We hope you finished your summer reading! But, if not, we read Finding Freedom so you don’t have to (unless you want to)! Join us as we discuss the summer’s most excerpted book, and whether it accomplishes the goals of the authors, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Duran. We can all now put the tiara drama to rest!

The British Monarchy has still not officially acknowledged its role in the beginnings of the British slave trade and subsequent profiting off of it. Can the royals responsibly lead the Commonwealth while continuing to ignore the roots of its founding?

Huge debt to the framing of this episode to Brooke Newman’s article in Slate on the royal family’s role in the British slave trade. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/british-royal-family-slavery-reparations.html 

Other sources:

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/commonwealth-nations-brexit-and-future-global-britain?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIge67jNmA6wIVNAnnCh38xALoEAAYASAAEgJEufD_BwE

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/17/commonwealth-british-empire-britain-black-brown-people

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/06/harry-and-meghan-say-commonwealth-must-acknowledge-the-past

https://www.queenscommonwealthtrust.org/inspiration/the-commonwealth-necessary-lessons-new-directions/

How many lyrics from Hamilton can we quote in this episode? We just couldn't help ourselves, because today we are talking about George III! Was he mad? Yes. Was he the oppressive tyrant American colonists made him out to be? Listen and find out!

Was King Juan Carlos of Spain brought down by bad PR? He’s led a very interesting life as head of Spain’s ruling family: born in exile, maybe killed his brother, groomed successor to a dictator, and abdicated due to his kids’ financial shenanigans. Things are definitely not boring in Spain!

The Monaco royal family is no stranger to the spotlight, and today we are talking about the headlining generating Princess Stephanie, plus a catch up on modern royal gossip!

That time a Royal purse swap led to the Hundred Year’s War.

Monarcast is back to distract you with a bit of today's royal gossip and some tales of royal gossip past. First up? Someone once tried to kidnap Princess Anne and learned...not to try to do that!

Edward II and his cronies were the original thugs and gangsters, apparently. How did he come to run his kingdom this way, and why did his wife help oust him? We talk all this and more about England’s maybe murdered, maybe not murdered Edward.

Harold Godwinson dies on the battlefield in Hastings and a Norman rules England. How does it get to that end? This episode, we talk about Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, and Harold, and how you can’t really have one without the other.

The last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family were famously killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. What led to their downfall? Was it the thrall of Rasputin? The indifference of an Autocrat toward his people? We dive in to the themes that contributed to the end of the Romanovs.