u/Particular_Chart1584 — reddlx

▲ 345 r/crimsonshed

In 1658, Lucy Walter died at 28, abandoned and penniless, after King Charles II's spymaster kidnapped her son on the king's orders. On her deathbed, she claimed they had secretly married making their son the rightful heir to England's throne

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 4 days ago

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The 18th century had no social media, no internet, no TV. And yet, Kitty Fisher became England's most famous woman not for what she did, but for who she was seen with. She was dead at 25, four months after her wedding.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 6 days ago

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In 1863, Lavinia Warren was the most famous little person alive. She toured the country with her baby. Crowds went wild. She met President Lincoln. She met the Pope. There was no baby. Barnum picked up a different child from the local orphanage before each show and quietly returned them after.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 8 days ago

🔥 Hot ▲ 5.7k r/crimsonshed

A Parisian courtesan dies in 1939 and her apartment sits locked and untouched for 71 years, and when they finally open the door in 2010, they find love letters from two Prime Ministers and a painting worth €2.1 million

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 16 days ago

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When Jeanne Poisson was a child, a fortune teller predicted she would one day reign over the heart of a King. Her mother believed it so completely, she renamed her 'Reinette' little queen. By 1745, Madame de Pompadour had made it come true.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 18 days ago

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Woman sold as a wedding present in 1836 goes to court in 1856 to argue for her own freedom and isn't permitted to speak. Her enslaver doesn't appear. She wins. She dies in 1891 worth $300,000.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 19 days ago

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In 1741, a 12-year-old orphan was selling flowers on the streets of Bath to survive. By the late 1740s, she was so famous that wives across Britain copied her every fashion choice and husbands secretly hid her portrait inside their pocket watches. Her name was Fanny Murray.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 21 days ago

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In 1839, 15-year-old Marie Duplessis stood on a Paris street, too poor to buy a bowl of fried potatoes. Her father had sold her to a stranger. She escaped, charmed her way to the top of French society with Franz Liszt among her lovers, and died at 23. Her life became La Traviata.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 26 days ago

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A duchess set a loaded revolver on the dinner table, looked at her guests, and said "I might just shoot Marlborough" Gladys Deacon spent 24 years engineering her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough. She waited through his entire first marriage, a secret affair, and two decades of patience.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 27 days ago

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She wore diamonds on every finger, ran the most powerful brothel in America, and may have outlived her own death certificate. In 1900, a New Orleans Blue Book described Lulu White as "thehandsomest octoroon in America.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 27 days ago

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She kissed her mother goodbye like she was going to school. She never came back. For the next 60 years, she made sure no one found out why. In 1880, a woman named Sadie Mansfield was listed in Arizona Territory census records as a courtesan.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 28 days ago

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She was four years old when she found her mother's body. No autopsy was ever performed. The official cause of death was listed as a throat infection. Barbara Woolworth Hutton inherited the Woolworth retail fortune in the early 1930s. At the time, it was worth over $50 million. By any modern measure,

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 29 days ago

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She was the sister of the murdered Tsar. In 1925 a stranger walked up to her in a Berlin nursing home and said "I am your niece Anastasia." Olga looked at her for four days and walked away.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago

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Sophonisba was a Carthaginian noblewoman married twice by men controlling her fate in 203 BC. When Rome demanded her as a war prize, she was sent a cup of poison instead. Her story inspired Virgil's Queen Dido then disappeared for 2,000 years.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago

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In May 1898, Princess Louise of Belgium's husband convinced Emperor Franz Joseph I to lock her in an asylum not for madness, but for leaving him. She spent 6 years inside. When she escaped, her dying father had already married his 16-year-old mistress and left her almost nothing.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago

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She ruled as Empress of China for 16 years. Then Empress Nara's husband erased her. He destroyed her portraits, stripped her titles, buried her in cheap wood next to a minor consort, and exiled the official who dared ask for mourning. She died a year later. We still don't know her real name.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago

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Marie Walewska was married off at 18 to a Polish count of 68. By 20 she was Napoleon's mistress, sleeping with the emperor to win her country's freedom. Poland stayed under foreign rule for another century. She finally married for love at 29, then died within a year.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago

▲ 447 r/HistoryAnecdotes+1 crossposts

Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, was a well-known beauty and the daughter of a Scottish cricketer and socialite , whose many romances included Prince George, Duke of Kent, and David Niven and married twice but in 1963, a bitter divorce made Margaret shunned.

u/Beginning-Passion676 — 1 month ago

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In 1803, Robert Emmet led an armed uprising against British rule in Ireland. His own barrister secretly accepted £200 to throw his trial. He could have escaped to France but chose to stay for his fiancée. His burial place has never been found.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago

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In 1774, Georgiana Cavendish married one of England's most powerful dukes. Her husband then moved his mistress into their home, had children with her, and when Georgiana had an affair, she was sent into exile. She's Diana's great-great-great-great-aunt.

u/Particular_Chart1584 — 1 month ago