Raucous Book of the Month: Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy

In the raucous book of the month, Royal Affairs, Leslie Carroll takes readers on a lively tour through some of history’s busiest boudoirs. Everyone enjoys a good love story, unfortunately kings and queens could rarely choose a mate for love. Royal marriages were usually arranged to secure stronger alliances and a few heirs in the royal nursery. Rarely, did a happily-ever-after occur when the bride stepped off the boat. Carroll reminds us that it was the love affairs that happened outside of the marriage that provide a glimpse into a king or queen's true desires and reveal the kind of paramour that could command royal attention.

I especially enjoyed Carroll’s conversational writing style. I felt like I was sitting down for tea with a gossipy friend spilling the dirt on the latest rumors. Royal Affairs would also make the perfect gift book for the attention deficit reader (like me) because you can read it in parts and skip around to your favorite royals. And although this book falls into the adult genre, give it to that history loving teen on your Christmas list (or that teen who does not know yet there is a history lover inside of them).

Although the entertainment factor is high for this book, I must add that Royal Affairs is not just another frivolous romp through British history. Behind the bodice ripping is some real history. In each section, Carroll raises questions on how these dalliances changed the course of history. What if Mary Queen of Scots had not been such a dullard when choosing men? What if Charles II had divorced his wife and chosen a more fertile bride? What if Henry VIII had never met Anne Boleyn? From the Angevins to the Windsors, Carroll’s meticulous research uncovers the men and women behind the dutiful monarchy and will have you contemplating why some behind-the-scenes affairs got center stage in our history books and some did not.

When I finished Royal Affairs, I found myself comparing how a king behaved toward his queen vs. his mistress or how a dutiful queen behaved when not wearing the crown. Edward IV may have honored and loved his wife Elizabeth Woodville, but it was Jane Shore that captivated him through the years. Henry VIII respected his first wife Catherine enough to stay married to her for over twenty years until the magnetic Anne Boleyn flashed her sultry eyes. And Elizabeth I may have wed herself to England, but only Robert Dudley knew the secrets in her heart. Luckily, matrimonial bliss gets its say in Carroll’s companion book, Notorious Royal Marriages available in stores soon.

All newsletter subscribers are automatically entered to win a signed copy of Royal Affairs this month. If you are not a newsletter subscriber then you can subscribe here.





In non-royal news, John Anthony Beccia IV finally came into this world (sideways!) on October 21st weighing 9 pounds, 11 ounces. I am trying desperately to get caught up on posts, but some of my planned October posts may get pushed into November.

How Columbus was like a 7 year old brat

How Christopher Columbus got his own holiday might be one of the seven wonders of history. I confess that I have a bit of a bone to pick with Chris. My disenchantment goes back to my third grade history report in which I sentimentally droned on about what a fabulous guy he was, only to find out later I had been fed a pack of lies.

Smarty pants
Let’s start with the story we know and love. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue from Spain to the islands of the Caribbean while looking for a sea route to the Indies. No, he didn’t believe the earth was flat. No one thought the earth was flat. But Columbus also certainly didn’t expect to hit the Americas instead of his desired destination. Unfortunately, when anyone tried to tell him he hadn't arrived in the Indies, the naysayer ended up with their tongue cut off.

Go ahead and make me
His voyages were also not as harmonious as my history books led me to believe. After weeks of being lost at sea, his crew begged him to turn around, but Columbus refused. The desperate crew soon came to the conclusion that it would just be better for everyone if they threw Columbus overboard. But there was one problem. No one but Columbus knew the way home and their captain’s last dieing words were not going to include directions. Everyone believed that they would die. So you can imagine the rejoicing when the crew landed in the Caribbean. That’s when the fun began.

Mine, Mine, Mine
As soon as Columbus’s crew got off the boat, they slapped down a Spanish flag claiming the unknown territory. Unfortunately, the land already belonged to some confused Native Americans of the Arawak tribe. According to Columbus’s log, the Arawaks thought Columbus’s crew were straight out of heaven accept they couldn’t quite understand why angels stunk so much and why they were wearing so much darn clothes. Then, they became even more confused when the angels turned out to be no-good thieves.

