From the queen who burned down an entire town
using birds to the woman who became possibly the world’s most prolific serial killer,
today we have a show for you about the darkness that can eclipse a person's life
once they are put in a position of power. 12.
Let’s start with a story of eye-gouging because every ancient tale of kings and queens should
include someone getting their eyes torn out. This queen in question was Irene of Athens.
She was born sometime around the year 750. We don’t know too much about her early
days, but we do know she came from a family that could greatly influence
politics. That meant she was always destined to be involved in all that violent
malarkey that came with politics back then. It seems as though she might have been an
orphan who was adopted into this family, with the head of the family being a guy named
Constantine Sarantapechos. He was either her uncle or cousin but what’s important is
that he was a patrician, a part of the ruling class in the great city of Athens.
Irene ended up getting hitched to the son of the Byzantine ruler Emperor Constantine V.
This son, Leo, may have picked her from a bride show. Irene was apparently easy
on the eyes. In short, they had a son, and then when the emperor died, Leo became
the new emperor. That made Irene the empress. So, things were now looking fine and dandy
for Irene, although things were never really fine in the Byzantine royal back rooms. That
was where all the talk of skullduggery took place and it is where people spread vicious
rumors after Irene’s Leo kicked the bucket. She was made regent and her son, now nine, was
in a precarious position being so young and there being many people from the family thinking
they should be the next emperor. This young boy may have been a kind of emperor, but a lot of
powerful people didn’t think that was right. This was a tricky time for Irene, so she did what
any queen would do and called in for some backup. That backup was mainly a bunch of Byzantine-era
special forces called the Excubitors. It seems she got busy banishing folks
from the city of Constantinople, and she may also have had the whip brought out now and
again for anyone thinking about making a fuss in the royal court. If you were loyal to Irene, you
stayed. If you were not loyal, you were banished, or whipped until you had a change of mind.
But it seems as a regent she was quite power-hungry, loving to see her face
on coins which was normally a privilege reserved for the emperor. Let’s remember here
that being a female regent wasn’t easy. There were just too many people who wanted you
dead. Take, for instance, Empress Martina. Martina was the last woman to become regent
prior to Irene and guess what happened to her? After about one year in the big seat, she was
accused of poisoning folks and being power-hungry. So, they cut out her tongue. Her sons were then
paraded in front of her, and their noses were cut off. Her youngest sons were castrated. Then
the lot of them were banished to a small island. Make no mistake, Irene knew all about that story.
She ruled well, making just the right friendships, but her son started getting a bit peeved with
her as he turned into a man. This ended with an open rebellion, but Irene came out on
top, and it seems she forgave her son at first. He tried again to topple her, and again he
failed, this time running away to the provinces. But, Irene’s army caught up with him and
dragged him back to the palace. He pleaded with his mother but she was having none of it. She
told her men to rip out his eyes, which they did, leaving the young man screaming on the floor.
He may actually have not survived the ordeal. Losing your eyes or nose in those days was serious
business, given that they had no skilled surgeons as we do now or medications for infections.
So, was Irene a brutal ruler? Well, let’s be honest, she was almost always
surrounded by potential enemies. We know that a mother watching on as her son’s eyes are
ripped out is what you might call a tad brutal, but back then it wasn’t all that strange.
Irene was deposed after a while and sent to an island where she lived for about one
year and died. She apparently became a wool spinner during that last year, which is quite
a fall for a former queen. She was probably in her mid to late 40s at the time of her death.
Ok, now for someone downright crazy, and we mean in the maniac sense of the word.
11. Maria Eleonora is such a wonderful-sounding name,
but Maria the Monster also has a ring to it. Her story starts at the beginning of the
17th century when the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, was looking for a wife. One day he’d become an accomplished
military leader, but in his early 20s, he did what his mother told him.
He actually wanted to marry a woman named Ebba Brahe, but his
mother wouldn’t allow that. They still wrote to each other often,
but it seems nothing really came of the relationship. Then the king got
wind of a 17-year old girl who many said was the most beautiful person
around. This was Maria Eleonora. They eventually married, although it’s said Maria
could have gotten married to any number of rich and powerful men including the king of England.
