The Sibling Rivalry That Wrecked an Empire, and Other Self-Destructive Royal Family Episodes

39. The Caliph’s Kids Go At It

Harun al Rashid’s eldest son al Ma’mun (786 – 833) was born to a Persian concubine, which counted against him when it came to the pecking order of royal offspring. So when al Rashid died in 809, the caliphate went not to the eldest son, but to a younger one, al Amin (787 – 813), who was born to al Rashid’s favorite wife, Zubayda, an Arab of royal blood.

As a consolation prize, al Ma’mun was designated next in line for the Caliphate, and given Khurasan – corresponding to modern Afghanistan, parts of Iran, plus much of Central Asia – as a semi-independent realm. However, he felt slighted. His brother gave him an excuse to do something about it when he tried to curb Khurasan’s independence, and remove al Ma’mun from the line of succession in favor of al Amin’s son. So al Ma’mun rebelled.

38. The Abbasid Brothers’ Civil War

In 811, Abbasid Caliph al Amin gathered an army of about 50,000 men, mostly infantry, and sent it to put down his elder brother in Khurasan. They ran into a much smaller army of al Ma’mun, of about 5000, but they were all cavalry – mostly mounted steppe archers.

Al Amin’s army was routed, and al Ma’mun then went on the counter-offensive, invading his brother’s heartland, and besieging him in Baghdad. After a siege that lasted a year, Baghdad fell, and al Amin was captured and executed in 813. Al Ma’mun succeeded him as Caliph, and ruled until his death in 833.

37. The Abbasid Caliphate’s Nose Dive

Although al Ma’mun ruled for a respectable twenty years, the bulk of that reign was spent in fighting challengers. The civil war between al Rashid’s sons had fatally weakened the Abbasid Caliphate, and unleashed separatist movements that no Caliph was able to control.

The Abbasid Caliphate went into a precipitate decline, and within a few decades of al Ma’mun’s death, it had been reduced to a shadow of its former glory. Abbasid Caliphs continued to rule from Baghdad, but they ruled in name only. By the end of the century, their authority barely extended beyond their capital, and often, not even beyond their palace.

36. The Ottomans’ Ruthless Solution to Avoiding Sibling Rivalry

As seen above, royal sibling rivalries could wreck a realm. The Ottoman Turks came up with a ruthless solution for that problem: no siblings, no rivalry. As soon as a new Ottoman Sultan ascended the throne, he immediately executed all his brothers. The chances of deadly rivalries and civil wars were thus eliminated by eliminating all potential claimants to the throne.

Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror (1432 – 1481) is credited with coming up with that solution. He enacted a Law of Governance that stated in relevant part: “Any of my sons who ascends the throne, it is acceptable for him to kill his brothers for the common benefit of the people. The majority of the ulema [Muslim scholars] approve this; let action be taken accordingly“.

35. “The Empire Wept”

Sultan Mehmed II’s successors heeded his advice to maintain the stability of the realm by preemptively executing their brothers upon ascending the throne. It was cruel, but it worked: for two centuries, the Ottoman Empire was remarkably stable and free of infighting and civil wars when compared to its contemporaries.

However, although the system worked, the consciences of many were troubled by the murder of innocent royal siblings at the start of each reign. Those misgivings reached a peak when Sultan Mehmed III (reigned 1595 – 1603) inaugurated his reign by ordering his nineteen brothers, some of them mere infants, strangled to death. It was said that “the Empire wept” as a long line of child-sized coffins exited the palace in a grand procession the next day.

34. The Ottomans’ “Humane” Alternative to Massacring Their Brothers

Over time, a reaction set in against the Ottoman sultans’ tradition of fratricide. So a new tradition was developed to take its place: instead of new Sultans outright murdering their siblings upon ascending the throne, they simply locked them up.

Thus was born the system of the Ottoman Kafes, or “Cage”, whereby Sultans set up a secluded part of their royal Harem as a detention center for their brothers. There, potential rivals were kept under house arrest, under surveillance by palace guards and isolated from the outside world to prevent intrigues and plots. It was a harsh existence that drove some of the locked-up princess to madness. However, compared to death, it was still a relatively more humane alternative.

