Historical Filth- Five Weird Weddings

Kafka2

Whale-raping abomination
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Historical Filth- Five Weird Weddings

Recently I had a bit of a crisis about these articles I dish out. I started wondering whether it was seemly for a grown man to be sniffing around in the knicker-drawer of history, attempting to dress up blatant mucky smut in just enough historical detail to be make the cut in history forums. It got to the point where I was considering stopping these altogether- I'd even planned out a new series where I salvage the reputations of characters who have been unfairly damned in modern times. A worthy enterprise, I'm sure you'll agree.

Then, in an entirely typical act of perversity I decided to write possibly my least justifiable piece ever. Enjoy.

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Henry IV Bolingbroke and Mary de Bohun


This one is probably only weird by modern standards. Marriages between children weren't unusual in medieval royalty (David II of Scotland was married at the age of 4), but there was usually a decorous interval of several years before children emerged. Not in this case, however. It's not recorded when the marriage took place, but the young pair were certainly up to the job because their first child was born when Henry (1367- 1413) was just 15 and his wife was 12. Their legacy is still honoured today, in the many underaged fumblings behind bike-sheds all over the land.



Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette


Everything seemed to go so well at first. At their marriage in 1770, Louis was 16 and Marie 15. The whole of France sat back and happily waited for royal babies to dutifully pop forth. Except they didn't....

After a few years, courtiers were getting concerned, and delicate questions started to be asked of Louis. Actually, let's not beat about the bush- they were asking him if he was putting it in the right place.The indignant king brushed off their enquiries at first, but eventually he revealed all. It transpired that he suffered from a slight deformity of the foreskin that hindered him in experiencing any form of sexual sensation, and to this problem was added the fact that his sex education hadn't gone into much detail. To cut a long story short, while he was putting it in the right place, that's all he was doing. These formal insertions would be followed by an equally formal withdrawal and buttoning-up, and a dutiful "Goodnight dear".

After a spot of minor penile surgery and some rather more graphic sexual instruction, the king went about his duty rather more productively, and a fruitful marriage was theirs. Then they got guillotined.



George IV and Catherine of Brunswick


This is a particular favourite of mine. George (1762- 1830) was a typical Hanoverian prince even from his mid-teens- happily racking up the odd bastard child and secret marriage here and there, much to the displeasure of his parents (despite the fact that bigamy appeared to be a genetic trait in the family, alongside insanity, inbreeding and gout). He was possibly Britain's most promiscuous heir to the throne, and would have happily carried on for years, had he not run up colossal debts through his pursuit of high fashion, weird sex in strange clubs, and gambling. Eventually, in order to get his debts cleared, Parliament forced him into a political marriage with his cousin Caroline of Brunswick (1768- 1821).

She was a terrible choice. Rather than being a dutiful little virgin, she had already racked up a few affairs of her own. She was also decidedly plain and had a volcanic temper. To top it all, she had a famously relaxed attitude to her personal hygiene, and stunk. The "happy" couple met for the first time three days before the wedding, whereupon Catherine loudly declared her disappointment at the sight of such a fat and unattractive man. George went very pale and had to be plied with brandy to remain in her malodorous presence.

The wedding was a joy. George had threatened to run away, and his friends had to get him blind drunk in order to get him married at all- he spent most of the ceremony unconscious in a chair. Remarkably, out of some heroic sense of duty, he dragged himself out at one point in the night and fell into the bedchamber. Emerging a few minutes later, looking decidely green about the gills, he returned to his chair by the fire and blacked out again. Nine months later their child (unsurpringly, it was their only child) was born.

The rest of their married life was precictably disastrous. They both had affairs, and didn't speak to each other for years. George made strenuous attempts to keep Caroline out of the country, and attempted to bribe her with £50,000 to stay away from his coronation. He also launched two seperate Parliamentary inquiries into her sexual conduct, which was a little hypocritical given that he was still happily jumping anything with ovaries at the time.



Peter III and Catherine The Great


Can we get one thing straight from the start? Ok- please pay careful attention...

CATHERINE THE GREAT NEVER HAD SEX WITH A HORSE.

Ok? Got that? It never happened. It's a myth. Believe me- I wish it was true, as it would have got her a much larger entry (if you'll pardon the pun). No it wasn't horses. It was the people who rode them. My God, did she have a weakness for young cavalry officers. All those firm thighs in tight, tight breeches....

