis XVI. Both Provence and Artois fled France with their families during the revolution. After the death of their brother, both eventually got what they had always dreamed of - the chance to become king. After the fall of Napoleon, Provence ruled as Louis XVIII from 1814 to 1824. Artois succeeded him as Charles X from 1824 to 1830 before being overthrown.

Napoleon's family

The fallen emperor had reasons for bitterness. In the eyes of Napoleon, he raised his huge Corsican family to unprecedented heights. Joseph, Lucien, Eliza, Louis, Pauline, Caroline and Jerome became royals. He gave them titles, placed them on the thrones of kingdoms, and made them rich. In return, Napoleon expected blind devotion from his brothers and sisters. In fact, everything turned out to be completely different.

From the very beginning, not all of Napoleon's brothers and sisters respected him. His younger brother Lucien hated him since childhood, considering him a bully, suffering from delusions of grandeur. In a letter to his elder brother Joseph in the early 1790s, he listed all of Napoleon's shortcomings, noting: “I think he is very fond of tyrannical methods. If he were a king, he would be a tyrant, and his name would inspire terror to descendants and patriots."

When Napoleon came to power in France, Lucien was exiled to Italy for marrying a woman whom his brother did not approve of. The rest of the Bonapartes continued their strife. Now they were united by a common hatred for Napoleon's wife, Josephine. In response, Napoleon taunted them, honoring Josephine and her children. At dinner one evening, he constantly referred to his stepdaughter Hortense as a princess, simply to anger his sisters. Theo Aronson, in his book The Golden Bees: The Story of Bonaparte, writes about it this way: “Caroline was crying. Eliza, who was better at restraining her emotions, resorted to caustic remarks, outright sarcasm and a long, arrogant silence.

It all came to a head in 1804 when Napoleon crowned himself and became emperor. His sisters and daughters-in-law were shocked that they would have to carry the trail of the hated Josephine to the ceremony in Notre Dame. Joseph said he would move to Germany if his wife was so disgraced. In the end, the women reluctantly agreed - only if their trains were also carried.

Among other things, the brothers and sisters were jealous of each other. Napoleon made Joseph king of Italy and Sicily, Jerome king of Westphalia, and Louis king of Holland. Upon learning that Eliza had received the principality of Piombino, Caroline joked: "So Eliza is a sovereign princess with an army of four privates and a corporal."

After the defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon said this about his family: "I do not love anyone, no, not even my brothers." “Joseph, maybe a little. But this is more out of habit, because he is the elder."

While in exile on Saint Helena, he realized that he had made the mistake of putting his brothers and sisters in power. “If I had made one of my brothers king,” he muttered, according to Aronson's account, “he would have imagined himself king by the grace of God. He would no longer be my assistant. He would become another enemy for me. It would be a matter of time, alas."

If you are interested in history, read our article on for which Mary I of England received the nickname "Bloody Mary": a bloodthirsty fanatic or a victim of political intrigue.