33. The Ruler Who Left the Corpse of His Sister’s Lover Dangling Outside Her Window

Russian Emperor Peter the Great ascended the throne as a child, so his elder Sophia ruled as regent on his behalf. When Peter grew up and sought to rule in his own right, Sophia resisted surrendering her power. So he locked her up in a monastery. Ten years later, in 1698, a lover of Sophia led the Streltsy Regiments – a sort of medieval Russian Praetorian Guard – in a failed uprising while Peter was out of the country.

Peter rushed back to Russia, but the rebellion had already collapsed by the time he returned home. Upon reaching Moscow, he brutally broke the Streltsy, who were tortured and executed by the thousands. Peter took a hands-on approach, and played an active part in the executions, personally chopping off the heads of rebels with an ax in Moscow’s Red Square. He also strung up the bodies of executed Streltsy outside Sophia’s monastery, and left the corpse of her lover dangling from a rope directly outside her window.

32. “From the Devil We Sprang”

As King Richard, the Lionheart said about his Plantagenet family: “From the Devil, we sprang, and to the Devil, we shall return“. Many contemporaries agreed that there was something demonic about the Plantagenet Dynasty (1154 – 1485). Known for their manic energies and a seeming inability to just sit still, they revolutionized and remade England. They dominated the British Isles by conquering Wales, cowing Scotland, and subduing Ireland. They created an empire stretching from Ireland to the Spanish border, and devastated France in the Hundred Years War. Europe proving too small, the Plantagenets exported their energies to the Middle East, where they wreaked havoc during the Crusades.

They were also known for their fierce intra-familial rivalries, which doomed and brought their dynasty to a dramatic end. Where others tried to take them down, and failed, the Plantagenets proved quite capable of taking themselves down. As with everything else they did, they approached the task of self-destruction by going at each other full tilt.

31. Strife From the Beginning

The Plantagenet Dynasty’s founder, King Henry II (1133 – 1189) spent much of his reign in a war against his own kin, setting a pattern of Plantagenet intra-familial rivalry. Henry’s wife and children kept raising armed rebellions against him, and he spent much of his reign fighting his own Plantagenet brood, going to war against family members in 1173, 1181, and 1184.

Henry commissioned a painting depicting him as an eagle with three of its young tearing it apart with their beaks and talons, while a fourth hangs back, waiting for an opportunity to pluck out its parent’s eyes. He died in 1189 of a broken heart upon learning that his youngest and favorite child, the hitherto loyal and obedient John (of Robin Hood and Magna Carta fame), had finally betrayed him and joined his brothers in yet another war against their father. John had been the fourth eaglet, patiently waiting on the sidelines in the painting.

30. Edward II and His Wife

King Edward II (1284 – 1327) was a poor monarch, but what damaged his authority the most was the perception that was a homosexual, and an effeminate one at that. That was a problem in a kingdom ruled by a macho warrior caste. Edward often promoted his male lovers to positions of power, only for those lovers to abuse those powers, to the disgust of the king’s subjects. His last major lover, Hugh Despenser, fit that pattern.

Edward made things worse by publicly fawning upon Hugh, which humiliated and alienated Edward’s wife, Queen Isabella. One of Edward’s enemies, Roger Mortimer, took advantage of that, seducing Isabella and making her his mistress while she was on a diplomatic mission to France in 1325. In 1326, the couple invaded England, executed Hugh Despenser and his relatives, and deposed Edward II. They replaced the king with his 14-year-old son, who was crowned as Edward III, with Mortimer as regent.

29. Isabella Avenges Herself on Her Husband

Reports of plots to rescue the deposed Edward II convinced Mortimer and Isabella to put the former king beyond rescue, by killing him. In order to avoid leaving marks of murder on the body, and contemptuous of Edward’s perceived effeminacy, the killers held him down, and inserted a red hot poker up his rear to burn his bowels from the inside. Another version has it that a tube was first inserted in his rectum, then a red hot metal bolt was dropped down the tube into his bowels.

Either way, it was a gruesome way to go, and Edward II’s dying screams were reportedly heard for miles. Mortimer retained power as regent until 1330, when Edward III decided he was old enough to rule on his own, seized Mortimer, and had him executed.

28. Richard II’s Relatives

The Plantagenets had been prone to fighting each other since the dynasty’s founding – Henry II, the dynasty’s founder spent much of his reign warring against his wife and sons. The dynasty survived those earlier travails, but it would not survive another bout of intra-dynastic bloodletting, that began in the 14th century.