Anyway, I digress. Peter III (1728- 1762) was, to be blunt, a moron. Russia saw some fairly useless rulers in its history, but he really takes some beating. The funeral of the Empress Elizabeth (which saw him become Tsar) treated the citizens to the sight of their new ruler skipping and capering like an excited child at the head of the cortege. In 1745 he married Sophie Frederike Auguste, a 16-year old German princess, who took the name Catherine. He never got the hang of all that icky kissy stuff- his courtiers would dutifully lock him in with young Catherine in the hope that he might start feeling a few primal urges, but he would just spend the night playing with his toys instead. The bored bride quickly started taking a succession of lovers, one of whom assisted in the eventual murder of Peter. Catherine took the throne (and a few more young cavalry officers on the way) and became a great ruler, but I'm stuffed if I'm going to cover worthy topics in a "Filth" article. Suffice to say that she was still riding young men into her 60's, right up to her fatal stroke which took place while she was taking a dump. Not taking a horse. Got that?



John Ruskin & Effie Grey


John Ruskin (1819- 1890) was a great man in the world of art. He was probably the greatest and most influential art critic of all time- his championing of Turner's later works paved the way for modernism. Unfortunately he's probably best-known these days for his disastrous marriage to Effie Grey.

Already famous for his work, Ruskin was urged by his parents to marry the daughter of some Scottish family friends, and was only too pleased to oblige (he had fallen hopelessly in love with a Spanish girl at 17, but had been rejected). In April 1848, the couple were married, and after the usual festivities the young couple retired to their bridal bed. That's when it all started to go wrong...

After a short interval, Ruskin's servants were startled to hear the sounds of what appeared to be a man in some considerable distress. This was followed by the sight of Ruskin bursting out of the room and fleeing down the corridor in terror, stopping only to vomit out of a window. He refused to return to his room and spent the remainder of the night quivering on a couch, refusing to talk about what had happened. The full story did not emerge until the divorce proceedings years later- as Ruskin stated in his deposition to the court proceedings "the female form was not what I thought it was".

Ruskin had been deceived by Classical Art. The hundreds of artistic nudes he had seen in pictures or sculpture had not prepared him for one shocking fact- the true appearance of female genitalia and pubic hair. Expecting something broadly similar to the sexless planes of white marble or creamy skin he was so familiar with, the reality left him convinced that he'd married a monster. For the six years they were married, Ruskin never again attempted to consummate the marriage and was probably quite relieved when Effie left him for a young Pre-Raphaelite painter whose experiences with life models left him better-equipped to cope with women. They raised a large family together. Meanwhile Ruskin started falling miserably in love with pre-pubescent girls, became increasingly depressed and reclusive, and died a virgin.

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That's yer lot from me. Now it's your turn. I've only picked out five, but there's got to be loads more out there. What's in your nation's history?
 
an historically interesting,low down, filthy read kafka- keep up the great work :goodjob: (to be honest with you, it the anticipation of historical filth articles that kepe me lured much to the history section of the site at all anymore, it would be a shame to see you stop doing them, even if you get some silly notion that it isnt approriate, but then, what ever your choice of articles, I'm sure they will be f the same high quality filth you have thus far spewed forth from the septic tank of history ;)
 
I particularly like the last one. That one's strange and funny. Never heard of that Catherine the Great and a horse thing before though.

Btw, where did you get these stories from?
 
Originally posted by the mormegil

Btw, where did you get these stories from?

All over the place. I read a colossal amount of history work, and whenever I find a snippet that seems ludicrous or disgusting, I dig deeper.
 
Awh, Peter III and Catherine The Great is horribly lacking in details -- sad, because that's my personal favorite.
 
Kafka, thank you for reminding me why I look forward to your articles!

But a couple of juicy tidbits about Peter & Catherine that you didn't mention: When it became obvious that Peter wasn't carrying out his husbandly duty, his aunt, Czarina Elizabeth, desperate to ensure heirs to the throne, actually encouraged Catherine to have a liason with the first of her lovers. The child Catherine gave birth to nine months later was almost certainly not fathered by her husband Peter. An heir was assured, but this also resulted in the very real possibility that the child, the future Czar Paul, as well as all of his successors, were not in fact related to the ruling Romanov family at all!

Also, when Peter finally did start feeling those primal urges, he focused them not on his lovely wife, but on a hunchacked dwarf!
 
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