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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 the Great and Empress Catherine. Town and Country

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

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.