The Victorian era left us feeling like sex scandals are a new thing. But our ancient ancestors actually put us to shame when it came to high-profile immorality. Their sex scandals were often interlaced with conspiracy, murder, and executions—raising the stakes for powerful ancients caught in compromising positions.

10Randy Egyptian Judges

Around 1155 BC, Pharaoh Rameses III of Egypt was murdered in a conspiracy led by his wife, Tiye. His successor Rameses IV set up a commission of 12 judges to investigate the plot. The judges discovered that Tiye’s conspiracy had included numerous court officials and concubines, all of whom were put to death.

However, the trial itself was soon disrupted by a sex scandal when it was revealed that three of the judges had been seduced by women linked to the conspiracy. According to the ancient trial records, “the women . . . found [the judges] where they were. They had a fine party down there with them.”

Of the three judges involved, May had his nose and ears cut off while Pabes “was punished by leaving him [to himself]. He took his own life.” Hori was only reprimanded, probably because he testified against Pabes and May.

9A Dark Temple And A Dog Mask

During the reign of Tiberius, Rome was rocked by a particularly strange sex scandal. According to Josephus, a nobleman named Decius Mundus had the hots for a married woman named Paulina. He even offered her 200,000 drachmas to spend the night with him, but the respectable Paulina refused.

Decius wasn’t going to give up that easily. He knew that Paulina was a devoted follower of the Egyptian gods. So he bribed the priests of Isis to tell Paulina that the god Anubis wished to appear to her. Paulina obligingly came to the temple at night, where Decius was disguised as the dogheaded Anubis.

In the darkness, Paulina apparently bought that Decius was Anubis and “performed a night-long service for him.” A few days later, Decius told her the truth, bragging that he had saved 200,000 drachmas. Horrified, Paulina complained to the emperor. The priests were crucified, and the Temple of Isis was burned down. But Decius was only exiled.

8The Scandal That Ended A Country

In ancient China, a notorious sex scandal destroyed the state of Chen. According to the Commentary of Zuo, the married Xia Ji was having affairs with Duke Ling of Chen and two of his ministers, who frequently wore her underwear under their clothes. All three openly bragged about the relationship, which enraged Xia Ji’s son Xia Zengshu.

In 599 BC, the three men were drunkenly partying at Xia Ji’s house when Xia Zengshu appeared. Duke Ling turned to one of his ministers and joked that the young man looked suspiciously like the minister. “He also looks like you,” the minister joked back. At which point, Xia Zengshu snapped and murdered the duke.

In the chaos, the two ministers escaped and fled to King Zhuang of Chu, who used the incident as an excuse to conquer Chen. Xia Zengshu was executed, and all China learned a valuable lesson about “your mom” jokes.

7The Crush That Destroyed A Tyrant

The brothers Hippias and Hipparchus became co-tyrants of Athens after their father died in 527 BC. But trouble broke out when Hipparchus became infatuated with the handsome youth Harmodius. Of course, in ancient Greece, this was no scandal. What was shocking was that Harmodius was already in a relationship with a man named Aristogiton; Hipparchus was trying to use his power to split up the couple and become Harmodius’s new lover.

With no other options, Aristogiton and Harmodius decided to go out in a blaze of glory. During the crowded Panathenaea festival, they approached Hipparchus and stabbed him to death. The tyrant’s guards cut down Harmodius, while Aristogiton was tortured and executed. The Athenians later erected a statue of the lovers, honoring their blow against tyranny.

6The King Who Wanted People To Ogle His Wife

Candaules was king of Lydia, a powerful kingdom in what is now western Turkey. According to Herodotus, Candaules was a bit of a creep who was always bragging about his hot wife. In 718 BC, he asked his bodyguard, Gyges, if he wanted to see the queen naked.

Gyges sensibly declined. But Candaules insisted, telling Gyges to hide behind the door of their bedroom so that he could watch the queen get undressed. Unfortunately, she spotted Gyges. And she was furious.

Learning what her husband had done, she gave Gyges a choice: Kill Candaules and marry her, or she would publicly accuse Gyges of spying on her, forcing Candaules to execute Gyges. Unsurprisingly, Gyges chose the first option. That night, Candaules entered the bedroom and was stabbed to death by Gyges—who had been hiding behind the door again.

5China’s Fake Eunuch Scandal

An unusual scandal broke out early in the reign of Qin Shi Huang, who would become the first emperor of all of China. His mother, Queen Zhao, had a long-term affair with the minister, Lu Buwei. However, it was difficult for Lu Buwei to sneakily visit the queen, who became sexually unsatisfied.

So the pair tracked down a man named Lao Ai, who was known for his huge penis. (His party trick was putting a wheel on it like an axle.) After Lao Ai agreed to become the queen’s lover, Lu Buwei faked Lao Ai’s castration and plucked out his hair and beard so that he could pretend to be a eunuch.

Lao Ai was then sent to serve the queen. As a eunuch, he could enter the women’s quarters without suspicion, where he engaged in much “immoral behavior” with Queen Zhao. The ruse was eventually discovered, and Lao Ai was executed, along with three generations of his family. Lu Buwei and Zhao got off with banishment.

4An Extremely Jealous King

Gadatas had a problem we can all sympathize with: He was just too sexy. According to Xenophon, Gadatas was a hot young nobleman who served Nabonidus of Babylon. One day, one of the king’s concubines started flirting with Gadatas, saying that his fiancee was lucky to be marrying such a handsome man. To make matters worse, Gadatas started flirting back.

This was a bad move. The king immediately ordered that Gadatas should be castrated for his insolence, making him unlikely to flirt with any more concubines. Gadatas later got revenge by defecting to Cyrus the Great and handing key fortresses over to the Persians.

3Crassus And The Virgin

Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the richest men in history and one of the most powerful figures in Rome. So when he got caught up in a sex scandal, it was big news. It was a particularly juicy scandal, too. Crassus was accused of trying to seduce a Vestal Virgin.