It was triggered by the tyrannical rule of King Richard II, a nasty teenager who grew into a nasty adult. He surrounded himself with corrupt officials and ruled in an arbitrary and capricious manner. That led to an uprising by many lords, including some of the king’s Plantagenet relatives, who seized power.

27. Richard II Strikes Back

In 1386, Richard II’s opponents rebelled, and formed a committee known as the Lords Appellant, which governed the realm and reduced Richard to a figurehead. A Parliament, which became known as the “Merciless Parliament”, was called.

The Merciless Parliament impeached several of the king’s favorites, confiscated their property, and ordered their execution. Richard bided his time, and slowly rebuilt his power. Then in 1397, he struck back, reasserted his authority, and executed the most prominent Lords Appellant.

26. Cousin Henry Does in Cousin Richard

One of Richard II’s opponents was Henry Bolingbroke, his cousin and the son of his uncle, John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster. John of Gaunt had supported Richard and helped him regain power, and acted as intermediary between the king and his opponents, including Gaunt’s own son. However, John of Gaunt died in 1399, and Richard decided to settle scores with his son. So he disinherited Henry Bolingbroke, declared him a traitor, and banished him for life.

Bolingbroke did not stay in exile for long. He returned a few months later, raised a rebellion, and proceeded to defeat and depose his cousin. Richard II was captured and quietly murdered. Henry Bolingbroke had himself crowned as Henry IV, and founded the Lancastrian branch of the Plantagenets. The Lancastrians ruled England until the crown was disputed by the Yorkists – Plantagenets descended from John of Gaunt’s younger brother Edmund, Duke of York – in the Wars of the Roses.

25. The Plantagenets’ Last Bout of Bloodletting: The Wars of the Roses

The Plantagenets finally finished themselves off with the Wars of the Roses, between the Yorkist and Lancastrian branches of the Dynasty. They were helped in no small part by Richard Neville, 16^th Earl of Warwick (1428 – 1471), one of the most powerful noblemen of his era. Neville was a capable military commander, who began the conflict on the Yorkist side, but then switched his support to the Lancastrians. His role in making and deposing two kings earned him the nickname “Warwick the Kingmaker”.

The Wars of the Roses began when Richard, Duke of York, supported by the Nevilles, attempted to seize the crown from his cousin, the mentally incapacitated King Henry VI. However, the Duke of York and Warwick’s father were slain in battle, and the struggle passed on to the next generation of Yorkists, including Warwick and the Duke of York’s son, Edward.

24. Edward IV Had the Worst Kid Brother

Warwick the Kingmaker was instrumental in securing victory for the Yorkists, who crushed the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton in 1461. Henry VI was deposed and imprisoned, and his place was taken by the slain Duke of York’s son, crowned as Edward IV. The new king was a great warrior, but was uninterested in government, so Warwick governed the realm on his behalf.

The relationship soured because of Edward’s impulsive marriage to a commoner. That ruined years of painstaking negotiations by Warwick for a treaty between England and France, which was to have been sealed by Edward’s marriage to a French princess. Things came to a head in 1470 when Warwick, aided by King Edward’s younger brother, George, First Duke of Clarence – who had married Warwick’s daughter and thus became his son-in-law – deposed Edward. The Yorkist king fled England, while the deposed Lancastrian Henry VI was released from imprisonment, dusted off, and restored to the English throne.

23. Henry VI’s Relatives Get Rid of Him

Warwick the Kingmaker’s triumph was short-lived: Edward IV returned to England in 1471, and raised a counter-rebellion. At a critical moment, Warwick was betrayed by his son-in-law, George, Duke of Clarence, who had a change of heart and defected back to his brother, Edward. The two sides met in the Battle of Barnet in April of 1471, a Lancastrian defeat in which the Kingmaker was killed.

Another and final Yorkist victory at the Battle of Tewkesbury the following month confirmed Edward IV’s restoration to the throne. The unfortunate Henry VI was quietly murdered to eliminate the possibility of further trouble from Lancastrian loyalists. And to be thorough, Henry VI’s only son, the teenaged Henry of Lancaster, was also killed.

