Wives – Listorati https://listorati.com Fascinating facts and lists, bizarre, wonderful, and fun Sun, 23 Apr 2023 06:00:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://listorati.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/listorati-512x512-1.png Wives – Listorati https://listorati.com 32 32 215494684 Top 10 Rulers Who Killed Their Wives https://listorati.com/top-10-rulers-who-killed-their-wives/ https://listorati.com/top-10-rulers-who-killed-their-wives/#respond Sun, 23 Apr 2023 06:00:09 +0000 https://listorati.com/top-10-rulers-who-killed-their-wives/

It’s just a “thing” that happens—it doesn’t matter if they’re in the public eye or not. Rulers love to kill their wives and get away with it. I mean, it’s not just rulers. People kill people every day, unfortunately.

Yet, when it’s a leader who’s doing the deed, history loves to turn the image of their rule into a blood-stained epic adventure, filled with triumphs, egomaniacal escapades, all climaxing at wife killing.

And you know where all that glory got them? On this top ten list. Here are the top ten rulers who killed their wives.

Related: 10 Monarchs Who Executed Their Sons

10 King Henry VIII
1491–1547

King Henry VIII is a celebrity on this list. He is the OG king-gone-wife-murderer. He not only killed two of his wives and many family members but was also known for his six marriages and the plethora of mistresses who occupied his bed.

The 16th-century English King was also known for his divorce from Queen Katherine of Aragon, who refused the divorce he wanted. The Roman Catholic church would not allow it. So King Henry only did what you would expect a king to do. He separated himself from the Church and created his own church. It makes sense, right?

The first of his wives to be sentenced to death was Anne Boleyn, whom he courted for six long years. She is also the reason why King Henry VIII wanted a divorce in the first place.

During this time, Anne’s sister Mary, also his mistress, had birthed two children, one a daughter and the next a son. Unfortunately, these children were illegitimate and considered bastards with no claim to the throne. Anne only gave King Henry VIII a girl, Elizabeth, which was a big disappointment to him. After the birth of Elizabeth, it became clear to him that Anne would not produce a son. Because of this reason—and a few more—King Henry VIII had her beheaded on May 19, 1536, at 35 years old. She was convicted of treason and having affairs with five men.

The next wife to make it on King Henry VIII’s chopping block was Catherine Howard. Catherine was the cousin of Anne Boleyn. She was Queen from 1540 to 1541 as the fifth wife of King Henry before being executed and beheaded on February 13, 1542. He accused her of adultery.

Catherine did manage to throw some major shade the king’s way before she died. Her last words, spoken from the scaffold, were, “I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Thomas Culpeper.” Culpeper was a close friend to the king and related to her.

9 King Herod the Great
37 BC–4 BC

King Herod the Great (not the Herod during the life of Jesus Christ) sits in the annals of history as King of Judea from 37 BC to 4 BC. He killed one of his wives, Mariamme, who was the granddaughter of a former Judean High Priest, along with their two sons, Mariamme’s brother, grandfather, and mother.

Herod had eight other wives and children with six of them, fathering a total of 14 children. Mariamme was executed in 29 BC over accusations of adultery and having tried to kill the King. Go figure. I guess he beat her to the punchline.

8 Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the Roman Emperor: AD 54–AD 68

Between the years AD 54 and AD 68, the Roman Empire was ruled by “666” himself: Nero. His original name was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and he was the fifth Roman Emperor and the stepson and heir of Emperor Claudius.

Within 35 months, he would dramatically change from the type of ruler who at first disliked signing death warrants to ordering his mother’s death in AD 59. She wasn’t that innocent, though. Agrippina was intense, to say the least.

But back to Nero.

Nero beat his wife regularly and finally murdered her after falling in love with Poppaea Sabina, a senator’s young (ex)wife. Nero also killed his stepbrother and his stepbrother’s wife and mother. On top of that, people believed he was the one who had set fire to Rome even though he was miles upon miles away. Nero, in turn, tried to blame it on the Christians.

Nero’s name has become synonymous with evil, primarily known for persecuting Christians and killing his wife. He committed suicide in AD 68.

7 King Claudius
Hamlet

Diving into fiction here, one of the best examples of a ruler killing his wife, although in this case, it’s unintentional, is King Claudius. King Claudius is Hamlet’s uncle and the main antagonist of the Shakespearian tragedy Hamlet. Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, drinks from a cup of poison Claudius intends to give to Hamlet. Claudius did protest (the equivalent of a half-hearted, “No, don’t”), but instead of actually taking the chalice away from her, he just let her drink it. 

Yeah, she dies. It’s Hamlet.

The only people who survive in that play are Horatio and Fortinbras.

