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

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2020 33 min

Wars of the Roses - Battle of Bosworth Field — The Wars of the Roses, during which the Plantagenet Dynasty destroyed itself. Encyclopedia Britannica

‘Peter I Interrogates Crown Prince Alexius Petrovich at Peterhoff’, by Nikolai Ge, 1871. Wikimedia

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.

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.