22. Edward IV Had Enough of His Brother

As to the wishy-washy George, Duke of Clarence, he continued to demonstrate his ingratitude to his elder brother. Understandably, that irked Edward IV, who had made his younger brother a duke in the first place, then made him Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at age of 13, only to see his generosity get repaid with multiple conspiracies. When the Duke of Clarence was caught conspiring once again, an exasperated Edward finally had enough.

The king imprisoned his younger brother in the Tower of London, and tried him for treason, personally conducting the prosecution before Parliament. George was convicted, attainted, and sentenced to death. On February 18^th, 1478, the Duke of Clarence was executed by getting dunked into a barrel of Malmsey wine, and forcibly held under until he was drowned.

21. The Plantagenets Kept Killing Each Other to the End

The Plantagenets continued their self-destructive ways and intra-familial murders until the dynasty’s final demise. When Edward IV died unexpectedly in 1483, he left his brother Richard to act as guardian for his underage sons. Richard murdered the kids and declared himself Richard III.

He ruled for two turbulent years, until he was challenged by a distant cousin, Henry Tudor – the standard-bearer of what was left of the Lancastrians. The cousins met at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, where Richard III was defeated and killed. His death ended the Plantagenet Dynasty, as his victorious cousin ascended the throne as Henry VII, the first of the Tudor Dynasty.

20. Peter the Great Was Hell on His Son

Peter the Great did not brook defiance, as he exhibited when his son and heir, Crown Prince Alexius Petrovich, tried to buck him. Peter dragged Russia – often kicking and screaming – from its medieval ways and into the modern world. His achievements included revamping the government, weakening the Orthodox Church, modernizing and strengthening the military, and expanding Russia’s borders. He also moved the capital from Moscow to a new city that he built on the Baltic and named after himself, St. Petersburg.

Peter’s reforms faced significant resistance from the old order, but the Emperor ruthlessly enforced his will, steamrolling over all opposition. Tragically, those steamrolled included his own son and heir, Alexius, who had sought to stake out his individuality by contrasting himself with his father.

19. Crown Prince Alexius Tries to Defy His Father

Alexius Petrovich’s mother had been pious and conservative, so Peter the Great forced her into a convent when Alexius was eight. Understandably, that scarred Alexius. In contrast to his modernizing father, Alexius became conservative and religious and attracted admirers from amongst the traditionalists pining for the old days. Unfortunately for Alexius, the kinds of kids who get away with that are the kinds of kids who don’t have Peter the Great for a father.

The reformist Emperor, determined to protect his legacy from the threat of repeal by a successor down the road, sought to force his son into seeing things his way. The father-son relationship cracked for good in 1715, when Peter threatened to deprive Alexius of the succession. To his astonishment, the Crown Prince agreed to relinquish his claim to the throne, and volunteered to enter a monastery. At the last moment, however, Alexius had a change of heart and fled to Vienna, where he secured asylum from the Habsburgs.

18. Whipping His Son to Death

The embarrassment of his son’s flight to the Habsburgs enraged Peter, who sent agents to track down Alexius. In 1717, they handed him a letter in which the Emperor berated Alexius, but promised not to punish him if he returned to Russia. Ignoring warnings that it was a trick, the Crown Prince returned to Russia in 1718, where he begged forgiveness during a public spectacle in which he was disinherited.

The Emperor forced him to name those who had aided his flight, which resulted in the torture and execution of dozens of Alexius associates. That done, Peter ordered his son jailed. In June, 1718, Peter ordered Alexius whipped for days, until he confessed to conspiring to murder his father. The whipping was so severe that Peter’s son died of his wounds within a week.

17. The Queen Who Married and Killed Her Brother

Cleopatra VII, of Caesar and Marc Antony fame, carried on Ptolemaic family’s tradition of incest by marrying her younger brother, Ptolemy XIII. Also carrying on another family tradition, this one of infighting, the siblings fell out, and Cleopatra was forced to flee Egypt to Syria. She returned with an army, and fought a civil war that devastated the realm. The conflict seesawed, until Julius Caesar arrived in Egypt in 48 BC, and sided with Cleopatra, who became his mistress.

Her brother refused to accept the Roman dictator’s decision, and it ended badly for him. In the Battle of the Nile in December of 48 BC, Ptolemy XIII’s army was routed by Caesar. Cleopatra’s brother/ husband drowned in the aftermath, either accidentally or at the hands of his sister’s agents. Cleopatra then married another brother, Ptolemy XIV, while continuing her affair with Caesar.

