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History’s Top Executioners of All Time

Khalid Elhassan June 5, 2020 34 min

22. A Terrible Marriage, and a Turning to Torture

A likeness of Elizabeth Bathory, created from her historical description. Wikimedia

A year after her betrothal, Elizabeth Bathory got pregnant by a commoner. Her aristocratic fiance had her lover castrated, then torn to pieces and fed to the dogs. Elizabeth gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, who was quietly hidden. She wed her betrothed in 1575, but kept cuckolding him throughout their married life. It was a task made easier by her husband’s frequent and prolonged absences on military campaigns.

Elizabeth developed a taste for sadism, and sometime around 1585, began torturing and killing young girls. She started off with servants at her castle, then serf girls from surrounding peasant villages. Eventually, her victims included the daughters of local gentry, sent to her castle by their families to receive an aristocratic education and learn courtly manners.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.