She was generally well-liked by most people, although historians say she liked to party
a bit too much. Her favorite pastime was watching shows which consisted of actors
who were severe mental problems. She also loved shows where the actors had dwarfism.
So, in general, she liked mocking people who were let’s say a bit different from her. Then something
went wrong. She had a miscarriage, and it seems this sent her over the edge. She walked around
using foul language, screaming at anyone close by using the most obscene words. She also became
paranoid and violent, which is never a good mix. She later had a child, and that kid died after
about one year. Remember that the King needed a son, too, but most of the time he was risking
life and limb in battles. That could mean no male heir if he died while fighting,
and this put a lot of pressure on Maria. Then they finally had a baby girl, although
Maria was horrified at what she saw. The baby, to be named Christina, had a certain genetic
condition which meant she was covered in hair. Having a baby that resembled bigfoot seems
to have finally sent her fully over the edge. Her first words when the baby was handed to her
were, “Instead of a son, I am given a daughter, dark and ugly, with a great nose and black eyes.
Take her from me, I will not have such a monster!" She had good moments, but many bad ones. She got
pregnant again and with a bump in her stomach had a boating accident. She then shouted to her
friends, “Jesus, I cannot feel my child!” This became yet another miscarriage.
She really wanted a baby boy, of course. But what she ended up with was a girl
that she’d hated from day one. It’s suspicious then that Christina kept having strange accidents
throughout her young life like falling down the stairs multiple times, which was probably her
tumbling down after being pushed by her mom. So, while her husband was away fighting
in wars, she was at home torturing her kid. On various occasions, Christina
should have died in those accidents, so we are going to call that attempted murder.
Then, when Christina was seven, her father died. Guess who Maria blamed for the death? She
blamed the daughter she so much detested. For about one year, Maria forced Christina to
stay in a dark room alone. There were candles, but Maria expressly told the servants that
not one beam of light should enter that room. But here’s the kicker, for a while
the dead body of the king was placed in an open casket on the bed and Maria told
Christina she had to sleep next to it. Yes, she had lost the plot, so much so that
she had Christina taken away from her. She was the mother from hell, although we think
she had some serious mental health issues. Ok, now for arguably the
most hated queen of all time. 10.
This is the story of Marie-Antoinette. A beautiful and cruel queen is
living the high life in France, where countless people are starving to
death. Life is so unfair and unequal that one of the greatest revolutions is
about to happen and it’s going to lead to a lot of rich folks losing their heads.
When we say living standards were unequal, we are talking about the obscene wealth of
people living in lavishly opulent 50-bedroom country houses and poor people who could
not even afford a piece of bread each day. As a certain story goes, one day in 1789
a servant was brushing the queen’s hair when someone came into the room and announced
something along the lines of, “Your majesty. The harvest has been a terrible one and people are
dying from famine. There is no bread to eat.” Marie replied, “Let them eat cake.”
She was so out of touch with reality that she really thought her people
could all eat expensive cakes. Historians tell us she never actually said
that, or probably didn’t. The story might have been told time and again just to show how
selfish the nobility was. Marie spent money on unbelievable luxuries when the people of France
could not eat, and she was taking her money from public funds. It didn’t help her case that
she was also said to be a bit of a Libertine. So, when she appeared in the Place de la
Révolution on her execution day you can bet that it was a huge celebration. She was, without
doubt, the most hated woman in France. At about 12.15 pm her head was placed on the block of
the guillotine and whoosh; the queen was dead. Was she really that brutal?
Maybe not so much compared to the other women you’ll hear about today, but let’s be
honest, to enjoy living in insane luxury while not caring at all about mass death from starvation
going on around you isn’t exactly a nice thing. Right, let’s now talk about one of
history’s most infamous serial killer. 9.
Her name was Elizabeth Báthory, and while she was a countess and not a queen, her story
is too outstanding to not include on this list. The records show that this woman was almost
inhuman in regard to the utter sadism she inflicted on people. For one, she seems
to have hated her servants and she would torture and kill them over the smallest
matters. She even had a special torture room built for her brutal daily activities.
In the late 1500s and early 1600s, she used her power to lure peasants back to her abode.