6 Mayor Barry Waites
1990s

Is a mayor a ruler? Technically yes, but “mayor” just doesn’t sound very ruler-like.

In 1998, the mayor of Lanett, Alabama, murdered his wife, Charlotte. His initial story—that he was at work all day when he got the call from his daughter that her mother was dead—was pretty convincing. Convincing enough to send authorities on a wild goose chase. Officials never found a decent suspect, so the case went on the back burner for three years…until re-election season.

Waites’s running mate claimed that Waites was the one who killed Charlotte, strangled her, beat her, and threw her so hard that she sustained a life-threatening head injury. Eventually, police learned that Waites was in severe financial trouble, had cheated his two daughters after Charlotte’s death, and, surprise, killed his late wife.

He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2006.

5 King John of England
1199–1216

Also known as Bad King John, you might recognize this King of England from Robin Hood fame. But the story and movies don’t do justice to how cruel the guy actually was.

While his brother, Richard the Lionheart, was away fighting the armies of Islam, John hooked up with France’s King Philip Augustus so he could steal England’s crown for himself. However, under the pressure of high-ranking rebels, King John signed the “Magna Carta” in 1215, a document that limited the powers of England’s monarchs.

Many of the novels surrounding his rule bring up the fact that he would rape his wives. But it gets worse. He was a straight-up murderer and murdered quite a few people. He even starved his wife to death along with 22 knights inside of Dorset’s Corfe Castle and ordered the murder of his nephew.

King John was the youngest and favorite son of King Henry II. According to “tales,” he died from eating a surfeit of peaches. However, he most likely died from dysentery in 1216, covered in his own excrement. 

4 Afzal Khan
17th century

Though not a ruler, Afzal Khan was one of the most powerful men in the sultan’s army in 17th-century India…who had 63 sixty wives…and had them all killed. At the time, the 7’0″ man was the most powerful general in the sultan’s court. He was brave, respected, and an incredible military man.

He did have a weakness, though: omens.

Afzal Khan was preparing for a military campaign against the Maratha Ruler when he consulted astrologers to tell him how it would go. Their answer: not well. There was doom in the air. Fearing that his wives would remarry after he died in battle, Khan ordered their execution. We still aren’t sure if they were pushed down a well or slain by his own hands.

The astrologers weren’t wrong, though. Afzal Khan did die in this battle.

3 King Shahryar
1,001 Nights

It may be fiction, but the dead wives of ruler King Shahryar are essentially the catalyst to 1,001 Nights. Queen Shahrazad is the daughter of the king’s vizier and the storyteller of 1,001 Nights. Even though she goes against her father’s wishes, she marries the king, who has vowed to kill a new bride every morning.

Why? Because he was jilted once. Now he believes that every woman he marries will do him wrong. So instead of, you know, getting over it, he executes his brides. Enter Shahrazad, who, each night, tells him a story, ending in a cliffhanger so compelling that the king keeps her alive so she can finish the story the next night.

At the end of the 1,001 nights of storytelling, the king is a new, gentler man whose faith in women has been restored. But let’s not forget that he killed lots of women before this.

2 Caligula
AD 12–AD 41

This is a death-by-association situation.

Gaius Caesar Germanicus, also known as Caligula, was a pretty awful emperor. He was a ruthless murderer who believed he was a living god. He kind of resembled a goat (which is why he prohibited people from speaking about goats near him) and supposedly fed a few members of a gladiatorial game’s crowd to the animals.

To be fair, the Emperor before him, Tiberius, did imprison Caligula’s mother and two brothers. His mother and one of his brothers starved to death. The other brother committed suicide. On top of that, he suffered an illness that supposedly changed his personality.

Anyway, long story short, after four marriages, forcing parents to watch the executions of their children, and a brief and wild rule over the Roman Empire, Caligula was assassinated. A group of Romans attacked him after a public sporting event and stabbed him 30 times (more than Caesar). The mob then murdered Caligula’s fourth wife, to whom he was still married at the time, and his daughter.

1 Wu Zetain: Empress of China
655–690

As our last ruler, let’s switch it up. How about a ruler killing their husband?

Wu Zetain was the first and only woman to have sat on the throne of China. Born in AD 624, she started out as a concubine to the Tang Emperor Taizong. Because she knew what she was doing, she seduced the Emperor’s son while the current Emperor was dying. When he finally kicked, she was sent to a monastery like all concubines when the Emperor died.

Yet, while there, the new Emperor Li Zhi visited her at the monastery. He was overcome by her fierce and robust spirit and her impressive knowledge so much that the new Emperor brought her back to court as his special counselor.