Indian Givers
We first must understand how the Arawak culture worked. The natives sort of remind me of my grandmother (god rest her soul). I would say, “nice necklace grandma” and she would immediately insist that I have it. Tell her you like her cookies and she would send you home with every last crumb. The Native Americans demonstrated the same generosity. If you complimented anything they owned, then they would immediately give it away. But there was a catch. The Indians would give things away….but then they would expect them back. To them, humans didn’t own things. Columbus saw things a bit differently. Once someone gave you something (or you stole it), it was yours to keep. He called the natives “Indian Givers”, (a phrase we still use today), and couldn't understand why they would want their gifts back.

Yuck, Cooties!
And what did the natives get in return for their generosity? Columbus’s crew gave some very special gifts to them in the form of measles, tetanus, typhoid, influenza, pneumonia, dysentery, whooping cough, smallpox and pork chops. The last one was Queen Isabella’s idea. She knew a fattened pig was the perfect food source. Unfortunately, the pigs also spread trichinosis. All those poor Native Americans knew is that one minute they were living happily smoking their peace pipe with perfectly working bowel movements and the next they had a bad case of the runs and some wild pigs running through their homes. Fair? Hardly.

oooouuuuuu shiny things
By now, the honeymoon was over. The Indians soon had enough and attacked Columbus’s crew killing many of them. Columbus just got more men to come over and enslaved the Indians forcing them to mine for gold. Meanwhile, the Indians just couldn’t understand why Europeans got so worked up over shinny things. It would be like a bunch of aliens landing in New York and demanding large quantities of bobble head dolls. Sure, bobble head dolls are amusing, but they have no monetary value. To the Indians, gold was not currency, and certainly not something that they were willing to die for.

I know you are, but what am I
Columbus seemed to take a sadistic delight in the rape, pillage and murder of innocent people. The rape and pillaging part is generally scratched out of the history books because it makes a far less picturesque tale then the tiny ships of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria merrily sailing across the ocean. Any Indian who didn’t give Columbus enough gold immediately had his hands cut off or was bled to death. By the time Columbus was done being a fabulously swell guy, 250,000 Indians had died. ok ok, we must remember that this was part of exploration and he did nothing more horrible than any other explorer of his time. But like my grandmother always said…. just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you have to do it.

When you look at all the mayhem Columbus caused, you can’t help but wonder why school children everywhere still have to write reports on such a big jerk. But if there is one thing that the kids at home should learn from this blog it is this - the person with the most toys gets to write the history books and Columbus certainly brought back his share of new toys. His spoils included gold, slaves, chocolate, peanuts, potatoes, tobacco and possibly syphilis.**

Maybe Columbus' appeal to school kids is because he kind of acted like a spoiled brat. He didn't share. He spread countless germs. He bullied others. He is the kind of guy that we teach are children not to grow up and become. So why then do we honor him in classrooms across America?

** Some historians even argue that good old Chis spent his last days suffering from some itchiness. The other side of the debate is that Columbus did not bring back syphilis to Europe. Syphilis may have randomly mutated into a virulent pathogen at the end of the 15th century and the fact that it began to wreak havok on the population at the time of Columbus’s return home was mere coincidence.

Sources and Further Reading:
Hayden, Deborah. Pox: Genius, Madness, And The Mysteries Of Syphilis, New York, NY: Basic Books, 2003.
Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New World. DVD. History Channel. 2005.
Cook, Noble David, “Sickness, Starvation, and Death in Early Hispaniola”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter, 2002), pp. 349-386.

Five things you probably didn’t know about the Mary Rose

I got this email this morning about the Mary Rose. Wouldn't you have loved to see Henry VIII's face when the ship sank?

