Fertility problems and bandy legs, dysfunctional family relationships, heavy drinking and morbid obesity... some of our monarchs have been sorry specimens indeed.
And yet historian Lucy Worsley, whose day job is chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces, believes the British monarchy survives not through its strengths, but through the frailty of generations of royals.
‘It’s counterintuitive,’ Lucy says, beaming a mischievous smile. Let’s hope her new BBC2 series Fit To Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History doesn’t cripple her prospects of becoming Dame Lucy.
Lucy Worsley, whose day job is chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces, believes the British monarchy survives not through its strengths, but through the frailty of generations of royals
The series suggests it was the weaknesses of our monarchs that forced the institution to adapt through centuries of political upheaval and social change.
For Lucy, examining their medical records and their most intimate belongings is poignant evidence of the frailty of kings.
‘There was no royal body part too intimate or royal body fluid too unsavoury to evade attention,’ she says, peering into a Tudor chamber pot excavated from Henry VIII’s garden at Hampton Court. Henry couldn’t pass water without it being scrutinised by his gentleman of the bedchamber. The King’s health, after years of civil unrest, was the health of the nation.
Sadly for our royals, they’ve never been given much privacy. ‘There isn’t a single one of them I don’t have some sympathy for,’ says Lucy. Henry’s physician prescribed Viagra substitutes – goat’s testicles flavoured with marjoram – for potency.
The King’s fertility problems and desperation for a son changed the course of history when he broke with Rome to divorce Catherine of Aragon. His daughter Mary, in her turn, despaired of ever having a child to secure a Catholic succession and suffered a humiliating false pregnancy, though her swollen belly was probably caused by the cancer that killed her.
Hardly surprising then that Elizabeth I, as the Virgin Queen, refused to take up the biological challenge to reproduce.
When James I succeeded with an heir, a spare and a daughter, it seemed the monarchy had achieved stability, despite James’s homosexuality – and his jealous love for his good-looking favourite the Duke of Buckingham. But James’s sexual peccadilloes had psychological repercussions.
One of the most poignant objects Lucy produces is the pair of orthopaedic boots – from the Museum of London – worn by James’s son Charles, who suffered from rickets.
Growing up with a stammer and low self-esteem, overshadowed by his dashing older brother Henry – who died prematurely of typhoid – and his father’s much younger lover Buckingham, Charles’s hypersensitivity to slights brought about the intractable stubborness that led to his downfall.
Unfit to rule, King Charles I was beheaded in 1649.
George II, who had a terrible temper and suffered from angina, died of a heart attack in 1760
By the early 18th century it was still the monarch’s duty to produce an heir – but Queen Anne’s obstetric disasters won her sympathy as she mourned five dead children and 12 miscarriages.
Her physical failure meant the crown passed to the German Hanoverian dynasty, and the four Georges paid a high personal price for their time on the throne. ‘They had more than their share of unhappy marriages and bitter father-son rivalries,’ says Lucy. ‘They were players in a psychodrama that produced generations of damaged human beings.’
George II, who had a terrible temper and suffered from angina, died of a heart attack in 1760 – having fallen off his commode – after years of family friction and clashes with Parliament over money. ‘It was as though he’d died of crossness,’ Lucy says.
Paradoxically, however, the madness of George III served to remind the nation of its affection for this popular King. Lucy produces his waistcoat, stained with drool.
Recent research debunks the widely accepted theory that the King’s blue urine was caused by the genetic blood disease porphyria. More plausibly, it seems, it resulted from a plant extract tonic prescribed to aid his digestion, and his recurring ‘episodes’ would be recognised today as bipolar disorder, or manic depression.
By the end of his long reign that spanned revolution in France, George III had become a symbol of British stability.
His biggest failure was his son George IV, the most pathetic monarch to disgrace the throne. By 1830, when he died, George IV was a drunken, incapable drug addict, almost blind, often delirious and so fat he was described by artist Sir David Wilkie as like a sausage about to burst its skin.
His obituary in The Times declared, ‘There never was an individual less regretted than this deceased King’.
Lucy says, ‘His irrelevance was what saved him.His wife said he’d have made a great hairdresser. What a shame he had to be King, he wasn’t cut out for it. But nobody was bothered enough to get rid of him.’
Enter Queen Victoria – who laid the foundations for a modern monarchy based on middle-class family values. She would never have succeeded – or even been born – were it not for obstetrical tragedy. In 1817, her cousin Princess Charlotte – only 21 and the nation’s sweetheart – died only hours after giving birth to her first child, a stillborn boy, after being in labour for 48 hours.
The monarchy, it seems, has thrived on mediocrity, the survival of the unfittest
The Princess’s death set off a race between the disreputable royal dukes – sons of George III – to marry and belatedly beget legitimate heirs. ‘Hot and hard each Royal pair, Are at it hunting for the heir,’ quipped the contemporary satirist Peter Pindar. Queen Victoria was born in 1819; her father the Duke of Kent, having won the race, died before she was a year old.
‘Queen Victoria is another one I feel very sorry for,’ Lucy says. After Albert’s death she disappeared from public life, suffering from what today would be recognised as clinical depression.
Yet historian Helen Rappaport, whose recent book Magnificent Obsession reassesses Albert’s death and Victoria’s widowhood, feels that – paradoxically again – had Albert survived, he might have finished off the monarchy.
‘I think there would have been a serious constitutional crisis because Albert was getting much too powerful,’ she says.
The monarchy, it seems, has thrived on mediocrity, the survival of the unfittest.
‘Power has been lost at every twist and turn over the centuries,’ says Lucy, ‘so they’ve never been powerful enough to be worth overthrowing.’
As for our present-day Royal Family: ‘I’ve got my own views,’ she laughs. ‘But I’m keeping them to myself!’