The Vestals were an order of priestesses who swore chastity, so trying to get one into bed was a major crime. Fortunately for Crassus, he had the perfect alibi. He explained that the Vestal in question owned a really nice villa. The only reason he was always hanging around and flattering her was because he wanted her to sell it to him cheap.

Since Crassus was famously greedy, the court bought the story and acquitted him. As Plutarch put it, “It was his avarice that absolved him from the charge.”

2Some Shocking Graffiti

Of course, it’s hard to know for sure what people thought of sex scandals in the ancient world. One interesting example comes from the reign of Hatshepsut, the most famous female pharaoh of Egypt. It was rumored that Hatshepsut was having an affair with her courtier Senenmut.

Apparently, the rumor was popular at the time since a worker seems to have graffitied it on a wall at Deir el Bahri. The graffiti depicts a figure who may be wearing pharaonic headdress being penetrated. The figure is somewhat androgynous, having no breasts or penis. This might suit Hatshepsut, who was often depicted with a fake beard.

1Elagabalus

The Roman Emperor Elagabalus’s whole life was a scandal. Levered into power at age 14 by his grandmother, the teen soon spiraled out of control. Over the next few years, he married at least five wives and one husband, a charioteer named Hierocles.

Cassius Dio claims that Elagabalus set up a mock brothel in the palace where he stood “nude at the door of the room . . . while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by . . . men who had been specially instructed to play their part.” He enjoyed letting Hierocles catch him at this so that Elagabalus could “be violently upbraided by his husband and beaten until he had black eyes.”

Dio also claims that Elagabalus often referred to himself as a woman and offered a reward to any surgeon who could give him a vagina. It’s hard to be sure how many of these stories are true, but accounts of the time agree that Elagabalus was plagued by sex scandals. Sensing that public opinion was souring, his grandmother eventually orchestrated a coup and replaced him with his cousin.

Medieval Europe was a violent place where ruthless kings ruled with iron fists. Assassinations were an easy way of removing a tyrant or political enemy, and they were often carried out with shocking brutality. Some of them were also fiendishly clever.

10Duke Conan II Of Brittany

In 1065, William of Normandy was preparing to invade England. To secure his borders, he proposed alliances with the surrounding lords. However, Duke Conan II of Brittany hated the Normans because he believed they had poisoned his father. Conan refused to ally with William and strongly implied that he would attack Normandy as soon as the army left for England.

This turned out to be a bit of a mistake since William quickly had Conan poisoned as well. According to Orderic Vitalis, William had to be clever about it since the Breton would obviously have been careful to avoid the same fate as his father. So instead of targeting Conan’s food, William’s assassin smeared poison on Conan’s riding gloves. While out riding, Conan wiped his mouth with the back of one glove and soon suffered a fit and died.

9Kenneth II Of Scotland

Kenneth II was assassinated in AD 995. The death is primarily notable for the absolutely insane story of the booby trap that did it. According to John of Fordun, the princes Constantine and Gryme persuaded a noblewoman named Finnguala to do the deed. Since Kenneth had killed her son, she was happy to oblige.

Finnguala rigged up her house with multiple crossbows hidden behind tapestries. The crossbows were connected by strings to a statue in the middle of the room. Finnguala then invited the king to inspect the statue. As soon as he touched it, the crossbows went off, firing a dozen arrows through him at once.

We can say for sure that Kenneth was killed in AD 995 and that Constantine and Gryme were blamed. However, most historians are skeptical of a crazy crossbow statue as the murder weapon.

8Louis, Duke Of Orleans

Charles VI of France was insane. (Among other things, he believed that he was made of glass and might shatter at any moment.) This prompted his nobles to struggle among themselves for power.

The immediate winner was the king’s brother, Louis of Orleans, who seduced the queen and effectively became regent. Louis was opposed by John the Fearless of Burgundy, who even tried to kidnap the king’s son. In response, Louis may have tried to rape John’s wife.

Things came to a head on November 23, 1407. Louis was leaving the queen’s house in Paris when he was attacked by a gang of eight hooded men. An eyewitness said that they struck Louis repeatedly “as if they were beating a mattress” until his brains were all over the road. John didn’t even try to deny ordering the murder, insisting that it was “for the good of the realm.”

7John The Fearless

The murder of Louis of Orleans sparked a civil war between his Armagnac supporters and John the Fearless of Burgundy. This was the last thing France needed because it was the middle of the Hundred Years War and the English were invading.

In 1419, the two sides agreed to meet to resolve their differences in a special enclosure in the middle of the Montereau Bridge. However, as soon as John the Fearless arrived, three old friends of Louis of Orleans pulled out swords and killed him in revenge.

Although the Armagnacs insisted that the murder was not premeditated, John’s son Philip allied with the English, changing the tide of the war. It was later joked that the English entered France through the hole in John’s skull.

6Peter The Inquisitor

In the 13th century, the Catholic Church was campaigning against the Cathars, a heretical sect that believed in two gods, one good and one evil. The Albigensian Crusade had devastated the Cathar stronghold in southern France, while the Inquisition was established to hunt them throughout Europe.

One of the best inquisitors was Peter of Verona, who was known for his humble lifestyle and was unusually successful at persuading Cathars to rejoin Catholicism. As a result, the Cathar underground in Milan gathered funds and hired a pair of hit men. The killers tracked Peter to a lonely spot on the road, where they jumped him and put an axe through his head.

Peter was immediately declared a saint, and Pope Innocent IV released a bull allowing Inquisitors to use torture for the first time. Interestingly, one of the hit men, Carino of Balsamo, later repented and is now considered something of a holy man.

5Philip De Montfort

Philip de Montfort had an interesting family history. His father and uncle were leaders of the Albigensian Crusade, while his cousin Simon was the lover of Queen Isabella of England. The couple eventually overthrew and murdered Isabella’s husband, Edward II.