Now, Zetain was an incredibly effective leader and particularly ruthless. She did not appreciate criticism, nor did she like people threatening her power. She ordered the execution of two princes who were against her (heads chopped off and brought to the palace), the suicides of her granddaughter and grandson, wiped out members of the Tang clan, and supposedly poisoned her husband.

Zetain knew what she was doing from the beginning, and I’m sure that “poison husband” was part of the plan.

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10 Wives of Dictators Who Met Unfortunate Ends https://listorati.com/10-wives-of-dictators-who-met-unfortunate-ends/ https://listorati.com/10-wives-of-dictators-who-met-unfortunate-ends/#respond Mon, 27 Feb 2023 00:45:17 +0000 https://listorati.com/10-wives-of-dictators-who-met-unfortunate-ends/

When historians delve into the murky waters of totalitarianism, colored by the bloody unwashed hands of political tyrants, they often highlight the chaos left in their wakes, the hardship brought upon the oppressed, or the sheer horror of their rule, only mentioning the other halves as a sideline to their story. However, the women in the lives of these dictators often play a prominent role in how power-hungry or evil they can be.

Some of these so-called dictator wives, like Lucia Hiriart, wife of Augusto Pinochet, and Asma Al-Assad, the wife of notorious Bashir Al-Assad, avoid the pitfalls of dictatorship. But with riches earned off the back of bloodshed, some of them are not so lucky. Here are ten wives (or mistresses) of dictators that met unfortunate ends.

10 Elena Ceausescu

Elena was the wife of the communist dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu—who succeeded to the leadership after Gheorghiu-Dej passed away in 1965. Her fall was as magnificent as her husband’s rise to power. One of the most powerful women in Eastern Europe during the final decades of their rule, Elana was an important cog in their time in power, which left Romania in economic, social, and moral ruin.

Considered to be immensely vain, she also brought about the ruin of Romania’s Academy of Sciences as the institution lost control of all 50 institutes originally under its jurisdiction. To this day, controversy remains regarding her accreditation in many scientific papers. On Christmas 1989, the government collapsed, and Elena and her husband Nicolae were executed later that same day by firing squad.[1]

9 Kay Amin

The self-proclaimed last rightful king of Scotland, Idi Amin, was the murderous dictator responsible for the death of an estimated 300,000 people. Yes, the smiling deviant had a way with the ladies, and Kay was happy to indulge him with his psychotic tendencies. Kay Amin was Idi’s fourth wife, whom he met while she was studying at Kampala University, despite his already being married.

Seven years later, the couple split after Idi added yet another wife to his repertoire of angels. Less than one year later, in a death shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, Kay’s body was discovered in the trunk of a car, dismembered and sewn together in an unrefined fashion. The car belonged to a doctor with whom Kay was rumored to have had an affair. The doctor’s body was found the day before, ruled a suicide. We should probably take that with a grain of salt.[2]

8 Eva Braun

No list of dictators would be complete without Adolf Hitler. The man needs no introduction, and his atrocities are well documented. Almost as famous as his reputation as a murderous racist maniac is his exploits with photographer and long-time mistress Eva Braun. Not involved with any of his politics, she was a safe haven for the Führer to escape from killing and pillaging entire nations by providing a simple life of domesticity and relaxation—skiing, swimming, and laughing.

Hitler did not allow her to be seen with him in public, and unlike many others on this list, she remained out of the spotlight. In April 1945, the same day the Americans liberated the Dachau concentration camp, Eva and Adolf were united in marriage and then committed suicide together as the Russians closed in around them. It must have been love, then. Who else would have made such a permanent commitment?[3]

7 Nadezhda Alliluyeva

Joseph Stalin, the poster child of communism and way up there with the worst on the kill counter, was responsible for millions of deaths (possibly as high as 60 million). The atrocities of his regime were not limited to enemies of the state or neighboring countries who stepped out of line; the majority were his countrymen killed in camps, executions, and famine as a result of failing policy.

Nadezhda Alliluyve’s, Stalin’s second wife, death was ruled as a suicide at the age of 33. Just like all the oligarchs who continue to mysteriously fall from windows at the moment, one can definitely be somewhat suspicious of Russian reports of suicide, even if there were rumors that she was driven to it by Stalin’s behavior.[5]

5 Eva Peron

María Eva Duarte married Juan Peron in 1945, and she was involved in his campaign to become the next Chilean president, which he did in 1946. Unfortunately, her death would come only a mere six years later. However, before that occurred, she became a beloved symbol to the people of Chile. Her work with the poor and advocacy for women’s suffrage made her a very popular woman. Nothing so unusual about this so far. Well, it soon gets disturbing.

