Trashy Royals

We return this week to the Stuart Dynasty, and King James VI of Scotland, coming on in as King James I of England. His reign begins in 1603 and runs through 1625, you might be surprised what you can pack into 22 years to trashy administrating, but James makes the most of it.

Included: Rewriting of The Bible, Witch Hunting, More Pamphlets, Gunpowder Plots, and Jimmy's Maybe Lovers, with a little treason and murder on the side too. The Howard Family resurrects themselves and spiderwebs are everywhere! 

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In this exciting installment of our past selves bringing you current episodes, we continue with the thread of the Trashy Stuarts. It is time to explore the life of James VI from his birth to the age of 39 when he assumes the English Throne in 1603. Oh my – so many things before he even assumes the throne in England after the death of Elizabeth. James is dealing with dead parents, mad -lunatic and angry uncles, and a child bride, Anne of Denmark. Feuds with countries and religions. Kids, and witches, and pamphlets too.

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In this week's double Trashy Royals, past-us brings an episode out of the Trashy Divorces side of the world, as it really does all connect in history. 

It is back to April 2021 when we took a trip into the late 16th Century to do some witch hunting with King James VI of Scotland, long before he makes it to England as James I. His new hobby is no way a valid pursuit of anything worthwhile - just a king's manic fevered dream which is pretty terrible for the old, poor, or single women of both Scotland and England.

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In this exciting episode of Trashy Royals, we are jumping into the future a bit from our Tudor timeline into the beginning of the Stuart Dynasty. How does the crown go from Elizabeth I to James I, and who were the other contenders in play? Everyone is related in this one – pull out your yarn and have some family tree fun!

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The Tudors are still turning, friends, but with the spooky season upon us, Alicia thought it would be a wonderful time to share the scariest thing the Tudors themselves dealt with: a mysterious illness called Sweating Sickness. Fortunately for people alive today, the disease vanished centuries ago, leaving modern scientists to puzzle over what it might have been. For this episode, Alicia sat down with our friends Sam and Allie at I'm Horrified!, another perfect spot to showcase a horrifying and deadly disease.

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By 1520, Europe found itself in an interesting moment. The most significant leaders in the endless jostle for power and influence were all young kings - Henry VIII in England, around 30 years old; Francis I in France, around 26 years old; and Charles V as King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, at about 20 years old.

You can imagine how potentially unstable an axis of entitled, army-commanding young kings might be, but it's noteworthy that there were cooler heads with bigger visions than wars of conquest moving pieces on the field of politics even then. Henry's England was still something of a third wheel in the spheres of influence of the era, but both Francis and Charles were eager to count the island nation as an ally in their machinations against each other.

Henry's right hand man, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, had the idea that it could be possible to produce an enduring peace among the Christian nations, particularly in light of the growing threat of the Ottoman Empire. Following the 1518 Treaty of London, a non-aggression pact between most of Europe's states, Wolsey wanted to showcase both the majesty and the (largely imaginary) friendship between England and France, resulting in a three-week-long summit between Henry VIII (and many thousands of courtiers, artisans, soldiers, and others) and Francis I (and many thousands of courtiers, artisans, soldiers, and others) on a large turnip field outside of Calais, then an English holding.

The two sides spent months ahead of the June meeting building elaborate, but fake, castles, stadiums and other infrastructure to house, feed, and maintain the influx of people, horses, livestock, and goods that were soon to arrive. The Cloth of the Field of Gold was heralded as an event of great import, and Henry VIII would consider it a high point of his reign, but as we know, the dream of a peaceful Europe would not be realized for many centuries to come, and even now, remains a fragile and threatened thing.

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Sources

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, by Karen Lindsey (Amazon)

The Distinctive 'Habsburg Jaw' Was Likely the Result of the Royal Family's Inbreeding (smithsonianmag.com)

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Life after the death of her husband, King James IV of Scotland, was not simple for Margaret Tudor, at least not at first. Her quick marriage to Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, happened while she was unaware of his long relationship with another woman. Her royal status in Scotland was complicated - fairly massively - by the fact that her brother, King Henry VIII, was responsible for the battlefield death of her husband, The King.

The Archibald Douglas marriage didn't help either, as allying herself with the Douglas family ignited factionalism in the Scottish court, resulting in her regency being revoked. When she became pregnant, she fled to England, and while Archibald returned to Scotland soon after, her brother welcomed her to court in London. After a year-long negotiation, she returned to Scotland, where she learned what a lout her second husband truly was.

Meanwhile, her sister Mary in London was busy having babies with her second husband, Charles Brandon, and Henry VIII was beginning to explore relations outside of his marriage, having failed to obtain a living son with Catherine of Aragon. Their messy, messy story continues next week here at Trashy Royals on As The Tudors Turn!

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After his father shipped his sister Margaret off to be the Queen of Scotland, it fell to Henry VIII to manage his baby sister Mary's love life. A genuine beauty, France's King Louis XII, then 52, was undoubtedly happy to walk down the aisle with the 18-year-old English princess. The bliss would not last, as just three or so months later, Louis was dead, with salacious whispers in the French court that Mary had "intercoursed" him to death. Ah, the 16th century.

But this wasn't the end for Mary's heart, not by a long shot. It turns out that she had long nurtured a desire for Tudor courtier and man-about-town Charles Brandon. Charles's father had been a loyal partisan of Henry Tudor's claim to the throne before he became Henry VII, and Sir William Brandon had died at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Young Charles was raised at court, a few years older than Henry VIII, and enjoyed a bit of hero worship from the future king.

He was also a scoundrel who fleeced a number of rich women (and girls) through the hazy definitions of marriage and engagement in the period. Still, in spite of Henry making him promise not to marry his sister, Charles was dispatched to France after the death of Louis XII to negotiate the young queen's return to England, and once there, the long-suffering Mary convinced the dashing man of her dreams to abandon the pledge and marry her anyway. Her brother was, to put it mildly, displeased.

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The much-discussed and much-reviled English King Henry VIII is best known, of course, as one of history's worst husbands. There were famously six wives, two of whom were lucky enough to outlive him. But before whatever madness began to take hold of him in his 30s, he was a dashing, popular young king with a devoted wife and, as far as historians can tell, a fairly limited number of mistresses.

These wonder years were not without obstacles and tragedies. Catherine of Aragon, his first and longest-married wife, suffered miscarriages and stillbirths throughout their years together, finally producing just a daughter, the future Mary I, or, for the Protestants in the audience, Bloody Mary.

Still, these years seemed to be a time of optimism for both Henry and the people of England. Who could have predicted the social and political earthquakes that were to come?

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