Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   7

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S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
08
 King Me: 
Outrageous Tales of European Royalty
Supposedly dour, English Queen Victoria’s favored tipple in 
court was red wine spiked with a healthy dose of Scotch. Th
 is 
classy cocktail was allegedly invented especially for her by 
Scottish servant John Brown, with whom she may or may not 
have had a romantic relationship.
✖  ✖  ✖
Charles VI of France started out his reign, at the age of 12, 
with the promising 
nom de roi
 of “Charles the Well-Beloved.” 
But by the time he’d hit his 20s, it was defi nitely “Charles the 
Mad.” Charles wasn’t wacky eccentric “Henry VIII” crazy or 
demented “George III” crazy. No, he was more of a dark, 
brooding, creepy, unpredictably enraged, “I wonder if the 
king’s going to stab us in our sleep tonight” crazy. Eventually 
his council gave up trying to make him do any work on the 
pressing issues of the day, like the war with England, and just 
tried to stay out of his way. His wife, Isabeau, meanwhile, got 
to raise their 12 (!) kids while simultaneously negotiating 
treaties and caring for the aff airs of state.
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Queen Juana (“La Loca”), on the other hand, was sadly un-
able to parlay her psychosis into a sweet life of leisure. In-
stead, she wound up locked in a windowless room for the last 
32 years of her life. Th
  e sister of Catherine of Aragon and 
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, Juana was fi rst driven to 
hysterical jealousy by her husband, Philip’s, countless infi -
delities and then fi nally pushed into complete derangement 
by his death. As the only legitimate claimant to the throne of 
the dead Isabella, she was then politically exploited in turn 
by her father and her son, both of whom kept her safely locked 

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up, which is just what her beloved husband was, in fact, plan-
ning to do when he died.
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It wouldn’t be a party without Dracula. No, he didn’t drink 
blood, but Vlad III’s fondness for impalement as a solution to 
all life’s problems has not been overstated. He probably also 
did nail two Turkish ambassadors’ turbans to their heads when 
they refused to take them off . Still, he wasn’t all bad. By all ac-
counts, the crime rate in Walachia went way, way down during 
his reign. Probably the nicest Vlad story tells of the golden cup 
he set unguarded at a Walachian spring for travelers to drink 
from, which was never once stolen during his reign, because 
everyone was terrifi ed of being gutted on a giant stake. Makes 
you feel all warm and fuzzy. In any case, he was generally re-
garded at the time, throughout so-called Christendom, as 
something of an unpleasant necessity, since he gleefully butch-
ered so many prospective invaders. Speaking of invasions . . .