One of history's great ironies is that one of Russia's most successful periods occurred under the leadership of a monarch with not a drop of Russian blood. Catherine II, better known as Catherine the Great, was a minor Prussian princess whose fairly horrible mother set her sights on achieving notoriety through her daughter.

Fortunately for young Catherine (who was born Sophie), Frederick the Great of Prussia had a political project to strengthen ties between his country and Russia, and Russia's Empress Elizabeth needed her heir, the future Peter III, to find a wife, have babies, and continue the Romanov line. All eyes turned to the 16-year-old from Anhalt-Zerbst.

The marriage went poorly, but the real surprise occurred on the death of Empress Elizabeth in 1762. While crowned as Empress Consort to her husband, Peter III, it was only a matter of months before Catherine deposed her husband, forced him to sign an abdication, and became Russia's sole ruler, and the longest-ruling Empress in Russia's history.

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It feels safe to say that when Russians recall a leader's reign as a "dark era," we're into some deeply, deeply dark events. Empress Anna, a niece of Peter the (Not So) Great, had survived many humiliations before Russia's Supreme Privy Council elevated her to Empress; they thought she would be easy to control, but instead, her decade-long reign was characterized by Anna's cruelty and capriciousness. A career of personal vendettas was fueled by her limitless power and a secret police system she stood up to discover and end plots against her.

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For the Dutch Republic, 1672 was a series of existential catastrophes that nearly saw the nation swallowed by France's Louis XIV. But the internal push and pulls that culminated in the brutal murder and partial consumption of the man who'd run the place for a couple of decades actually began much, much earlier, when Martin Luther (perhaps) hammered his Ninety-Five Theses into a church door, sparking a flowering of dissonant thought across Europe, as well as a brutal regime of repression to try to tamp it down.

Across the 80 year struggle for Dutch independence from Spain, a succession of Princes of the House of Orange ably managed the country's political and military affairs. But once the war ended, Dutch nobility preferred to decentralize power through a Republican model of government, putting the House of Orange and its supporters on the margins. This went pretty well, right up until it didn't, and as the calamities of 1672 unfolded, public anger against the longtime administrator of the country, Johan de Witt, grew into the kind of blind rage that leads to dangerous mob violence. In The Hague that August, it led all the way to cannibalism.

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The last couple of years have been a time of enormous change for the House of Windsor, the United Kingdom, and the 14 nations that comprise the Commonwealth, and we are so grateful to be joined by podcasting superstar and Royal watcher extraordinaire Kristen Meinzer to discuss.

When Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8, 2022, Prince Charles, England’s longest-serving Prince of Wales, immediately fulfilled the obligation he had waited 73 years to meet: He became King Charles III, and his second wife, the former Camilla Parker Bowles, was coronated Queen alongside him on May 6 of this year.

It’s no secret that Charles and Camilla’s history is… complicated. Kristen walks us through the decades of history behind their 2005 marriage, as well as the toxicity of Camilla’s close friendships with some of the UK’s least savory media personalities.

Check out more of Kristen’s Royal (and more) watching at The Daily Fail podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Pausing from the messiness of Plantagenet England, Alicia takes us on a trip to the east to visit Mother Russia, circa 1700, where the Romanov Tsar Peter the Great was busily acquiring lands, founding cities, and reforming the institutions of a country that - largely through his efforts - would become a major player on the world state for centuries to come. But with those accolades and accomplishments, it's important to recall that the dude was really, really trashy - as his two wives, many mistresses, and romantic rivals would attest to. At least, those whose heads didn't end up in jars.

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Alicia continues with our inexorable march to the Tudor dynasty with yet another French princess contributing to the Plantagenet - now technically Lancastrian - line of the English monarchy. Her marriage to King Henry V, grandson of John of Gaunt and great grandson of King Edward III, was cut tragically short when Henry died on military adventure in France. Doubly tragically, Henry's child with Catherine, Henry VI, had been born just months before his demise.

What's a 21-year-old, beautiful, royal Dowager Queen to do? An early flirtation with a member of the Beaufort line was stymied by an act of Parliament, but all's well that ends well, because that left the door open for a (presumably) dashing young Welshman employed in the household by the name of Owen Tudor. Yes - through a possible secret marriage to Catherine - he became the grandfather of those Tudors.

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It's probably impossible to fully understand the events leading up to the Tudor dynasty without talking about perhaps the 14th century's most singular figure - at least from a historical perspective. John of Gaunt was the third son of King Edward III, and through beneficial marriages, became extremely rich in both land and money. His successes on the battlefield and the untimely death of his brother, Edward the Black Prince, made him a powerful political operator. But perhaps the most consequential thing John of Gaunt did was carry on a years-long extramarital affair with a woman named Katherine Swynford - resulting in four children who were given the surname "Beaufort." Theirs was a questionable lineage that would nevertheless have its day in the sun almost a century later.

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While the 14th century wasn't exactly a hotbed of feminist fervor in England, the place wasn't without its powerful and intriguing women. Joan of Kent was one. Though her family was caught up in the armed conflicts that ended the reign of Edward II, once Edward III threw off the restraints imposed by his mother, Isabella of France, he welcomed Joan's family - his relatives - back to his court.

This might have been the happy end of Joan's role in history except for the little matter of her bigamy - and eventual marriage to Edward III's eldest son, Edward, the Black Prince. While the Black Prince did not live long enough to succeed his father, his union with Joan made her the mother of the final Plantagenet King of England, Richard II.

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The War of the Roses was hardly the first period of civil war in England. In fact, Edward III's father oversaw such a period long before Eddie III's kids kicked off a few generations of bloody sibling rivalry. Interestingly for the age, Edward II's wife, Isabella of France, had a starring role in ending his disastrous reign. Alicia has the full story, from the 12-year-old fully royal child bride to, many years later, her return to England with an invasion force provided by the Count of Hainaut (in modern day Belgium), with which she waged a successful campaign against her husband and, perhaps, his lover, Hugh Despenser.

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Unsurprisingly, the French Revolution didn’t happen particularly spontaneously. Years of financial mismanagement, poor crops, massive unemployment, and a swelling population in Paris itself all contributed to a growing dissatisfaction with King Louis XVI and the monarchy in general. The King’s cause wasn’t helped at all by a lingering suspicion that his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, was a profligate spender and an Austrian spy, but Marie Antoinette’s reputation took a calamitous hit in 1785, when an ambitious con artist named Jeanne de la Motte hatched a plan to acquire one of the most expensive jewelry pieces ever crafted.

Playing on the vanity and avarice of one of her lovers, Cardinal Louis de Rohan, Jeanne and her crew succeeded in boosting a piece worth $2 million – and forever ended any goodwill the French public had toward their Queen.

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