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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

Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger. Wikimedia

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.

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.