Random Most Destructive And Abusive Royal Marriages In History (12 items)

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  (#7) Tamar of Georgia

  • Notable Figure

  Marrying someone not of her choosing proved to be disastrous for the fierce Queen Tamar of Georgia. Though she co-ruled with her father before his death and was his official heir, not everyone was excited about having a queen. Both nobles and members of her own family insisted that she find a man to rule at her side.

  So in 1185, the queen married Yuri Bogolyubsky. It was a huge mistake, and, between his drinking and affairs, he soon proved to be an unfit consort. Tamar kicked him to the curb and annulled the marriage in 1187. Enraged, he led a revolt against his ex-wife that she handily defeated. She went on to rule until 1213. 
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  (#6) Henry II of England

  • Notable Figure

  One of the great romances of the medieval world was the relationship between King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Sparks flew when they first met: Henry was the young, handsome future king of England, and Eleanor was the beautiful, captivating wife of the king of France. But they didn't let a little thing like Eleanor's marital status stand in their way - she got an annulment in 1152, and Henry and Eleanor married a few weeks later.

  Though their marriage was royal, it also was open to the same strains as any other. Henry's eye wandered, and by the 1170s the marriage was beyond the point of repair. He even installed a mistress at his side. Bitter, brilliant, and bold, Eleanor convinced her sons to rebel against their father in 1173.

  Henry put down the rebellion, and, not trusting his shrewd wife, had her locked away for the last 16 years of his life. When her sons Richard and then John inherited the throne, she again became a critical actor in the royal court until her own death in 1204.
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  (#8) Peter the Great

  • Notable Figure

  Russia's Peter I may be remembered as "the Great" - but to his first wife Eudoxia, he was anything but. Eudoxia married the tsar in 1689 in a wedding that Peter's mother had brokered. Though the marriage produced three kids, Peter grew bored with his wife. In 1698, after nine years of marriage, Peter felt it was time to move on.

  So, he divorced Eudoxia and sent her to a convent. With his first wife out of the picture, Peter secretly married his peasant-mistress a few years later.
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  (#4) Henry VIII of England

  • Notable Figure

  If there was any royal who could never figure out the secret to marital bliss, it was Henry VIII, the King of England from 1509 to 1547. He divorced two wives, killed two more, and lost one to the ravages of early modern childbirth. Of his doomed marriages, perhaps the most tragic, was to Catherine Howard.

  Henry married Catherine when he was 49 and she was only 16 or 17. The huge age discrepancy mirrored a discrepancy in lifestyle, too.

  By the time he married Catherine, Henry was a shadow of the golden prince he had once been: he was now obese and inactive, thanks to an old jousting wound. Catherine, by contrast, was in the prime of her youth and allegedly looked elsewhere for romantic fulfillment. After being accused of having an affair with Thomas Culpepper, Catherine Howard's downfall was swift and decisive - the teenaged queen was beheaded on February 13, 1542.

  Catherine wasn't the only one of Henry's wives to end up on the chopping block. He had his second wife, Anne Boleyn, beheaded only a few years earlier.
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  (#9) Margaret of Valois

  • Noble person

  The wedding with perhaps the most directly awful consequences was that of Princess Marguerite de Valois and Henri de Navarre. They came from two sides of the tracks: Marguerite was the willful daughter of Catholic King Henri II of France and his calculating wife Catherine de Medici, and Henri was the Protestant King of Navarre.

  Their marriage in Paris on August 18, 1572, brought both Catholics and Protestants to the city to celebrate the royal nuptials. But the spirit of Christian unity was short-lived. On the night of August 24, the so-called St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre - on the orders of Marguerite's brother King Charles IX and her mother Catherine de Medici - made Paris's streets run red with the blood of thousands of slaughtered Protestants.

  Marguerite's new husband barely escaped with his life, and it was an ominous way to begin a new marriage. Indeed, the pair annulled their marriage in 1599.
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  (#12) Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon

  • Noble person

  Princess Margaret - Queen Elizabeth II's younger sister - was a popular fixture in British high society during her sister's reign. So her wedding to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones on May 6, 1960, was the social event of the season. Unfortunately, the marriage was an emotional rollercoaster for both parties. Margaret and her husband were both vain and combative, and they brought out the worst in each other in their intense spats.

  Things got so terrible between the royal pair that Armstrong-Jones began leaving "hate notes" for his wife. Among the more ridiculous things he wrote: "You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you." Unsurprisingly, the marriage ended in divorce in 1978. 

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