Philip was Crusader Lord of Tyre. His talented leadership alarmed the Egyptian Sultan Baibars, who asked the notorious Hashishin (“Assassins”) to take care of the problem.

A Syrian Assassin was sent to Tyre, where he successfully disguised himself as a Christian and prayed daily at Philip’s church. Once the Assassin was a familiar face, he wandered up behind Philip while he was kneeling at prayer and stabbed him in the back. Baibars attacked the Crusader states a few months later.

4Godfred Of Denmark

Godfred was king of Denmark around AD 800 when the famous Frankish Emperor Charlemagne dominated Europe. Charlemagne had conquered the pagan Saxons and forcibly converted them to Christianity, which was quite alarming to the pagan Godfred. In anticipation of a confrontation, he greatly expanded the Danevirke, a mighty series of earthen fortifications in southern Denmark.

When the Baltic city of Reric allied with Charlemagne, Godfred attacked and destroyed it. In 810, his fleets ravaged Frisia and Godfred began to talk of reconquering Saxony. According to Frankish chroniclers, Godfred boasted that he would stable his horses in Charlemagne’s palace. Furious, the emperor began building a fleet of his own.

It seemed that everything was set for a huge war between the Franks and Vikings until Godfred was suddenly stabbed to death by one of his own warriors. Many historians have suggested that the murder was ordered by Charlemagne, who presumably found assassins cheaper than fleets.

3Godfred Of Frisia

Murdering Danes named Godfred seemed to run in the family because Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Fat did the same thing. Charles had named a Viking called Godfred as the Duke of Frisia. In return, Godfred agreed to stop raiding Frankish lands and to keep other Vikings from doing the same.

Unfortunately, Godfred got greedy. Frisia was poor land, so Godfred demanded that Charles give him some rich, wine-producing areas along the Rhine. This attempt at extortion seriously annoyed the Franks. They invited Godfred to discuss the issue on an island in the Rhine. To Godfred’s surprise, the previously meek Franks showed up armed to the teeth and hacked him to death.

2Harthacnut

It’s often forgotten now, but the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror was actually the second time that England had been conquered in 50 years. Cnut (aka Canute) of Denmark made himself king of England in 1018. After his death, the throne eventually passed to his son Harthacnut.

Edward the Confessor was the son of the overthrown Anglo-Saxon king of England. Thanks to some complicated family politics, he was also Harthacnut’s half-brother. (They shared a mother.) If Harthacnut died, Edward was in line for the throne. As luck would have it, Harthacnut did die after suffering a mysterious fit at a banquet at age 25.

So what’s suspicious about that? Well, after Edward took the throne, the rebellious Earl Godwin of Wessex also died after suffering a mysterious fit while eating dinner with the king. Meanwhile, Edward’s half-brother dropped dead days after returning to England from exile in Kiev. Which starts to seem a little suspicious, really.

1Pedro The Cruel

Pedro the Cruel was not a nice guy. As king of Castile, he was accused of numerous crimes. This included the murder of his brother Fadrique, who was dining with Pedro when a guard walked up behind Fadrique and hit him with a mace. When Pedro noticed that Fadrique was still moving, Pedro gave a knife to a page to finish the job while Pedro continued eating.

Fadrique’s twin, Enrique, soon rose in revolt and besieged Pedro in his castle. Enrique was supported by the famous French knight Bertrand du Guesclin. Bertrand had a reputation as a bit of a weasel, so Pedro offered him a bribe to help him escape. Since Bertrand was actually a huge weasel, he accepted and then informed Enrique, who agreed to match the bribe if Bertrand handed Pedro over.

On March 23, 1369, Bertrand helped Pedro sneak out of the castle and led him to a tent. To Pedro’s surprise, Enrique was waiting for him. The Spanish princes immediately started throwing insults, calling each other “son of a whore” and “son of a Jew.” Then they started wrestling. Pedro was winning until someone pulled him off and sat on him while Enrique stabbed him in the stomach.

Medieval Europe was theoretically pretty conservative on sex. One 13th-century bishop even put out a list ranking the five known sexual positions from least to most sinful. (If you’re curious: missionary, side-by-side, sitting, standing, and “dorsal.”) But just like any other era, the medieval period still had its share of sex scandals.

10Abelard And Heloise

In the early 12th century, Peter Abelard was the most famous philosopher in Europe. Huge crowds turned out to hear him speak, while students paid him handsomely to act as their tutor. He courted scandal when he started sleeping with one of his students, the beautiful and brilliant Heloise.

Heloise was the niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame and Abelard’s landlord, who was enraged when he discovered the illicit affair. Fulbert demanded that the couple get married. Neither was keen, but they agreed so long as the marriage was kept secret. But after Heloise gave birth to a son named Astrolabe, Fulbert revealed the marriage—only for Heloise to publicly deny it. Fulbert was furious.

Abelard sent Heloise to safety in a nunnery, which only annoyed Fulbert more. In 1117, a group of men burst into Abelard’s bedroom and brutally castrated him. He survived to become a monk and remained in contact with Heloise.

9Katherina Hetzeldorfer

In the late 1400s, an unmarried young man moved to the city of Speyer in Germany. He soon developed a reputation as a real rogue, conducting several affairs and groping women during the carnival. Nobody cared until 1477, when it was revealed that the philandering youth was actually a woman named Katherina Hetzeldorfer.

According to the trial records, Katherina had built herself a prosthetic penis “half as big as an arm . . . with a red piece of leather, at the front filled with cotton, and a wooden stick stuck into it.” She used this to have sex with several women, all of whom insisted at trial that they had no idea it wasn’t real. Katherine’s one-night-stand Else Muter even claimed that it somehow produced “semen . . . beyond measure.”

Katherina was drowned in the local river. The court accepted that her lovers had been hoodwinked, and they were sentenced to exile rather than death.