She preferred good-looking young women, whose blood she thought would help her retain her
beauty in old age. She would sometimes tear at the woman with her teeth, like a savage animal.
But, after 100s of peasants had died some people became suspicious, especially as it was
getting harder to get rid of the dead bodies. Bathory got older and became convinced that
drinking her victim’s blood wasn’t working, so she told her servants to go out and find
her women and girls with noble blood. These were hard to come by, so her servants ended
up dressing peasants up in fine clothes and telling them they had to pretend to be noble.
To cut a long story short, the authorities were finally pushed into starting an investigation,
even if Bathory was supremely powerful. They ended up finding mutilated bodies around
her massive house, including folks who’d obviously been chewed on by Bathory.
As you can imagine, this became a great scandal. About 300 people came forward and
explained just how sadistic Bathory was, and how one day they’d sent their child
to see her, and the child never came back. The servants who’d helped Bathory pick up
the victims were all beheaded, but Bathory, being so rich, was just told she’d have to spend
the rest of her life locked in a rather luxurious castle. We’ll never know the exact number of her
victims, but it could have been as many as 650. Let’s now go over to Asia.
8. Wu Zetian was a Chinese woman who historians
have from time to time called a tyrant ruler. Born on February 17, 624, for a time she took
over what was known as the Tang Dynasty. She might have had some tyrannical leanings, but
back in those days getting blood on your hands was part and parcel of being a ruler. It must be
said, though, that she lessened corruption and was behind some positive economic reforms.
She was a good leader, in some respects. It’s what she did to get to power that you
could call a little bit sketchy. For instance, when she was just starting out she joined
the harem of Emperor Gaozong. Once there, she went about killing others in the harem to
ensure that one day she would become the empress. Some historians have written that to stay
in power she was absolutely ruthless, and may even have murdered two of her own
children, although that is still up for debate. It should be said that this particular
rumor surfaced long after she had died. Then after she secured her position, she kept it
by coming down hard on anyone that criticized her. Some of those that did, were either sent into
exile or executed. It seems this kind of thing went on all throughout her life, although as we
said, those days, in general, could be brutal. Next up is another person
who it seems lost her mind. 7.
Her name was Maria I, known for being for the first Queen of Portugal
and often called Maria the Pious there. But in Brazil, a country where she was also the
monarch, she got the name “Maria the Mad”. She was the eldest daughter of King Dom José. When he passed away in 1777, Maria took the
throne. She had a husband who became king, King Dom Pedro III, but it was
her who was the lineal heir to the throne and so she wielded all the power.
It seems at the start she did a pretty good job, but something wasn’t quite right in her mind,
and she often suffered from debilitating bouts of melancholia. When these came on
she would often became delirious and then end up having to be carried home.
Her husband died, and let’s just say things didn’t get much better for her after that. Like
the Roman Emperor Caligula had once done after the death of his sister, Maria made sure everyone
under her mourned for this great man. She made life miserable for normal people because of her
own loss, not allowing regular festivities to take place. But she wasn’t only a party pooper.
It wasn’t long until she couldn’t rule at all, and spent much of her time alone in her room. This
was a place from where people would often hear wild screams. She was later taken to Brazil, but
things didn’t get any better there. She spent all of her time alone in bed, half-mad, hence that’s
why in Brazil they called her “Maria the Mad”. She stayed like that until she died in 1816.
So, while Maria might not be the most brutal woman on this list, she was certainly a
terrible queen once her madness kicked in. This next queen was much, much worse.
6. Her name was Queen Ranavalona I and she
ruled Madagascar between 1828 and 1861. Once her husband had kicked the bucket,
she took over, and she became known as an avid isolationist who spent much of her
time keeping European colonists at bay, something which made European powers quite
displeased. Many of the horror stories about this queen came from European explorers
in the region, so we must take everything written about her with a slight pinch of salt.
Still, it’s we know for sure that she amassed a great army, but she didn’t ensure they were
fed well. It’s said her forces died wholesale from general ill health, forced labor, but
also starvation. If you were against her, she would put you through what we now call
a “Trial by Ordeal”, meaning she’d find out someone’s innocence or guilt by making
them endure some terrible, sadistic torture. With so many of her soldiers dying and so
many civilians also becoming ill and dying, the population of Madagascar pretty much halved.