16. The King Whose Mother Made Clear He Was Not Her Favorite Child

Caesar’s Cleopatra was not her dynasty’s first scandalous Cleopatra. A century earlier, when Ptolemy VIII Potbelly died in 116 BC, his wife and reigning queen, Cleopatra III, made her son Ptolemy IX, nicknamed Chickpea, her co-regent. However, Ptolemy IX had not been her favorite son, and she had been forced to choose him because of public pressure.

She worked out some of her resentment by forcing Chickpea to divorce his sister-wife Cleopatra IV, and replace her with his mother’s sister and Ptolemy IX’s aunt, Cleopatra Selene I. The ditched sister and ex-wife fled to Syria. There, she married into the royal family and reigned as queen until she was murdered. As to Ptolemy IX Chickpea, Cleopatra III accused him of having tried to murder her and deposed him in 107 BC. In his place, Cleopatra III installed her favorite son, Alexander, who ascended the throne as Ptolemy X.

15. Cleopatra III Got Little Gratitude From Her Favorite Son

After deposing her son Ptolemy IX Chickpea in favor of her favorite son, Ptolemy X, Cleopatra III settled in to enjoy her twilight years as queen and co-regent. Her enjoyment did not last long, however. In 101 BC, Ptolemy X tired of ruling jointly with his mother, decided to go solo, and had her murdered.

Ptolemy X then made his wife, Cleopatra Bernice III, queen and co-regent. Bernice III was also his niece – the daughter of his brother, the Ptolemy IX Chickpea who had been deposed by their mother Cleopatra III. A popular uprising in 88 BC overthrew Ptolemy X, who fled to Syria. He returned with a mercenary army, whom he paid by looting and melting down the golden sarcophagus of Alexander the Great. That infuriated the Alexandrians, who deposed and chased him out of Egypt again. Ptolemy X was killed while trying to flee to Cyprus, and was succeeded by his brother and father-in-law, the previous king Ptolemy IX Chickpea.

14. There’s Ruthless, and There’s Murdering Your Baby to Frame a Rival Ruthless

According to Confucian tenets, women are unfit to rule. Wu Zhao (624 – 705) did not care much for that bit of Confucian conventional wisdom and became the sole officially recognized empress during China’s two millennia of imperial rule. Her rise began at age 14, when she was taken into Emperor Taizong’s harem as a concubine. The emperor was not into intelligent women, and thus did not favor Wu, who had brains as well as beauty.

Being an intelligent woman, and looking ahead, Wu had an affair with the emperor’s son and eventual successor, who was not intimidated by smart women. When her lover became Emperor Gaozong after his father’s death, he made Wu his favorite concubine, and eventually elevated her to his second wife – a huge jump in the imperial harem’s rankings. Wu was not content to remain second fiddle, however. So she reportedly strangled her own infant daughter, and framed the emperor’s first wife for the death.

13. Wu Zhao Steps to the Throne Over Her Daughter’s Corpse

Framing her rival for the murder of her infant daughter worked great for Wu Zhao, who was elevated in the imperial palace’s ranks to become the emperor’s official consort. Upon the emperor’s death, he was succeeded by Wu’s child, with Wu acting as regent.

When her son came of age, he tried to assert himself and rule independently. So Wu deposed and exiled him, replacing him with a younger son. Six years later, tiring of the pretense about who really ran China, she deposed that son as well, and officially proclaimed herself empress.

12. The King Who Married His Sister – and Murdered Her Kid on Their Wedding Night

In the second century BC, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Egypt, captured Alexandria, and made King Ptolemy VI his puppet ruler. The people of Alexandria rioted, and chose the puppet king’s obese younger brother, Ptolemy VIII Potbelly as monarch. After the Seleucids were forced out of Egypt by Roman threats, Ptolemy Potbelly agreed to a three-way joint rule, with his brother Ptolemy VI, and their sister Cleopatra II, who was also Ptolemy VI’s wife.

The arrangement did not work out. Ptolemy Potbelly was away from Egypt when Ptolemy VI died in 145 BC. Cleopatra II, the deceased king’s sister-wife, and Potbelly’s sibling as well, promptly declared her son, Ptolemy VII, as king. When Potbelly returned, he convinced his widowed sister to marry him, promising that the sibling spouses would rule jointly. However, he doubled crossed his sister/ new wife, by having her son, Ptolemy VII, murdered during the wedding feast. He also reneged on his promise to rule jointly with his sister-wife and declared himself sole ruler.

