Noble Blood

By iHeartPodcasts and Grim & Mild

What's Noble Blood about?

Author Dana Schwartz explores the stories of some of history’s most fascinating royals: the tyrants and the tragic, the murderers and the murdered, and everyone in between. Because when you’re wearing a crown, mistakes often mean blood.

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Noble Blood episodes:

04.23.2024
The Nun of Monza, Part 1
For plenty of young women in the early modern era, if their families couldn't afford their dowries, they simply shipped them off to a nunnery. That was the case for Marianna, a young girl who rose in the ranks of...
04.16.2024
Lucretia as a Symbol
Why did the Roman Empire do away with kings? Simone de Beauvior would write that, through women, "certain historical events have been set off, but the women have been pretexts rather than agents. The suicide of Lucretia has had value...
04.09.2024
A Grand Duchess Above the Barber Shop
History is fascinated by the possible escape of Anastasia Romanov, the Grand Duchess killed alongside her family in the Russian Revolution. But there was a Grand Duchess that DID escape - Anastasia's aunt, Olga Alexandrovna, who would hold onto hope...
04.06.2024
Spider-Man's Surreal Adventures on Broadway
Very Special Episodes is a new podcast hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Follow us down a different rabbit hole every Wednesday. In 2011, after many delays, one of the most anticipated musicals in theater history finally opened...
04.02.2024
The Daring Prison Break of the Emperor in Exile
When a coalition of European nations invaded Paris in 1815, they offered Napoleon what they believed to be very generous terms of surrender: he would keep his head, but be exiled to a life as Emperor of the insignificant island...
03.26.2024
The Dinner Party at the End of the Iranian Monarchy
When Mohammad Reza Shah got into a helicopter in 1979, he had no idea that it would be the last time he would ever see his country again. Nor did he know that he would be ending a 2,500 year...
03.19.2024
Odoacer and Theodoric, the Barbarian Kings of the Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was conquered by Odoacer, who styled himself as the "King of Italy." But the leader of the Ostrogoths, a warrior named Theodoric, would challenge Odoacer for supremacy. But were both men just playing into the hands...
03.12.2024
Napoleon's Coup Within a Coup
Was Napoleon a military dictator, or a man who did what was necessary in order to preserve a French republic that was crumbling? To discuss the coup in which Napoleon became "First Consul" of France, Dana is joined by Pascal...
03.05.2024
How Ada Lovelace Constructed Her Wings
When Annabella Millbanke had a daughter with her husband, Lord Byron, she was terrified that their child might inherit his poetical madness. And so she steered the girl, Ada, toward math and logic, where eventually, Ada Lovelace became obsessed with...
02.27.2024
The Plot to Undo Mary Eleanor Bowes, Part 2
Mary Eleanor Bowes managed to escape her abusive husband, Andrew Stoney, but the trial to divorce him and secure her financial freedom would ultimately risk her reputation, and her life. CW: spousal abuse, rape Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and...
02.20.2024
The Plot to Undo Mary Eleanor Bowes, Part 1
When Mary Eleanor Bowe's first husband died, he left her a letter warning her that, "A living man have no interest to mislead. A living man may." He could not have possibly predicted just how deceitful Mary Eleanor's next husband...
02.13.2024
The Sheika Kept Prisoner (with Heidi Blake)
In 2018, Sheika Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, the daughter of the ruler of Dubai, attempted a daring escape to international waters, away from what she characterized as a dangerous and oppresive life among her family. She was captured and...
02.09.2024
Introducing: History on Trial
From the Salem Witch Trials to O.J. Simpson, trials have always revealed hidden truths about our society. History on Trial will dig into these cases, focusing on the real people behind the headlines, and the powerful cultural contexts that shaped...
02.06.2024
The Venetian Doge Condemned in Memory
Along the walls of the Chamber of the Great Council in the Doge's Palace in Venice, there are portraits—one after another—of the Republic's doges. Each man has his likeness, and a description of some of his accomplishments. But there's a...
02.01.2024
Introducing: Very Special Episodes
On Very Special Episodes, we tell one incredible story each week. Stranger-than-fiction tales about normal people in extraordinary situations. Stories that make you say, “this should be a movie.” Follow Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English down a different...
01.30.2024
Pompey and the Prince
Jean Baptiste Charbonneau is best known for something that he accomplished as an infant -- traveling with his mother, Sacagawea, and Lewis and Clark with the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean. But as he reached adulthood, he would...
01.23.2024
The Contradictions and Controversies of Marc de Montifaud
In the late 19th century, French writer Marc de Montifaud was sentenced to prison for indecency in his work. But rather than being sent to the rather cushy location for literary criminals, he was sentenced to forced labor... as a...
01.16.2024
John Dee's Language of the Angels
Alchemist, magician, astronomer, astrologer - John Dee served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, interpreting the stars for her. And when a comet crossed the sky, he told her that it portended the birth of something he came up...
01.09.2024
"Eat Him If You Like"
CW: Gore, cannibalism. The village of Hautefaye was a sleepy town in France best known for a local fair. But in the summer of 1870, gripped by paranoia and political anger, the villagers turned on a young nobleman and unleashed...
01.02.2024
How Pope Joan Became the High Priestess
According to legend, around 1100, a woman disguised herself as a man and was unanimously elected Pope. The ruse lasted until she gave birth while riding her horse through the streets of Rome. The story isn't true, but how the...
12.26.2023
William the Conqueror, Christmas King
William the Conqueror is considered the first King of England. But the road to his victory at the Battle of Hastings was strange and challenging, and it would take more than a coronation to get England to submit to him. Support...
12.19.2023
Napoleon's Josephine (with Jennifer Wright)
The wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, Josephine went from a sugar plantation to prison to Empress. But her rise and her fall reveal a dark undercurrent in the trend toward women in post-Revolutionary France. Dana is joined in conversation by the...
12.12.2023
The Queen Caught Between Kingdoms
When her husband, King John of England died, the widowed Isabelle of Angouleme sailed back to France to fight for her own independent kingdom. But over decades of trying to pit England and France against each other, sacrificing her reputation...
12.05.2023
Charlotte Corday, the Angel of Assassination
A minor aristocrat, Charlotte Corday could have lived an ordinary life in Normandy in the 18th century. Instead, she took it upon herself to kill the prominent leader of the Jacobin revolutionaries - a newspaper writer named Marat - while...
11.28.2023
Caroline Norton Balancing the Scales of Justice
CW: Spousal abuse, miscarriage. In the UK in the early 19th century, married women didn't exist as their own legal entities; they were extensions of their husbands. Caroline Norton's abusive husband took full custody of their children, and Caroline tried...