8The Swedish King And His Sister-In-Law

Princess Jutta was the daughter of King Eric IV of Denmark. As a young woman, she was placed in a cloister, where she was expected to live out the rest of her life as a nun. Instead, she staged a daring escape to Sweden.

Jutta was welcomed by her sister Sophia, who was married to King Valdemar of Sweden. Unfortunately, Valdemar started a passionate affair with the beautiful Jutta. They even had a child together. Soon, all Sweden was in an uproar with rumors that the king was cheating on his wife with her own sister.

Valdemar eventually had to make a pilgrimage to Rome to beg the Pope for forgiveness. It wasn’t the PR triumph he had hoped since the Pope imposed a hefty fine. The Swedes were furious that they had to cough up extra taxes for this, and Valdemar was quickly overthrown by his brothers.

7The Naughty Nuns Of Littlemore

In 1517, the local bishop decided to inspect Littlemore Priory in Oxfordshire, England, and uncovered the scandalous behavior of the nuns living there. Apparently, the sisters “romped and played with boys in the cloister.”

Even the prioress had an illegitimate daughter by a priest from Kent. To make matters worse, she had stolen church property to give her daughter a dowry, selling off the nunnery’s “candilsticks, basynes, shetts, pelous, federe bedds, etc.”

The nuns weren’t particularly repentant. In fact, when one was put in the stocks as punishment, three others broke down the door and freed her. The four nuns then set fire to the stocks and smashed their way out through a window.

Such immoral behavior couldn’t be tolerated, and the nunnery was eventually shut down on the orders of Cardinal Wolsey.

6The Pervy Pope

John XII became Pope when he was just 18, entirely thanks to his powerful family. The teenager rapidly proved himself more interested in sex than religion, to the point that his official palace came to resemble a brothel. It was said that local monks actually stopped praying for his health and started praying for him to die.

Before long, the scandal had spread across Europe. The Holy Roman Emperor wrote to warn that “not just a few, but all . . . have accused you of homicide, perjury, sacrilege, [and] incest with some of your female relatives and two sisters.”

John died in AD 964, apparently while making love to a woman named Stefanetta. Some accounts say that he had a stroke from the exertion, while others say that Stefanetta’s jealous husband burst into the room and threw the Pope out the window.

5William The Conqueror

These days, William I of England is best known as William the Conqueror. But in his own lifetime, he was often derisively referred to as “William the Bastard” or “William the Tanner.” That’s because he was born from a teenage tryst between Duke Robert of Normandy and a tanner’s daughter from Falaise.

Since Robert never had other sons, William was legitimized, but the scandal of his birth continued to haunt him. When he besieged Alencon, the citizens dangled animal skins from the walls and shouted, “Hides, hides for the tanner! Plenty of work for the tanner!” An enraged William fired a bunch of their severed hands from a catapult.

William’s descendants had more of a sense of humor about the whole thing. Henry II was stitching a torn glove when a bishop shouted that he looked just like his relatives in Falaise, prompting Henry to “burst unto uncontrollable laughter.”

4The Demon-Kings Of England

Henry II had an even more disconcerting story in his ancestry. While his mother was William the Conqueror’s granddaughter, his father was Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. The family had a reputation for cruelty, and it was said that they were descended from a demon.

According to the story, one of the early counts married the mysterious beauty Melusine but noticed that she always slipped out of church before the Eucharist. One day, he stood on her cloak to prevent her from leaving. As soon as the priest raised the Host, Melusine screamed, sprouted wings, and flew out the window, leaving behind two of her demon babies.

Of course, nobody buys that story nowadays, but the Plantagenets loved it. Both Henry and Richard the Lionheart often joked about being half-demon. Meanwhile, Bernard of Clairvaux summed up popular opinion of the family by declaring “from the Devil they came and to the Devil they will return.”

3The King, His Son, His Wife, And Her Brother

A more realistic scandal involved Henry, his son Richard the Lionheart, and Princess Alys of France. Alys and Richard had been betrothed as children, and Alys was sent to live with Henry when she was nine. But even when Alys passed the age of 16, Henry declined to actually let Richard marry her. Soon, sensational rumors leaked out that Henry had taken her for his own mistress.

The Pope threatened to excommunicate Henry’s whole kingdom unless he let Richard and Alys wed. King Louis of France demanded either a marriage or his daughter back. Henry begrudgingly agreed but didn’t name a date and continued to drag his feet for the next decade.

To make things even messier, some historians have suggested that Richard was having sex with Alys’s brother Phillip. In any case, Richard refused to marry Alys after his father died, alleging that she had already given birth to his half-brother.

2Heretical Spooning

In the late medieval period, the Church became increasingly worried about heretics, who were encouraged to admit to all sorts of disturbing sex acts on top of their religious crimes. In a famous case, a German heretic named Lepzet confessed that his sect met in a cave, where their bishop would insert the handle of a silver spoon into his anus and use it to hold an offering.

Then the congregation would kiss the bishop’s buttocks and a cat’s rectum before having an orgy—“men with men and women with women.” The confession was considered extremely shocking, although some killjoy historians suggest that Lepzet was probably making the whole thing up.

1Machiavelli, Da Vinci, And The Holes Of Truth

In the 1400s, the rulers of Florence placed several boxes known as “holes of truth” around the city. Citizens could write anonymous accusations and place them in the boxes to be investigated by the authorities.

It was a recipe for innuendo and rumormongering. Even Niccolo Machiavelli had to deny sodomizing a local courtesan known as La Riccia. He was presumably lying since he mentioned in a letter that La Riccia jokingly called him her “house pest” because he visited so often.

But the biggest scandal came in 1476 when multiple notes were left accusing Leonardo da Vinci and three other local notables of regularly having sex with a 17-year-old named Jacopo Saltarelli.

Soon all Florence was abuzz, and the artist found himself hauled in for questioning by the Officers of the Night, who weren’t nearly as cool as their name suggests. Fortunately, the charges were eventually dropped without damaging Leonardo’s career too much.