1. The debate continues as to why the Mary Rose mysteriously sank off the Portsmouth coast in 1545. Four of the suggested possibilities are:
- Too many cooks and not enough skilled seamen on board.
- Poor communication and slow responses from an international crew.
- A hole made by a French cannonball in battle led to the Mary Rose taking water onboard.
- The Mary Rose was too top heavy and keeled over when changing course.

2.On 19th July 1545 Henry VIII was watching his fleet set sail to battle the approaching French and saw the Mary Rose sink. So did the wife of Vice Admiral Sir George Carew, who was on board – not surprisingly, she fainted.

Maybe it is my morbid curiosity, but I find facial reconstruction technology utterly fascinating. I think the guy to the right looks a little like Richard Gere minus the full beard. Maybe? ok I have had better calls.

3. Scientists have used Facial Reconstruction technology to illustrate the facial features of the crew of the Mary Rose from skulls found on board (shown above).

4. As well as iron bolts The Mary Rose was held together by thousands of wooden pegs – each one made by hand.

5. Celebrated Marine Artist Geoff Hunt researched the Mary Rose for 113 hours before he began his new painting of the ship, unveiled earlier this year. His research revealed that King Henry VIII’s flagship had one more fighting castle deck than had previously been thought, fuelling speculation that it was the ship’s top heaviness that may have led to her mysterious sinking (shown here).

Not too shabby of a painting eh? Here is some more info about the Mary Rose:

http://www.maryrose500.org/
www.facebook.com/MaryRose500?_fb_noscript=1
www.twitter.com/MaryRose500
www.youtube.com/maryrose500appeal
http://www.maryrose.org/
http://www.historicdockyard.co.uk/

Those gossiping son of a guns

Are you sick of all the child birth posts yet? Ok, I promise this is my last one…maybe. When researching this subject, I was surprised to find many American idioms and words that originated in child birth practices. Here are a few of my favorite:

Son of a Gun
If you were a sailor’s wife in the 17th century then you might not want to give birth on the ship. To help the baby along the sailors would fire a canon believing the blast would help the baby come out faster. It’s from this tradition that we get the phrase “son of a gun.” Just imagine coming into the world to the sound of blazing canons.

Gossip
Throughout history, when a woman gave birth it turned into one big party where presumably everyone but the mother in labor had a good time. When Marie Antoinette gave birth to her daughter, everyone but the local butcher crowded into her bed chamber to wait for the blessed event. These women who gathered around the birthing mother chattering and sharing stories were called “God-sibs” or sisters-in-god and became the origin of the word gossip. When Louis XIV’s mistress, Louise de la Valliere gave birth, he appointed a male midwife because he new prattling women were less likely to be discreet.

Farmed out
Today when you use the term “farmed out,"you usually think of the labor forces used in other countries to manufacture the goods that were once made in America. The term actually has its origins in childbirth. Throughout the 17th and 18th century, wealthy English ladies would send their newborns out to live with a wet nurse in the country. This practice was called “farmed out.”

Travel
Before the 1300s, the word travel was derived from “travail” and was defined as painful exertion and suffering. It was often used in referring to the pain of childbirth. They just don’t call it labor for nothing!

Winner of The Raucous Royals giveaway

Congratulations to Kimberly of Kimberly Eve Musings of a Writer. Her article on Anne Boleyn was chosen as the winner of The Raucous Royals favorite royal contest hosted by Everything Tudor. You can read her article here:

http://kimberlyeve.blogspot.com/2009/10/writing-competitions.html

And here is another article on my favorite royal Elizabeth I
http://kimberlyeve.blogspot.com/2009/09/many-faces-of-elizabeth-i.html

Winner of The Midwife's Apprentice

The winner of The Midwife's Apprentice is Kathleen. I have emailed the winner and just need your mailing address.

All newsletter subscribers are automatically entered to win the giveaway. If you are not a newsletter subscriber, then subscribe here.

Congratulations to last month's winner.