11. The Royal Who Threw Out Her Baby

It is hard to find a more cartoonishly evil mother than Fredegonde (circa 545 – 597). She started off as a servant of Audovera, wife of Frankish king Chilperic I of Soissons, and caught the king’s eye. She convinced him to divorce Audovera and dump her into a convent, then became Chilperic’s mistress. Chilperic eventually ditched Fredegunda to marry a noblewoman, Galswintha. So Fredegonde personally strangled Galswintha to death.

Fredegonde then resumed her place at Chilperic’s side, as his official mistress and queen consort. In 580, a dysentery epidemic afflicted king Chilperic, as well as two of his sons with Fredegonde. She took that as a sign of divine displeasure for her sins, and made some efforts to mend her ways, but soon reverted to being cartoonishly evil. While besieged in a city, another of her sons, a baby, became seriously ill. Worried that she might catch whatever her kid had, Fredegonde ordered him cast away, and let him die.

10. Fredegonde’s Daughter Discovers the Risks of Challenging Her Mother

Abandoning her baby to die was at least driven by Fredegonde’s animal instinct for survival and the desire, ignoble as it might be, to save herself. Not so what she did to her own daughter, Rigunth. That worthy, a chip off the old block, was just as scheming as her mother, but not as wily and ruthless.

As she grew into beautiful young woman, Rigunth took to bragging that she would soon take her mother’s place as the king’s mistress and queen consort. She should have recalled what her mother had done to other rivals, before running off the mouth. As seen below, a jealous Fredegonde responded by trying to crush her daughter’s head.

9. Crushing Her Daughter’s Head

Infuriated by her daughter’s attempts to replace her as royal mistress, Fredegonde decided to do her in a most dramatic way. As described by a medieval chronicler: “Fredegonde was jealous of her own daughter, Rigunth, who continually declared that she should be mistress in her place. she waited her opportunity and under the pretense of magnanimity took her to the treasure-room and showed her the King’s jewels in a large chest.

Feigning fatigue, she exclaimed, “I am weary; put thou in thy hand, and take out what thou mayest find.” The mother thereupon forced down the lid on her neck and would have killed her had not the servants finally rushed to her aid“.

8. The Religious Zealot Who Killed Her Kid

When Byzantine Emperor Leo IV died, he left the empire to his son, the child Emperor Constantine VI, with the kid’s mother, Irene (circa 753 – 803), as regent. After consolidating her power, Irene set about undoing the preceding decades of Iconoclasm – a religious movement that had banned icons and religious imagery.

She went about it with all the tenacity and enthusiasm of a religious zealot. In her determination to let nothing stand in the way of her mission, Irene rode roughshod over opponents, including her own son, whom she killed in a particularly cruel way.

7. Gouging Out Her Kid’s Eyes

Empress Irene began the process of rolling back Iconoclasm by calling a church council in 786, and packing it with her supporters. Unsurprisingly, the council concluded that Iconoclasm had been a huge mistake. That kicked off a Byzantine counter-reformation against the Iconoclasts – supporters of Iconoclasm – who resisted the return of religious imagery just as vehemently as their opponents had resisted the destruction of icons.

When Irene’s son Constantine VI came of age, he declared himself an Iconoclast. Irene demonstrated the strength of her faith by overthrowing him, and in 797, had him mutilated by gouging out his eyes. He was maimed so severely, that he died of his wounds soon thereafter. Irene then proclaimed herself empress, and continued her quest to undo Iconoclasm and reintroduce religious imagery.

6. The Persian King Whose Mother Despised Him

Alexander the Great kicked off his conquest of the Persian Empire by defeating the Persian governor of Asia Minor in the Battle of the Granicus River, 334 BC. That got the attention of Persia’s King Darius III, so he set out at the head of a huge to settle Alexander’s hash in person.

They met at the Battle of Isus in 333 BC, another Persian defeat, that ended with Darius fleeing the field. He left behind not only his defeated army, as well as his baggage and supplies, but also his family and harem, including his mother, Sisigambis. Getting ditched and left behind by her fleeing son soured Sisigambis on Darius, and left her with a lifelong sense of loathing towards her offspring.