Eva was diagnosed with cervical cancer, but her husband did not tell her. In fact, it was kept a secret so that the people would not see her as weak. Since she was Juan’s connection to the Chilean masses, he didn’t want anything to change that. In fact, he kept the real reason for her treatments and surgeries from her, with rumors of having ordered that Eva receive a lobotomy—supposedly to help her with pain. But this isn’t all.

After Juan Peron was deposed in 1955, his enemies stole her corpse, which was kept hidden in Italy for 16 years. Her body was eventually returned to Juan, who was living in exile in Spain at the time. Upon his death in 1974, Juan’s third wife, Isabel Peron, entombed Eva with her husband in a crypt in the presidential palace in Chile. Only two years later, when new military leadership took over the country, Eva was finally returned to her family, who buried her in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.[5]

5 Khieu Ponnary

Khieu Ponnary was the wife of the revolutionary Pol Pot (actual name Saloth Sar), the man who presided over the brutal Khmer Rouge regime starting in early 1975. Pol Pot was a man who was responsible for the death of more than a million Cambodians but still managed to live long enough to have age take him rather than a guillotine.

Married in 1956, Ponnary was also a communist by heart and eight years his senior. She was also the first Cambodian woman to obtain a bachelor’s degree and taught linguistics and literature. She tested the waters of extremism politics before paranoia got to her, convinced that the Vietnamese were out to kill her and her husband. Incapacitated by her mental health for the remainder of her life, she passed away, out of the public eye.[6]

4 Yang Kaihui

Yang Kaihui was the second wife of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party in the Republic of China, a man responsible for millions upon millions of deaths. Mao’s first marriage was arranged when Mao was only 13—they never lived together, and Mao never acknowledged her as his wife). Kaihui shared Mao’s political views and, shortly after meeting him, took up membership in the party. Her marriage to Mao ended when he took up with another woman, Mao’s second wife, He Zizhen. And that should have been the end of it.

But they were in a civil war, and as you may have noticed from this list, there aren’t many happy endings. In November 1930, Kaihui was captured by a Guomindang warlord and executed in front of her infant son. It doesn’t always help to get out while you still can—it also didn’t help that she maintained her political views throughout her life.[7]

3 Jiang Qing

The women in Mao’s life had about as torrid a time as his unfortunate subjects. As the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, a movie star, and part of the infamous Gang of Four, Qing was the most influential woman in the People’s Republic of China until Mao passed away in 1976. Then, her steady downfall began.

Jian was arrested in 1977 and expelled from the Communist Party. Three years later, Qing and the other members of the Gang of Four were held responsible for provoking turmoil and bloodshed, charges which she denied while denouncing the courts and the current leadership. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. Two years later, the Chinese government changed her sentence to life imprisonment. In 1991, Jian Qing reportedly committed suicide in prison.[8]

2 Imelda Marcos

Another woman many might already know is Imelda Marcos, the wife of Ferdinand Marcos, a lawyer and politician. He established an authoritarian regime in the Philippines, which came under severe criticism for suppression of democratic processes. Imelda was also known as the Steel Butterfly and the Rose of Tacloban for her fashionable beauty. She married Ferdinand after only two weeks in a very Hollywood move, and so began her time in the political spotlight. Unlike others on this list, she is still alive—as of this writing—but still met with some unfortunate events.

Considered by most as an asset to the leader, she oversaw numerous beautification projects in Manilla. This position swiftly changed after her husband declared martial law, and the rest of the world characterized her as a drain on the treasury (how many shoes did she have?) and a proponent of nepotism. After a controversial election, the Marcos family fled the country to Hawaii—with gold and jewels galore—where they spent their time in exile.

After her husband died in 1989, she returned to the Philippines, holding office in the Lower House. In 2018, she faced a setback as she is now on bail after being sentenced for embezzling $200 million in funds decades ago. Her son, Ferdinand “Bongbong,” was elected to the presidency in 2022. What does this mean for the former Steel Butterfly?[9]

1 Clara Petacci

Benito Mussolini, the famous Italian dictator and Nazi sympathizer, had a wife, Rachele Mussolini, who lived out her life in peace at her home in the town of Predappio. Clara, Benito’s mistress, who was comfortable with her role in the public eye as his mistress, remained by his side until the bitter end. Mussolini, having an insatiable thirst for women, was open about his affection for Clara, noting that she was the only woman he ever truly loved.

After the Nazis lost their grip on northern Italy, Mussolini met with a group of partisans, knowing his hold on Milan was on shaky ground. After learning the situation was even more dire, he stormed from the meeting with Clara in tow. Later, they joined up with a convoy of fellow fascists that were traveling north. Unfortunately, their car was stopped, and they were attacked by partisans. Petacci and Mussolini were then taken to a remote Italian town and executed by machine gun fire. Their heavily mutilated bodies were strung up and paraded for all to see.[10]

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