11.21.2023
The Princess Who Wrestled for Her Future
Khutulun was a 13th century Mongolian princess born in the war-torn years after Genghis Khan's massive empire began falling apart at the seams. She fought valiantly at her father's side to defend his Khanate, but when it came to marriage...
11.14.2023
The World Inside of Rudolf II's Cabinet of Curiosities
Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was an obsessive collector — of art, of rare and expensive artifacts, of scientific equipment, of natural curiosities. (He claimed he had a siren's jaw and a phoenix feather.) But religious tension and foreign...
11.07.2023
The Tabloid Sacrifices of the Spare, Princess Margaret
Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II's younger sister, was one of the most famous and glamorous women of the 20th century. But her life was lived in view of, and in response to, the tabloid scandals that threatened to undo her. Support...
10.31.2023
Eleanor Cobham, Necromancer Witch
After marrying the Duke of Gloucester, Eleanor Cobham became one of the wealthiest and post powerful women in England. She and her husband were a heartbeat away from being King and Queen, and the promise of power tempted Eleanor into...
10.24.2023
The Thrift-Shop Pope
After Vatican II, many traditionalist Catholics around the world decided that the heresies of the Pope meant that the papal throne was actually empty. For one member of that group, the only solution was to fill the position himself. Support Noble...
10.17.2023
The Cage of the Ottoman King
When Mehmed III, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, died, his young son Ahmed took the throne. Tradition dicrated that Ahmed should have killed any rivals to the throne, specifically his half-brother, Mustafa. He didn't. Historians still don't know why, and...
10.10.2023
The Stories of the Tsar Monk
In 1836, a stranger arrived to a remote Russian town on a snow-white horse. The man spoke fluent French and had a noble bearing, but he refused to give any information about where he came from or who his family...
10.03.2023
The Hidden Life of Henry VIII's Fool (With Peter K. Andersson)
William Somer (or Will Summers), Henry VIII's fool, became known to history as a famous wit, the man who spoke truth to power and advocated for the common people. But in reality, the man's life was more nuanced, and far...
09.26.2023
The Arsenic Wife (Part 2)
Marie Lafarge's trial was a sensation. But when chemists begin to disagree on their conclusions, who's to say what the real story is? NOTE: This is the second part of our discussion of the trail of Marie Lafarge. If you...
09.19.2023
The Arsenic Wife (Part 1)
In 1840, the trial of Marie Lafarge scandalized France. Marie was a woman from noble birth, raised in all of the right social circles in Paris, who ended up married to an iron-master, heavily in debt. When he died less...
09.12.2023
The Tragic True-Crime Life of Lady Lucan
[CONTENT WARNING: this episode contains depictions of violence and spousal abuse.] On November 7, 1974, John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan committed a horrible crime: attacking his wife, Veronica, Lady Lucan, and murdering their nanny, Sandra Rivett, in the family's quiet...
09.05.2023
The Great Hope of Spain
King Alfonson XII of Spain died without a male heir—but there was hope: his wife was six months pregnant. And as great fortune would have it, the Queen gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who would be Alfonso XIII....
08.29.2023
The Eviction of the Texas Princess
Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi lived many lives—as political researcher, congressional wife, Playboy model, and actress. But it would be her role as wife of an Italian prince that would eventually lead her into the battle of her life: an inheritance fight...
08.22.2023
Eleanor of Aquitaine Imprisoned
Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of the most famous women in European history for good reason. After annulling her marriage from the King of France, she would marry the man who would become Henry II, King of England. But that...
08.15.2023
Sadism in the Bastille
TRIGGER WARNING: this episode contains references to sexual content. The Marquis de Sade, the namesake of "sadism," is famous for his writings cataloguing the full extent of brutal and abusive sexual acts. Today, he's perhaps more famous as a concept...
08.08.2023
The Death and Life of Amy Robsart
Robert Dudley is famous for being the favorite of the "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I, but the death of his first wife, Amy Robsart would be his most enduring scandal. Amy, the jilted wife of a man who ignored her in...
08.01.2023
Dumas and Napoleon
Alexander Dumas is famous for his swashbuckling novel The Count of Monte Cristo, but more thrilling than fiction is the real-life story of his father, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. Born the son of an enslaved woman, Dumas would become one of the...
07.25.2023
The Resistance Queen Wilhelmina
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was raised like a fairy tale princess — but she would reign over one of the most tumultuous periods in European history and she would attempt to lead her people while in exile after the...
07.18.2023
Queen Tamar's Revenge
When her council forced her to marry, Tamar immediately knew their selection was the wrong choice. When he would eventually try to lead an invading army into overthrowing her government, I bet she wished she could have said, "I told...
07.11.2023
Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I (with Tracy Borman)
Dana is joined by the Tudor historian—and Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces—Tracy Borman to discuss her latest book, Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I, and how two of British history's most famous women created their own legacies. Sign up for...
07.04.2023
Edward VI Among the Women
The story of King Henry VIII is famous, as are the stories of his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. King Henry's only son, the sickly Edward VI, had a short reign, often overlooked and too often ignored. Sign up for Dana's history...
06.27.2023
The Men Who Would Kill the Medici, Part 2
The men knew they needed to get rid of Lorenzo de Medici, they just didn't know how. In the end, they decided the right place would be High Mass, on a Sunday, in the Cathedral of Florence. When the archbishop...
06.20.2023
The Men Who Would Kill the Medici, Part 1
Lorenzo de Medici was the center of power in Florence. Three men—Girolomo Riario, Francesco de Pazzi, and Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa—were determined to take him down. They just needed the authority of a Pope behind them. Sign up for Dana's...
06.13.2023
The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Fighting To Be Seen
Our two part series on the Chevalier de Saint-Georges continues, with our hero rubbing elbows with Whig politicians and fighting for freedom during the French Revolution—perhaps setting a record for meeting the greatest number of previously-covered 'Noble Blood' subjects along...
06.06.2023
The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Excellent or Nothing
In the late 1700s, one man became a celebrated fixture of Parisian salon culture: he was a prodigy fencer, and then a brilliant composer and violinists. He befriended Marie Antoinette and lead one of the city's most famous orchestras. And...

