As the English Civil War ground on and the tides began to turn against the Royalist forces, Charles II decamped to Europe for his own safety. His mother was in Paris, but he also spent a lot of time in The Hague, where his sister Mary was the wife of William II, Prince of Orange.

Charles, then still just the Prince of Wales, met a Welsh lass there named Lucy Walter. Lucy had skipped out on the UK to get away from her parents, whose ugly divorce had risen to high scandal, and was hoping to find her fortune - via a husband or lover - in the English Court-in-exile.

In May of 1648, Lucy met Charles, and a relatively brief romance transpired, but one that produced Prince Charles's first child. Happily, Charles eagerly acknowledged his son, who would go on to become the Duke of Monmouth. Less happily, agents of English dictator Oliver Cromwell kidnapped the boy for 10 days, and years later, long after the romance was over, his own father would successfully kidnap him to hide him from Cromwell and other dangers.

Sadly, Lucy died some time in 1658, and never saw her old flame on the English throne, or her son as a Duke.

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History includes a lot of highs and lows, but England's Interregnum period was a particularly low low. King Charles I had been defeated in the English Civil War and was tried and beheaded in January 1649. For the next eleven years, various flavors of religious extremists, mostly under the sway of Oliver Cromwell, governed the realm (badly).

Cromwell died in 1658 and his successor, his son Richard, proved a more miserable leader than even his predecessors, which led to the restoration of the monarchy and Charles II strolling into an eager London on his 30th birthday. By then, his reputation as a ladies' man was already well established, and for a grateful nation, it was time to let the good times roll once again.

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Stacie has the gobsmacking escape of Princess Haya of Jordan, whose decade and a half of marriage to Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, was heading south by the time he became embroiled in yet another scandal for kidnapping one of his 26 children. Again.

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The city-state of Carthage, on the coast of modern Tunisia, was the product of a flight from tyranny. Dissidents from Tyre fled by ship and ended up building something enduring - for seven centuries, anyway. Slightly older than the city of Rome, Carthage's wealth came from a broad trade network that encompassed the entire Mediterranean Sea.

But as the Roman Republic's fortunes rose, conflict with their southern neighbor seemed to become irresistible, setting off a series of wars that would end in the total destruction of Carthage, its culture, and its people. But Rome's victory, apparently, wasn't quite enough. It turns out that Rome's first emperor also wanted to capture and transform the story of Carthage's founder, Dido, an early act of propaganda intended to knit together the nascent Roman Empire.

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Between the years 235 and 280 AD, the Roman Empire was a basket case. Emperors were dropping like flies, succession fights were common, pretenders routinely declared themselves Emperor, and whole regions broke away. It was not the most prestigious period for Rome.

In Roman-controlled Syria, a fully Romanized city-state called Palmyra had become a wealthy and prosperous destination on various trade routes, as well as the last bulwark on the eastern frontier between Rome and the Persian Empire. As the Roman crack-up proceeded, the city appointed its first-ever king, Odaenathus, who ruled alongside his wife, Zenobia. When Odaenathus was assassinated in 267 - we don't know by whom - Zenobia took the reins of Palmyra and led it through an audacious territorial expansion, until Palmyra controlled basically all of the Eastern Empire, including Egypt.

And then, as more Emperors bumbled through the halls of power in distant Rome, Zenobia gave up on them entirely and declared herself Empress of Rome, and her domain, the Palmyrene Empire, the equal of Rome itself.

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Today is second part of the incredible story of Lady Anne Glenconner. This episode is full of the stories and spiderwebs of Anne's third act, having incredible success with her memoirs. So many people show up in this one - with stories and a little tea-spilling too - including Princess Margaret, Lord Snowden, King Charles III, Queen Consort Camilla, Mel B., Mick Jagger, and even Graham Norton too.

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In this special crossover episode of Done and Dunne and Trashy Royals, Alicia introduces you to The Right Honourable The Dowager Lady Glenconner, Anne Tennant. Lady Anne’s life is truly incredible – from a privileged childhood to being a lady-in-waiting attending Queen Elizabeth II through her coronation, these are only Anne’s early years. Marriage and children follow in her life, with so many connected spiderwebs into the aristocracy, and our podcast journey.

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It's that time of year again, Good Nobles, so Alicia is taking us on a magical tour of (mostly) Tudor England's holiday season! Think Advent, the 12 Days of Christmas, and a full on two-week break to eat, drink, and be as merry as you can be with Henry VIII as your king.

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When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt bloodlessly in 332 BC, he was welcomed as a liberator after a period of Persian domination. Establishing cities like Alexandria and Philadelphia, his short life meant that the double-crown passed shortly to one of his most trusted generals, Ptolemy I Soter, kicking off a 300-year reign of Greek-Macedonian leadership over the ancient country.

But times were changing during that three century period, with the power of Greece ebbing and a new superpower, Rome, emerging across the Mediterranean Sea. By the time that Ptolemy XII was securing the Egyptian throne for his children, Cleopatra VII and Ptolemy XIII, Julius Caesar was large and in charge well beyond Italy, and took a keen interest in the troubles the two co-pharaohs were having. It turns out things between the young rulers were worse than even Caesar expected, with the two factions in armed rebellion against each other. Ptolemy XIII made the choice to attack Caesar and Cleopatra in Alexandria, and subsequently died in the Battle of the Nile.

There was romance between Caesar and Cleopatra that produced a child, but upon Caesar's death, Cleopatra had to once again take a look at the power dynamics of the world around her to preserve her kingdom and her dynasty. The Roman general Mark Antony fit the bill as both a strategic partner and lover - for a time, anyway.

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Decades after a band of British colonists in the new world gained independence from the Crown, a funny thing happened: wealthy American women began returning to the ancestral homeland to find impoverished but titled Englishmen needing wives - and cash. It was a match - actually, hundreds of them - made in heaven.

Jeanette "Jennie" Jerome was an American daughter of a banker and a landowner, as well as being a noted beauty of her era. In 1874, at the age of just 20, Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill - the two would produce another notable Churchill - and began a fascinating period of decades that saw her involvement and influence in the highest level of British politics and society.

Sources:

The Titled Americans: Three American Sisters and British Aristocratic World into Which They Married, by Elizabeth Kehoe (Amazon link)

Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother, by Anne Sebba (Amazon link)

The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York, by Anne de Courcy (Amazon link)

International Churchill Society (winstonchurchill.org)

Million Dollar American Princesses, Smithsonian Channel documentary (smithsonianchannel.com)

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