At the turn of the last century, the French Riviera was mostly a winter destination for those in colder climates. It turns out that "fun in the sun" and "playground for the rich" are fairly modern concepts, but in a brilliant real estate move, American actress Maxine Elliott created both. Her waterfront Château de l'Horizon, constructed in 1932, became a veritable clubhouse for the rich, famous, and powerful on both sides of the Atlantic. Alicia takes us through some of the more notable personages, stories, and affairs from the heyday of the Château de l'Horizon, under Maxine Elliott's ownership, and later that of Prince Aly Khan.
Among the luminaries who appear in this episode: Gerald and Sara Murphy; King Edward VII; William Montagu, 9th Duke of Manchester; George Keppel; Alice Keppel; Jennie Jerome Churchill; Winston Churchill; Elsie de Wolfe; Prince George, Duke of Kent; J.P. Morgan; King George V; King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson; Cecil Beaton; Cimmie Mosley; Picasso; Prime Minister David Lloyd George; the Aga Khan; Clark Gable; George Bernard Shaw; Lady Diana Cooper; Lady Doris Castlerosse; Daisy Fellows; Marion Davies; Edwina Mountbatten, Countess of Burma; The Mitford Sisters (and their brother); Randolph Churchill Jr.; Evelyn Waugh; Gloria Guinness; Kick Kennedy; Prince Aly Khan; Pamela Churchill; Rita Hayworth; Gianni Agnelli; JFK and Jackie Kennedy; Aristotle Onassis; Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, just to name a few.
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34. Maxine Elliott and the Château de l'Horizon

Whether it's the debauchery of ancient Roman emperors, the Tudor crime family, the shenanigans behind the Chair of St. Peter, or the Austrian elites’ attempts to save themselves by trading their daughters to other royal houses, it turns out that our betters have always been among our worst. Join Alicia and Stacie from Trashy Divorces as we turn our jaded eyes to a different kind of moral garbage fire: Trashy Royals! Thursdays. Brought to you by Hemlock Creatives.

History

Society & Culture

Part of the joy of history is how resonant it often is. Imagine an ambitious if dysfunctional family with some minor claim to nobility in some far off backwater rising to power - to the highest office in the land - on the strength of a charismatic son known as much for his professional acumen as his arrogant, sometimes outrageous behavior. 
Welcome to revolutionary France! When the Italian-by-way-of-Corsica Bonaparte family arrived in France in 1779, when young Napoleon was 9, it set into motion a course of events that would change history. Trained in prestigious French military academies, Napoleon would become a military hero and an influential supporter of the French Revolution and the various governments that followed - including the ones that had nearly beheaded, and then released, Josephine de Beauharnais. 
It is a historical irony that Josephine, Empress of France, was not even Josephine until her relationship with Napoleon, and Beauharnais was her first husband's name. Napoleon didn't like her given name of Rose, so he changed it, and Josephine's first extremely unhappy marriage was ended by the revolutionaries' guillotine to her husband's neck. Born in colonial Martinique, Josephine made her way to France in place of her recently deceased sister, who had been betrothed to the Viscount of Beauharnais. 
Napoleon and Josephine had a passionate, if rocky, marriage that his family always detested. His mother referred to his wife in highly derogatory terms, and his brothers turned themselves into the Hardy Boys of Gossip Against Josephine. Napoleon's sisters hated Josephine as well, so it's a wonder that the couple made it 14 years. Still, once you go from Republican-leaning military officer to Emperor, you have to give your country an heir, and while Josephine entered the marriage with two children from her first, Napoleon had been notably childless both with her and his many mistresses. 
Then - like a miracle, and possibly through his own family's trickery - one of his mistresses gave birth to a baby he believed was his own! Josephine's time as his wife was clearly limited; they annulled their 14-year-long marriage in 1810, and Josephine lived out her days at the Chateau de Malmaison outside of Paris, tending a lavish garden of roses and remaining close to her former husband until her death in 1814.
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62. Meet The Bonapartes | Napoleon and Josephine