What's Noble Blood about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Noble Blood episodes:

The Nun of Monza, Part 1

Lucretia as a Symbol

A Grand Duchess Above the Barber Shop

Spider-Man's Surreal Adventures on Broadway

The Daring Prison Break of the Emperor in Exile

The Dinner Party at the End of the Iranian Monarchy

Odoacer and Theodoric, the Barbarian Kings of the Roman Empire

Napoleon's Coup Within a Coup

How Ada Lovelace Constructed Her Wings

The Plot to Undo Mary Eleanor Bowes, Part 2

The Plot to Undo Mary Eleanor Bowes, Part 1

The Sheika Kept Prisoner (with Heidi Blake)

Introducing: History on Trial

The Venetian Doge Condemned in Memory

Introducing: Very Special Episodes

Pompey and the Prince

The Contradictions and Controversies of Marc de Montifaud

John Dee's Language of the Angels

"Eat Him If You Like"

How Pope Joan Became the High Priestess

William the Conqueror, Christmas King

Napoleon's Josephine (with Jennifer Wright)

The Queen Caught Between Kingdoms

Charlotte Corday, the Angel of Assassination

Caroline Norton Balancing the Scales of Justice

The Princess Who Wrestled for Her Future

The World Inside of Rudolf II's Cabinet of Curiosities

The Tabloid Sacrifices of the Spare, Princess Margaret

Eleanor Cobham, Necromancer Witch

The Thrift-Shop Pope

The Cage of the Ottoman King

The Stories of the Tsar Monk

The Hidden Life of Henry VIII's Fool (With Peter K. Andersson)

The Arsenic Wife (Part 2)

The Arsenic Wife (Part 1)

The Tragic True-Crime Life of Lady Lucan

The Great Hope of Spain

The Eviction of the Texas Princess

Eleanor of Aquitaine Imprisoned

Sadism in the Bastille

The Death and Life of Amy Robsart

Dumas and Napoleon

The Resistance Queen Wilhelmina

Queen Tamar's Revenge

Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth I (with Tracy Borman)

Edward VI Among the Women

The Men Who Would Kill the Medici, Part 2

The Men Who Would Kill the Medici, Part 1

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Fighting To Be Seen

The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Excellent or Nothing

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