Ancient warfare was dominated by men, who have natural advantages when it comes to wielding a sword, drawing a bow, or dying of dysentery in some squalid camp. But every so often a powerful woman would come along to shock the ancient world by leading her armies into battle. Proud male warriors often underestimated these women, usually with fatal results.

10Cynane

Cynane was the daughter of Philip of Macedon and the half-sister of Alexander the Great. Her mother was from Illyria, a region with a tradition of female warriors, and she taught Cynane to ride, fight, and shoot. In fact, as a teenager, Cynane supposedly accompanied a Macedonian invasion of Illyria and killed the Illyrian queen in single combat.

That may not be true, but Cynane was certainly a power player at the Macedonian court. Alexander tried to marry her to a distant chief to get her out of the way, but the chief mysteriously dropped dead before the wedding. Rumors of poison ensured that nobody else would try to marry Cynane against her will.

After Alexander died, his mentally disabled brother succeeded him as Philip III and there was a scramble to see who would become the power behind the throne. Cynane raised an army and marched on Babylon, intending to marry her daughter to Philip. This alarmed the regent Perdiccas, who sent an army under Antipater to stop her. But Cynane defeated Antipater at Strymon and continued toward Babylon.

In desperation, Perdiccas sent Cynane’s old friend Alcetus to assassinate her at a meeting. But the plan backfired. The Greek army was so horrified at the murder of Alexander’s sister that they demanded that Cynane’s daughter marry Philip as she had wished. Even in death, Cynane got her way.

9Mavia

During the reign of the Emperor Valens, an alliance of seminomadic Arab tribesmen burst across the border and invaded Roman Palestine. The Arabs were led by a woman named Mavia, who personally led her troops into battle. The Romans thought this was hilarious. In fact, when the commander of Palestine summoned reinforcements, he was effectively dismissed from his post for needing help to fight a woman.

Mavia soon taught them a lesson, crushing the Roman forces in battle. According to the historian Sozomen, the dismissed Roman commander actually redeemed himself by charging into the fray and rescuing the general who had fired him.

In any case, the Romans decided that Queen Mavia had to be taken seriously and sent negotiators to reach a diplomatic solution. Mavia’s main demand was that a monk named Moses be appointed to replace the current Arab bishop, suggesting that her invasion was religious in nature.

8Lu’s Mother

Lu’s mother didn’t even leave us her name, but she certainly made her presence felt in Ancient China. Around AD 14, a minor official named Lu was unjustly executed by the local magistrate.

Lu’s mother was heartbroken at the death of her son and became determined to get her revenge. Since she came from a family of wealthy wine merchants, she was able to build up support by generously offering gifts and credit to the local peasants.

By the time she was in her sixties, Lu’s mother had built up a loyal network of several hundred local youths. She recruited more supporters from the outlaws who had taken refuge on a nearby island.

Once her forces were strong enough, she launched an outright rebellion and took control of the entire district. The magistrate who had executed her son begged for mercy. But she responded that her son had died for a petty crime, so it was only fair that his murderer should also get the death sentence.

After Lu’s mother died, her supporters joined the Red Eyebrows, a group of rebels who painted their faces and played an important part in overthrowing Emperor Wang Mang.

7Rhodogune

Rhodogune was a Parthian princess in the second century BC. According to the Greek historian Polyaenus, the fearsome Rhodogune was taking a bath one day when she heard that a local tribe was revolting. She immediately jumped out of the water and vowed not to bathe or wash her hair until the rebels were defeated.

Unfortunately, the war that followed was “tedious,” but the revolting Rhodogune eventually led her forces to victory against the revolting rebels. She immediately retired to her bath and thoroughly washed her hair. However, Polyaenus says that her statues and seals always depicted her with unkempt hair from that day on in honor of her great and smelly victory.

6The Trung Sisters

The Trung sisters are considered heroes of Vietnam for leading the resistance against the invading Chinese Han dynasty. Trung Trac was married to Thi Sach, a Vietnamese nobleman who organized a secret plan to rise up against the Chinese. When the Han got wind of this and murdered Thi Sach, Trung Trac took over as leader of the movement.

Together with her sister, Trung Nhi, Trung Trac gathered an army and put the Chinese forces to flight. In AD 39, the sisters declared themselves joint queens of an independent Vietnamese state. However, the Han empire struck back, sending a huge army which overwhelmed the Trung forces. Refusing to be captured, the sisters drowned themselves in a river around AD 43.

5Lady Trieu

When asked why she never married, Lady Trieu famously declared, “I wish to ride a strong wind and tame fierce waves, kill sharks in the Eastern sea, force back the Chinese armies, and throw off the chains of slavery. How could I possibly accept to be some man’s servant?”

Like the Trung sisters, Trieu was a Vietnamese woman who led a rebel army against the Chinese. Her rebellion was smaller and more localized that the Trung sisters’ uprising, but Trieu was every bit as fierce. In later years, she took on mythological characteristics, including yard-long breasts which she threw back over her shoulders so they wouldn’t get in the way during battle.

The brief accounts of her life indicate that she was eventually defeated and took her own life around AD 248.

4Amanirenas

In classic sitcom style, Amanirenas was a tough woman who had to fix a disaster caused by her idiot husband. The warrior queen was the wife of King Teriteqas of Nubia, who had foolishly attacked Roman Egypt. When the Romans struck back, Teriteqas died of disease, leaving Amanirenas ruling Egypt as regent for their young son.

Fortunately, Amanirenas was more than up to the challenge. Roman sources describe her as a giant of a woman, blind in one eye and tough as nails. After escaping a Roman siege of Napata, she raised an army and marched on the fortress of Premnis. The legions soon arrived, but neither side was keen on a pitched battle. Instead, Amanirenas sent ambassadors to Emperor Augustus, who agreed to her demands and signed a lasting peace treaty.