So, that’s certainly a black mark against her name. But she also came down hard
on Christians, sometimes putting them through those trials of ordeals after
accusing them of some kind of witchcraft. It was this widespread oppression of people that
have made some historians call her a tyrant ruler, although other academics have said some of her
misdeeds were exaggerated. One of those misdeeds, which may or may not be true, was
her starving her own mother to death. The next lady on the list wins
for just being plain weird. 5. Her name was Juana la Loca and she was
the Queen of Castile from 1504 to 1516. It seems at the start of her reign she
didn’t do much ruling at all. She was confined for much of itas she was deemed
unfit to rule. So, without any real power, we can’t blame her for any special brutalities.
But it was because of her and her family arguing about who would rule that led to the
country falling into disorder. This was really bad news for much of the poorer
population who died in famines or from the plague. It’s thought half of the population
of Castile died during those horrific years. Things didn’t get any better as she got
older, and it’s said she lost her mind, thinking everyone was out to get her –
including some nuns who were only trying to take care of her. She would barely eat, and
she refused to wash or change her clothes. There is some chance that she might have
suffered from a severe mental condition such as schizophrenia, but there is also a
chance that the many people who contended with her for power said this about her so
they could say she was not fit to rule. Some of the stories they told, which could
have been true, included her going back again and again to her dead husband’s coffin and
asking for it to be opened. She would then stroke the dead body and kiss his very cold feet.
There are also rumors that when she traveled, the coffin and its occupant went with her,
asking for it to be placed under her bed. If you want to know what made her
that crazy, just look at her mother. 4.
That was Isabella I of Castile. She ruled Spain at the side of King Ferdinand
II from 1451 through 1504, a period in time that saw the start of the notorious Spanish
Inquisition. We cannot place all of the blame on her for kicking off this ghastly time in
history, but she played a really big part in it. Isabella was the one who created the formal
mass expulsion decree leading to the expulsion of Jews and Muslims as well as mass toruture of
whoever she thought threatened her position. That itself would be enough to label someone
a little bit brutal, but it gets worse. Many of those people who weren’t expelled
had to face the music of the investigations, which we call the inquisition. This
often included being tortured and the woman we just talked about, Joanna, grew
up watching her mother order such tortures. In fact, it’s said that because Joanna’s
faith didn’t seem strong enough, sometimes Isabella would suspend her from
ropes, and to cause excessive pain she would add weights to her limbs. By all accounts,
Joanna was just skeptical about faith, but for Isabella, that was about
as bad as it gets for a child. We imagine this next monarch would have
done something similar given the chance. 3.
She was Princess Olga of Kyiv and she was a monarch
in the 900s in what is present-day Ukraine. Her husband, Igor of Kyiv, died in 945 at
the hands of a tribe called the Drevlians. It’s totally understandable that Olga would
be a bit peeved about losing her husband, but it’s the brutality of what she did
next that really makes her stand out. The Drevlians told her that the
best thing to do would be for her to marry one of their own. They sent many
ambassadors to her with this proposition, and she had them all buried alive. She
even bent down as they were struggling to breathe and said something along the
lines of, “How’s that for a reply?” Olga later had some of the higher-ranking
Drevlians invited to a great party at her house, which was perceived as a sign of goodwill and
forgiveness. It wasn’t. She invited them into the bathhouse, and then had the doors locked
and ordered the place burned to the ground. Later, she and her men massacred thousands of
Drevlians in one attack alone. The people that were left barricaded the city and a siege ensued.
Months passed and the people inside were starving, but then Olga got the idea to send in birds
with burning cloth attached to their feet. The birds did their job and landed on the wooden
houses and burned them down. Anyone seen running from the town was executed on the spot.
So, this was about as hardcore as it gets in the realms of revenge. Olga was a badass
without a doubt. She also went about converting people to Christianity and so she was later
canonized as a saint of the orthodox church. The next lady was not quite so
heroic. She was just bad to the bone. 2.