Long a vassal state to its much larger neighbors, Belgium only became independent in 1830, at which time it decided that what it really needed was a (constitutional) monarchy! Its first king, Leopold I, earned the gig by virtue of being born a Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld prince who had cultivated his relationships with Europe's royal houses during a distinguished military career. Like his son, he was not a paragon of family values, which prompted his second wife, Louise of Orleans, to lash out at their children. 
When Leopold II succeeded his father in 1865, he was hot to trot in acquiring colonial possessions, something that his father had attempted to achieve but never managed to. This led to a world-changing catastrophe and a crime of truly historic proportions. Leopold II engineered a private scheme by which he became the sole owner of the territory that is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he essentially enslaved the population and forced them to pillage their own land - rubber and ivory were especially valuable at the time - for his enrichment. Failure to meet quotas was punishable by death. Rape, mutilations, destruction of settlements, and taking workers' families as hostages to force them to work harder were all common. 
Leopold was savvy enough to recognize that this state of affairs wouldn't fly with the public in Belgium, so he invested heavily in a propaganda effort to mask the reality on the ground. For the average person in Belgium, the stories of the Christianization of the people of the Congo and the improving social and economic conditions there supported their king's enterprise entirely. Meanwhile, writers and journalists around the world began to realize through their own travels what was really going on. But even millions of deaths, a horrifying population-wide immiseration, and the slimy personal enrichment Leopold had attained through those practices didn't cause the Belgian Parliament to rush to correct the situation. It wasn't until 1908, a year before Leopold's death, and decades into his brutal domination of the Congolese people, that Belgium's elected government took control of what would become the Belgian Congo, and later, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 
His involvement with the Congo wasn't the only thing damaging Leopold's image at home. He was a terrible husband to his wife, Queen Marie Henriette, and at the age of 65, in 1899, very publicly took a 16-year-old mistress who he lavished with money and properties around Europe, including the famous Villa Leopolda. 
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61. Leopold II of Belgium, the Congo Free State, and Villa Leopolda

One of the outcomes of the 20th century's two world wars was the widespread abolition of monarchies across Europe. Some of these events were brutal, as in Russia, but others, like Italy, happened bloodlessly and through the popular will.
After a long reign that saw the Kingdom of Italy enthralled by Benito Mussolini's fascist dictatorship, World War II, and King Victor Emmanuel III aiding and abetting it all, the Italian people were exhausted. In an effort to preserve the institution, Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in 1946, elevating his son, Umberto II and his wife Marie-Jose of Belgium, to the throne. 
A referendum on the future of the monarchy was already scheduled, so Umberto and Marie-Jose, whose marriage had been uniquely unhappy, barnstormed the country trying to salvage public opinion and hang onto their thrones. It didn't work; by a 54-46% vote, Italians chose to create the Republic of Italy, and the reign of King Umberto II and Queen Marie-Jose ended after just over a month. They and their four children were exiled to Portugal, but it wasn't all bad news. After all, the independent and curious Marie-Jose had been strategically wed to a dullard who happened also to be gay. Once free of her role as anybody's Queen, she left Umberto on the Portuguese Riviera and took the kids to a new life in Switzerland and never looked back. 
Unfortunately, their one son, Vittorio Emanuele, did not exactly live his best life in the aftermath of it all. While just a child when the monarchy ended, he had a strained relationship with his father, fell into arms dealing and shady international finance as an adult, and managed to get himself into - and out of - serious legal trouble a number of times.
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60. King Umberto II and Queen Marie-Jose of Italy and the Fall of the House of Savoy

If you worried that royal houses had gotten a little too genteel by the 19th century, the story of Ranavalona I of Madagascar will disabuse you of that pretty quickly. Seizing the throne in 1828 after the death of her husband, King Radama - despite not being the rightful heir to it - she immediately launched a campaign of murder against her political rivals and potential successors, and summarily ended friendly relations with European nations, including expelling missionaries who had established schools. She didn't merely promote the local customs and faith traditions of the Malagasy people; she eventually banned the practice of Christianity entirely and executed those who practiced it. In fact, she executed a lot of people, in a variety of creative ways, and historians believe that in her 33-year reign of terror, she depopulated Madagascar by about half. It's no wonder that she's considered Madagascar's Bloody Mary, and Madagascar's Caligula.
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59. Queen Ranavalona I, The Mad Queen of Madagascar

When she assumed the throne in 1558, she made it clear to the members of her court that they shouldn't plan to have their wives or female companions around the place. She intended to be singular as she consolidated power, but perhaps she had another motive as well; by banishing the wives, Robert Dudley, newly appointed Master of the Horse to Her Majesty the Queen, was not required to send for his wife, Amy Robsart, to join him in London. 
Elizabeth and Robert were not overly discreet in their enjoyment of one another's company, while the young queen's advisors, especially William Cecil, her Secretary of State, grew more and more insistent that Elizabeth find a suitable strategic marriage to enter into with some titled European. This, of course, was not to be. Her relationship with Robert became such a scandal that Cecil himself decided it would cause her government to fall, and everything carried on very precariously until the morning of September 8, 1560, when Amy Robsart was discovered dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs at her home at Cumnor Place. The scandal banished Robert from court for more than a year, and while he and Elizabeth would remain close for the rest of his life, the intense romance that characterized the beginnings of her reign was over. 
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34. Maxine Elliott and the Château de l'Horizon

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