3Princess Pingyang

Princess Pingyang was the daughter of Li Yuan, who founded the Tang dynasty. When Li Yuan launched his rebellion, Pingyang was sent to the family estate for safety. Instead, she built a peasant army, known as the Woman’s Army in her honor. (Later legends claiming that it was an army of women seem to be incorrect.)

With this force, Pingyang seized control of Huxian County and defeated a Sui dynasty army sent to stop her. She then marched north with 10,000 men, destroying the Sui forces in Shaanxi. In AD 617, she combined with her father to capture the Sui capital. She became the first woman to take the title of Marshal but then suddenly died at age 23.

2Hydna

Hydna of Scione was the daughter of a Greek professional diver who taught her to swim from a young age. After defeating the Spartans at Thermopylae, the Persians marched on Athens while their navy sailed down the coast. When a storm blew up, Hydna and her father volunteered to cut the Persian anchors.

To complete this feat, father and daughter had to swim 16 kilometers (10 mi) across a storm-tossed bay and then dive down and saw through the Persian cables, all while avoiding detection. Amazingly, they succeeded and the Persian fleet was wrecked. The grateful Greeks erected a statue of the divers, which was later stolen by Nero.

1Fu Hao

Fu Hao might be the oldest and greatest female general in ancient history. She was the wife of Wu Ding, who ruled Shang dynasty China from around 1250 to 1190 BC.

While such ancient history can often be mixed with legend, it’s certain that Fu Hao served as a general because many inscribed oracle bones dated to her lifetime ask questions related to her military campaigns. Her tomb has also been found and contains weapons and other martial trappings.

According to the archaeologists who have unearthed her story, Fu Hao was her husband’s main general. Her greatest victory came against the Tu-Fang, ancient enemies of the Shang whom she defeated so thoroughly that they were never a threat again.

She led three other confirmed military campaigns, all of them great successes. It seems that she was a cunning strategist, luring the Bafang army into a deadly ambush. She died of exhaustion shortly after this triumph and was buried with great honor.

YouTube is no stranger to controversy. In the last few years, some of the craziest things have happened on the platform that have sparked outrage in the entire world. With Logan Paul’s shenanigans in Japan, or Pewdiepie’s all out war with the Wall Street Journal, YouTube stars have definitely given their fair share of scandals to the world. But some of those scandals definitely stand out as being unusual and completely random, which make it all more surprising than your average internet frenzy. From backfiring anger and crazy plot twists, to unpredictable emotional outbursts and dark mysteries, here are 10 bizarre YouTube controversies that shocked people:

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10 Lonelygirl15

14 years ago, in June 2006, a friendly 16 year-old girl named Bree Avery (more commonly known as Lonelygirl15) began to post videos to YouTube. In them, she is simply sitting in front of her webcam and talking to the audience. Nothing out of the ordinary (especially in 2006), but Bree’s likeable antics made her the very first viral YouTube stars. People loved her for her authenticity and relatable personality, and she seemed to have a great time exploring her world and talking about it in her videos. She was an absolute phenomenon in the early days of internet culture.

So imagine the shock when, a few months later, people found out that Lonelygirl15 did not actually exist.

The story of Lonelygirl15 is often said to be the first YouTube scandal ever. It turns out that Bree Avery was a fictional character played by 19 year-old actress Jessica Rose, and every single video she had posted had been written and meticulously directed by three California filmmakers to look like an authentic video diary. In a surprising event for the time, mainstream media picked up the story, with the New York Times even going on a special investigation to unmask the people behind it all, but the web series ended up continuing and even spawned a number of spin-offs, up until its end in 2008.^[1]

9 Kristian Harloff & The Collider Live Meltdown

Kristian Haloff is a YouTube personality behind a number of internet communities. He co-created Schmoes Know, the Collider Live daily show, and he even was a major part of the popular Collider Movie Talk for years. He is also a devoted Star Wars fan who solidified his place in the fandom with his weekly show “Jedi Council”, in which he broke down news about the franchise with a variety of co-hosts. But Kristian is also known for having a very strange temper and engaging in toxic behaviours against anyone who dared to criticize him, and it was made very clear when he had a completely random meltdown live on air during one of his shows.

When he found out that he wasn’t invited to an exclusive visit at the Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge theme park in 2019, and later heard that another reporter at Collider was going instead of him, Harloff threw a literal fit and declared live on air that he would not be covering anything related to Galaxy’s Edge on any of his shows. He ranted about his status in the Star Wars community online with his Jedi Council show, claiming “I’ve been busting my ass being a Star Wars fan for five years.”

That did not fly with the producer of the show, Thadd Williams, who immediately grabbed a microphone and put Harloff in his place by reminding him that the show belonged to Collider and that he would be addressing Collider’s coverage of Galaxy’s Edge, wether he wanted it or not. Harloff immediately exploded on him in a full on temper tantrum, and the two proceeded to verbally attack each other for minutes on end, with everyone else in the show awkwardly sitting there in silence.

In the following days, Harloff was absolutely blasted by the entire world, and was even called out by Star Wars writers on Twitter, who accused him of acting like a “spoiled child who didn’t get his toy”. Some even accused him of being sexist for being angry about women being sent to Galaxy’s Edge instead of him, and he was essentially written off as a representation of everything wrong with the Star Wars fandom, and why Star Wars fans can’t ever be taken seriously. The backlash was so intense that Kristian had to apologize more than once on air, admitting that his reaction was immature, entitled and embarrassing.^[2]

8 Motoki vs Math Podcast

This particular controversy has been fascinating to many, because it involves creators from two different cultures. Motoki is an Asian-American creator, and Math Podcast is French. Both are very successful, but they seemingly have nothing to do with one another. They shouldn’t have anything to do with one another. But, in 2016, some fans discovered in the strangest way that they had more in common than anyone could’ve thought.