She was known as Fredegund, and was the queen consort to King Chilperic I
who was part of a dynasty within the Frankish kingdom which encompassed most of modern
day France and parts of western Germany. Her rule stretched from 584 until 597 and
according to the few historians that wrote about her, it was a bloody career she had. What
was written creates a picture of a woman who at times could be one very mean, murderous sadist.
As the story goes, she wasn’t born into any kind of highly-influential royal family, but the
king took a special liking to her from a young age. He didn’t marry her, though, and instead
married a woman named Galswintha. It seems that Fredegund didn’t much like this, and she either
convinced the King that Galswintha needed to die or she just went about killing her by
herself. Whatever happened, Fredegund was partly behind Galswintha being strangled to death.
Fredegund then began a decades-long conflict with Galswintha’s sister, Brunhilda. The latter married
Sigebert I of Austrasia, and it seems that it was Fredegund who ordered his assassination. She also
might have ordered the assassination of one of his sons, but that one didn’t work out. There
were other successful assassinations, though, of people who had gotten on the wrong side of
Fredegund for various perceived transgressions. She even hated her own daughter, Rigunth.
That’s because once the daughter grew up and became attractive she told her Fredegund
that she should become the consort of the king instead of her mother. The Roman historian
Gregory of Tours said this happened next: “Fredegund waited for 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.” So yes, this was a brutal woman if ever there was
one. But now let’s talk about a woman with way more blood on her hands.
1. Her name was Mary I of England and she ruled
over England and Ireland from 1553 to 1558. There’s a kind of giveaway as to her
brutality with the name she acquired. That was “Bloody Mary”. But this had
nothing to do with a spicy cocktail that people often drink. During Mary’s short
reign, she went to great lengths to reverse England’s split with the Catholic Church.
This was known as the English Reformation and was started by that well-known
killer of wives, King Henry VIII. It’s a long and complicated story, but all you
need to know is that once she rose to power, she went about releasing some of the main Catholics
in England that had been previously imprisoned. It was now payback time, and there was a hell
of a lot of reformers that Mary took aim at. She is known for something called the “Marian
Persecutions” which in short meant going after Protestants. Some were sent into exile,
while others were captured, tortured, and burned at the stake. This didn’t just include
high-level clergy but a lot of normal folks, too, which included women and children.
During the torture, some of them might have been asked to renounce their faith, but in the end,
as many as 300 folks were burned at the stake. About 30 people also just died while in prison.
Of course, there were many powerful players at the time and we can’t blame all the carnage
on Mary alone, but it’s a fact that all those people died in horrific circumstances
under her rule. She did at least once say, “None may be burnt without some of the Council's
presence and good sermons at the same.” You’d be right to think that a lot of scared
people wanted to overthrow this bloody queen, which at times ended with rebellions. One of them
was called the Wyatt Rebellion and it involved a lot of powerful people in England. These people
had not wanted Mary to marry Philip of Spain, but it’s likely they just wanted
to get rid of her in general. Mary might not have done the torturing herself,
but what happened to some of those rebels before their execution was terrible. In order
to spill the beans about other rebels, some of them had to live through horiffic torture
methods such as being stretched on the rack. Once they had talked or not talked msot were
burned at the stake, with the unfortunate ones ebing hanged, drawn, and quartered. This
consisted of hanging them while making sure they didn’t die. Their guts would then be ripped
out and their bodies chopped into quarters. The head was usually saved and stuck
on a pike someplace to remind people of what happens when you start thinking
about rebelling. Some historians put the number of deaths in this rebellion at 200
although a more conservative estimate is 100. When people were burned en masse,
historians write that the air would be full of the smell of burning flesh. That
was about to happen on November 17, 1558, when a bunch of Protestants was lined up. As they
were preparing themselves to be burned, suddenly everything went quiet. That’s because someone
stopped the process and handed in a letter saying, “The Queen is dead.” British law made it that
now those people couldn’t legally be executed. So, was Mary any worse than other European
leaders that executed scores of folks back then simply because of their faith?
Maybe not. Her half-sister, Elizabeth I, would also execute people for that same
reason once she was sitting on the throne. Still, in the carnage that happened during
this period of time in that part of the world, it’s the name Bloody Mary that
seems to stand out the most. Now you need to watch “Most Evil Monarchs In
the History of Mankind.” Or, have a look at…