5. “I Have But One Son”

When Alexander captured Darius’ female relatives, he treated them with respect. However, the Persian king’s flight left his mother, Sisigambis, seething with contempt for her son, who had left her behind. The Persian king was beaten by Alexander once more at the Battle of Gaugamela, which also ended with Darius fleeing the field.

When Darius was eventually killed, Alexander sent his body to Sisigambis, to mourn for and bury him. Instead, she coldly said: “I have but one son [meaning Alexander] and he is king of all Persia“. By contrast, when Alexander died a decade later, Sisygambis went into paroxysms of mourning, refusing to leave her room or eat, and died of grief a few days later.

4. The Emperor Who Slept With His Mother

Nero (37 – 68 AD) became emperor as a teenager in 54, and was dominated by his mother, who reportedly controlled him with incest. As one contemporary writer described it: “whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by stains in his clothing“.

That kind of upbringing sheds light on how Nero ended up so depraved. When Nero grew older he tried to assert his independence, but his mother refused to give up her power, and kept meddling in government. So he decided to murder her.

3. Who Knew Murdering One’s Mother Could Be Such a Hassle?

Nero resorted to elaborate schemes to get rid of his mother, because he wanted to make her death look accidental. He had a roof specially constructed to collapse on top of his mother, but she survived. He then gifted her with pleasure barge that was specially designed to collapse. The barge collapsed in the middle of a lake while Nero watched from his villa, but to his astonishment, his mother made it out of the wreckage, swam like an otter, and made it to shore.

Horrified, and dreading the awkwardness of the inevitable confrontation, Nero finally threw in the towel on subtlety. Abandoning all pretense, he sent his henchmen to club his mother to death with oars.

2. Cuckolding an Emperor Proved Bad For a Courtier’s Health

Peter the Great’s sister and son were not the only relatives to feel his wrath: his wife got a taste of it, too. Late in his reign, rumors made the rounds that Peter’s wife, the Empress Catherine, was having an affair with her private secretary, Willem Mons. Gossip had it that the duo were lovers, and that Willem Mons’ sister, Matryona Balk, had played matchmaker.

One of the juicier tales held that “Peter had found his wife with Mons one moonlit night in a compromising position in her garden“. Whether or not Peter had actually witnessed his wife getting it on with her secretary, he did get word of the lurid stories about his wife. It ended badly for her lover.

1. Making His Wife Keep Her Lover’s Head in Her Bedroom

Peter the Great had his wife’s lover, Willem Mons, arrested and hauled off in chains on charges of embezzlement and abuse of trust. Mons’ sister Matryona, the supposed matchmaker, was also arrested, publicly whipped, and exiled to Siberia. On November 28^th, 1724, eight days after his arrest, Willem Mons was publicly beheaded in St. Petersburg.

While that was going on, Catherine put on a public display of indifference towards her secretary’s fate, which probably saved her own head. However, Peter put on a final demonstration of his power, in a bid to test whether his wife’s indifference was genuine. He had Mons’ head preserved in alcohol and put in a glass jar, which he then placed in Catherine’s bedroom.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

History Collection – History’s Deadliest Relatives

Atlas Obscura – What Happened to the Severed Head of Peter the Great’s Wife’s Lover?

Cawthorne, Nigel – Daughter of Heaven: The True Story of the Only Woman to Become Emperor of China (2007)

Daily Sabah, August 6^th, 2015 – The History of Fratricide in the Ottoman Empire

Encyclopedia Britannica – Henry II, King of England

Encyclopedia Britannica – Ptolemy VIII

History Collection – Deadly Family Spats Through the Centuries

Glubb, Sir John – A Short History of the Arab People (1969)

Herrin, Judith – Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (2001)

Hughes, Lindsey – Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (1998)

Jones, Dan – The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (2014)

Massie, Robert K. – Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980)

History Collection – Historical Rulers Who Murdered Members Of Their Own Family

Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium – Empress Irene

Plutarch – Plutarch’s Lives

Rejected Princesses – Fredegund: Assassination-Obsessed Queen

Spartacus Educational – King Richard II

Suetonius – The Lives of the Twelve Caesars

Thought Co – Wars of the Roses: An Overview

Warfare History Network – The Fourth Fitna: a Family Feud That Crippled a Caliphate

History Collection – Powerful Historic Family Dynasties that Are Rotten to the Core