Over time, more and more people started to notice that Math’s videos were very similar to Motoki’s. A bit too similar even. In fact, they were the same. To the word, to the second, and sometimes, to the shot. People realized that Math had plagiarized every single one of Motoki’s videos by translating them to French and reshooting them the exact same way, giving Motoki no credit whatsoever and making his French audience believe that he was the creator behind it all. He would sometimes even steal shots from the original videos and seamlessly reedit them into his versions.

In February 2016, Motoki ended up speaking up about this, confirming that Math had never asked for his permission to remake his videos. Both American and French media took on the story, and condemned Math for his actions — he had built a highly successful career by stealing Motoki’s work, and he decided to take action. Naturally, Math’s career crashed before he could even say “oops”, and despite numerous apologies and attempts to reinvent his channel over the years, he never recovered from the scandal and has now completely vanished from YouTube.^[3]

7 Olivia Jade

At first glance, Olivia Jade is your average teenage social media influencer and YouTube star. She has had an audience for a while, her content is harmless, and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Except, of course, for the fact that Olivia is the daughter of the disgraced “Full House” star Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Gianulli, who were recently sentenced to 2 and 5 months in prison, after pleading guilty to charges of bribery fraud.

Olivia reportedly helped her parents forge an extracurricular file after they paid over half a million dollars in bribes to get their daughter accepted at the University Of Southern California, ahead of any other (more deserving) students who applied for admission. When the scandal was exposed and lawsuits started to rain, Olivia was promptly dropped by the major brands that endorsed her (including Amazon, Sephora and TRESemmé), and she was essentially been banished from the Internet, resulting in a year long hiatus that led her to a 2020 apology press tour that has been poorly received.^[4]

6 Tanacon: The Biggest Ego Trip in Internet History

Tana Mongeau is a creator that is known for her eccentric personality, having become famous for her crazy (and often proven to be fake) “story time” videos on YouTube. Just like many problematic creators on the platform, her ego is her primary drive in life, and that assessment was never made more clear than on the day Tana decided to create her own convention, Tanacon.

When the massive Vidcon event refused to invite her as a featured creator for their 2018 edition, Tana decided to get back at them by launching her own free convention on the same day as Vidcon, and across the street from them. The problem was that Tana widely underestimated the implications, and was incredibly unprepared for the challenge. What ensued was an absolute train wreck that left thousands of people waiting in front of a full venue in brutal heat, without food or water, even resulting in people having to be sent to the ER in ambulances. The police had to intervene and give numerous statements on the situation and, due to the catastrophe it had turned into, the 3-day event was cancelled before the end of its first day.

It was later revealed that Tanacon was also a scam, as Tana and her team had advertised the event as being free, except for people who wanted VIP tickets, but it then came to light that it was a lie, and that every person present at the event had been a purchased VIP ticket, due to the website showing that free tickets had been sold out. The fallout from the scandal created a frenzy that resulted in lawsuits, companies going bankrupt and a number of documentaries going back on the event, with hours of footage from people who were actually there on the day of the debacle.^[5]

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5 The Brooke Houts Incident

Brooke Houts is a name that inspires immediate anger to those who know it. A creator on YouTube since 2014, Brooke became better known after adopting a puppy named Sphinx, who became the biggest attraction on her channel, bringing her thousands upon thousands of viewers. She was exhibiting a fun and cheeky lifestyle with Sphinx and people loved her for it. But that was until August 2019, when Brooke posted a seemingly normal video, in which she (unfortunately for her) did not realize that she had forgotten to edit out some disturbing images she clearly had not intended for anyone to see…

The uncut footage shows Brooke repeatedly punching Sphinx and shoving him around as he tries to play with her while she talks to the camera. As he accidentally interrupts her during her outro, she grabs him, pins him to the ground, yells at him to stop, before spitting on him. The part ends with Brooke slapping Sphinx one last time, prompting him to walk away off screen, audibly whining out of fear as she walks towards him.

The world, the media and Brooke’s former fans erupted in a mighty rage, tearing her to shreds online and calling for her to be arrested for animal cruelty. The police actually listened and opened an investigation on Brooke, and she later attempted to apologize on YouTube, unsuccessfully. Her career completely vanished in less than 24 hours, and while she has tried many times to make a comeback following it all, she has been brutally rejected every single time, prompting her to disappear again.^[6]

4 JayStation: YouTube’s Ghostbuster

JayStation is considered to be the very worst of YouTube. He has been called out numerous times by other creators for being toxic, manipulative and creepy. YouTube even blacklisted his channel, and eventually deleted it, forcing him to migrate to a new one. Many people still wonder why he is allowed to be on YouTube at all. Why? All of that for one simple reason: in 2019, JayStation decided to fake his girlfriend’s death for views.

He actually tried to make his audience (which is mostly constituted of children) believe that his girlfriend Alexia Marano had died in a brutal car crash, and that he was grieving her loss. He even built a fake crash site on the side of a road to show where she died. The grim video series was leading towards Jay attempting to “talk to her spirit”, but he never made it there. Thousands of people called him out, eventually forcing him to admit he was lying.

Alexia later revealed to be a victim of domestic abuse, claiming that Jay regularly bullied her and forced her to do things for the sake of getting views and subscribers on YouTube. The allegations eventually led to Jay being arrested and charged for assault with a weapon. He has since returned to YouTube and posts regularly, but JayStation will always be remembered by the public as the creep who faked his girlfriend’s death for fame.^[7]

3 Jenna Marbles: The Last Pioneer

Jenna Mourey, better known to the world as Jenna Marbles, is arguably one of the biggest YouTube stars to ever be on the platform. She is the female YouTuber with the largest amount of subscribers ever, with over 20 million viewers on her channel. Jenna is considered to be a true pioneer and legend of YouTube culture, and a positive role model that people (kids and adults alike) have been glad to look up to. However, in 2020, Jenna became the greatest example of what happens when the toxicity of cancel culture backfires.

Despite the fact that Jenna is an extremely loveable human being with great values, some people took issues with jokes she made almost a decade ago, that were deemed by many to be racist and offensive. But, weirdly enough, that wasn’t the controversial part. The controversy that everyone talked about came a few days later when Jenna released an emotional video to acknowledge and apologize for the jokes, in which she explained that she never meant to hurt anyone and that there are no excuses for her jokes. And then, to everyone’s absolute shock, she announced that she was quitting YouTube for good, after 10 years of weekly videos.

No one saw this coming, and the internet went into a frenzy. Even the people who were actively cancelling her seemed to be distraught by her sudden departure, and while some thought that she would be back after a couple of weeks, Jenna’s channel is still abandoned today, over seven months later, along with all of her social media profiles. Nobody actually expected her to leave, and the sadness and scandal that came with the departure of one of YouTube culture’s original pioneers even peaked the attention of mainstream media outlets, who covered the story for weeks on end.^[8]

2 The Myka Stauffer Family Scandal

Family lifestyle channels have become their own genre of YouTube content over the years, and they are often subject to debates when it comes to the ethical choices of parents who willingly exhibit every aspect of their children’s lives (private or not) to millions of people. But no creators on the platform have ever made people question those morals more than Myka Stauffer, a mother of 5 with a successful YouTube channel, who completely destroyed her career in 2020 when the shady circumstances of an adoption blew up in her face.

When Myka and her husband decided to adopt a child from China, audiences were thrilled, and their channel got much bigger as they documented every single step of the adoption process for everyone to see. They eventually got to bring a young autistic boy home, and they documented his new life as well, and more and more people enjoyed watching Myka as she exhibited the difficulty of being a parent to a child with such a condition. It kept going for a while, until one day, some viewers started to notice that the child had suddenly vanished from the channel.

Despite acting like everything was normal in the videos, every member of the family kept appearing, except for the adopted child. People started to question Myka relentlessly, and, after weeks of speculation, Myka and her husband released a video where they confirmed to the audience that their adopted son had been re-homed after two years of living with them, because they were no longer capable of dealing with his autism.

An absolute outrage ensued, and Myka was accused of having adopted the boy for the sake of getting views online, and having abandoned her own son when he was no longer profitable for their channel. She was continuously blamed for using the child as a prop, with many pointing to her various sponsorship deals that had to do with the adoption. Myka later released a statement, in which she explained to have underestimated her son’s condition, and admitted to have been arrogant, naive and brutally unprepared to take care of a child with special needs.

Myka lost all of her precious brand deals, as she was dropped by every company she was working with. The police opened an investigation on the matter, and talks about potential lawsuits against the couple have been brought up. Myka’s YouTube channel has been completely abandoned since, and we have not heard from her since her official statement.^[9]

1 The Mysterious Case Of Marina Joyce

To this day, Marina Joyce is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of YouTube, and there are still many questions hovering around her story. She started as a sweet and quirky fashion centred creator, at times touching on comedy with fun sketches. Marina was never exactly YouTube’s elite, but she had garnered a sizeable audience over the years, and her community seemed to thrive in her intimate world of light-hearted content. But then… things took a turn, and Marina Joyce quickly became a name that piqued the curiosity of the entire world.

In 2016, Marina’s content slowly started to change, in a way that began to make her fans ask questions. People noticed that she was losing weight at an alarming rate, and her mannerisms and body language became incredibly strange, almost robotic (frantic blinking, awkward hand gestures, broken speech patterns, etc). Her personality did a complete 180, going from friendly and bubbly to strangely formal and creepy. Her audience started to worry about her safety, some believing she was suffering from a serious drug addiction, but it all came to a head when she posted an especially disturbing video on July 2nd, 2016.

The creepy video, simply titled “Date Outfit Ideas”, sees Marina show off different outfits she likes for a first date. Innocent in concept, but everything about it feels incredibly off — Marina looks confused and lost, continuously rambling and repeating herself while twirling around to show her dresses. Her arms are covered in harsh bruises, as well as her back. Furthermore, there seems to be someone behind the camera telling her what to do, which often seems to distract her as she talks. And, in a final show of suspiciousness, we can hear her whisper “help me” in a quick musical passage.

The video instantly went viral all around the world, and the now famous #SaveMarinaJoyce became one of the most talked about stories in the media. Theories began to circulate about Marina’s situation for weeks on end, going from kidnapping scenarios to a hostage situation. But nothing came of it. On her end, Marina simply continued to post extremely disturbing videos, as if everything was fine, completely ignoring the millions of people commenting and tweeting about her. Many believed that she was leaving secret messages to ask for help, and thousands of people began to investigate and analyze every second of her videos.

Eight months later, after a quick hiatus from YouTube, Marina released a new video titled “Saving Marina Joyce”, in which she thanked people for being concerned about her well being, and explained that she indeed went through a traumatic event that changed her life and destroyed her mind, causing her to drastically change and lose herself in the process, even admitting “there was danger in her life” at some point. She also explained that she had been on a recovery path for a few months, and that life was much better for her now, which people were relieved to hear, as she indeed looked better and more “normal” in the video. While she never fully told what happened to her that triggered such a change, everyone seemed happy with her explanation, and the world moved on. But it wasn’t the end of it.

Two years later, on July 31st, 2019, at the age of 22 years old, Marina Joyce mysteriously went missing. The circumstances of her disappearance were extremely foggy. The police got involved, even asking for the public’s help to search, and Marina was found in London after 10 days, confirmed to be “safe and well”. The authorities did not give any explanation about the whole situation (despite her boyfriend claiming that Marina was never missing, which did not make sense), and, just like in 2016, the story eventually went away with very little information being revealed to the public.

Since then, Marina has returned to YouTube, regularly making videos with her boyfriend, and everyone seems to have left her story behind. Her community seems to have moved on as well, and people usually compliment her on seeming better and happier. But, to this day, no one knows what actually happened to Marina Joyce.^[10]

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