History's Best(?) Couples — Valentine's Day Special

History has a very weird
way of playing out.

In the third century AD, a Christian saint
named Valentinus was martyred for helping-

-Romans escape religious persecution,

and nowadays we choose to mark the
occasion by buying flowers-

and procuring fancy dinner reservations by
right of conquest.

There’s just something so romantic
about dropkicking-

-a party of two along your quest
for a candle-lit feast.

But even before our modern era of
professing love through-

-culinary blood-sport, couples throughout
history have had interesting and-

-varied ways of showing affection.

Which is my polite way of saying:

“unhealthy at best and deeply
self-destructive at worst”.

My friends, we are in for a ride today,
now Let’s Do Some History.

So as we know well — or in some cases,
just discovered in the past decade —

Love comes in many forms, and always has.

And we know this for a fact because people
specifically wrote about it.

“Sing, muse, of the Thirst of
Peleus’ Son Achilles”.

And as soon as Greek culture invented
first-person poetry it also invented-

-gay first-person poetry.

Now, this was going to be the part where I
begin discussing the lyric poet-

Sappho of Lesbos, but as I did my
research, I realized she’s actually-

-way too interesting for me to just
breeze through in this hijinks roundup.

So, ya girl is getting promoted to a
future History-Makers video,

and I’ll just skip ahead to the next
item on my list which is dunking on Caesar.

We usually think of Caesar as the guy who
conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon,

became Dictator For Life,
and then very swiftly died,

but his personal life was arguably just as
bonkers as his political career.

I like to joke about the sharp lines of
ol’ Cheekbones McGee,

but Caesar’s friends and enemies alike
had to concede that the man was handsome.

And his looks were most definitely
not going to waste,

because Julius was a prolific flirt,
and he used that as fuel for his politics.

In Rome, being a man of great manliness
could be demonstrated by doing the sex,

and that in turn reflected well on their
political abilities.

It’s a, uh, hm, you know what, no, I don’t
think I’ll elaborate on that.

So in addition to his
three successive wives-

-Cornelia (who died in 69 BC — nice),

Pompeia (whom he divorced after a political scandal),

and Calpurnia (who outlived him),

Caesar slept with every well-to-do
woman he could,

including and not limited to:

the wives of Pompey Magnus (Mucia)
and Marcus Crassus (Tertulla),

who were his political partners in the
first Triumvirate.

In Rome, extramarital affairs weren’t
particularly rare or even seen as wrong,

but what sets Caesar apart is
his thoroughness.

For one brutally illustrative example,
when the Senate was debating-

in the wake of the thwarted
Catiline Conspiracy in 63 BC,

Caesar received a letter while in the
middle of a speech.

Cato the Younger suspected the
note was some evidence-

-of Caesar’s involvement in the plot and
demanded that it be read out loud.

Caesar, to his credit, really tried to get
Cato to back down;

but Cato insisted, so Caesar began reading
an astonishingly inappropriate-

-and uncomfortably descriptive love letter
from Cato’s own half-sister.

Servilla’s lustful missive may well have
been mortifying-

-for Cato to read in a vacuum, but
imagine the poor man’s misery to hear-

-the entire Senate just
laughing at him about it.

Suffice to say he never lived it down, and
neither did the young Marcus Brutus,

because Servilla was also his mother.

Caesar, however,
was not immune from ridicule.

Because the young Julius once served as
ambassador to the Bithynian King-

-Nicomedes IV, and as soon as he returned
to Rome, the Rumor Mill spun into action.

The mockery he endured for getting frisky
with a foreign king was so intense-

-that Caesar’s own legions sang saucy
tunes about it decades after the fact.

And this actually brings up an interesting
angle of Roman sexuality,

because in Rome as in Greece,
the line between what we call-

-straight and gay was
thin-to-nonexistent.

So if casual bisexuality was the norm,
why all the jokes at Caesar’s expense?

Well, the thing with Rome is that
everything has a power dynamic,

so it was fine to be gay, but only if you
were the top —

which seems extremely arbitrary,
but knowing the Romans:

that still somehow makes complete sense.

So although Caesar was better known for
his womanizing,

the episode on the receiving end of
Nicomedes earned Caesar the nickname-

-“Every Woman’s Man and every Man’s Woman”.

And that’s the love life of Julius Caesar,
who banged his way through-

Rome, Gaul, Anatolia,
North Africa, and Egypt —

heck, I haven’t even mentioned Cleopatra,
but I’m out of time!

Suffice to say the only thing Caesar
couldn’t smash-

-was Parthia, am I right lads?

(Breathes) Oh that was dumb.

But not untrue.

Anyway;

If Caesar was an example of how to build a
political career on pure thirst,

this story from medieval China shows
how lust can be the undoing-

-of not just one ruler,
but an entire empire.

This tale is immortalized in Bai Juyi’s
poem The Song of Everlasting Sorrow,

so you know right off the bat
this one’s gonna go great.

But let’s start with the history and hop
into the Tang dynasty-

-during the reign of emperor Xuanzong.

During the early part of his reign, the
emperor is rightly credited-

-with improving foreign trade relations
along the silk road and at sea,

reforming the military to become a
professional force instead of-

-a conscript army, and generously
subsidizing literature and artistry.

But apparently, working one’s butt off for
a decade and a half-

-to lift China into a golden age of-

prosperity and culture
can get a bit tiring,

so starting in 734 the emperor began
delegating more responsibilities-

-to his wife, the Empress.

She appointed Li-Linfu as chancellor,
and when she died 3 years later,

Li found himself as the
acting head of state.

SO, what do you do when you need to
keep an emperor entertained-

-for basically the rest of his life?

You import a palace-full of women.

But, of these 3,000-odd concubines,
the emperor only had eyes for one person:

his son’s wife.

… That’s a Yikes.

Nevertheless, in 741 this Yang Yuhuan was
branch-transferred-

-from wife of the prince to
Imperial Consort.

And the emperor doted on her incessantly,
granting what began as small requests but-

-steadily ballooned into appointing
her entire extended family-

-to high positions in government
and the military.

While the Yang family slid
comfortably into-

-profitable posts that they proceeded to
completely neglect,

Li Linfu was busy appointing foreign
loyalists to beef up his power base.

For you Political-Corruption-stans in
the audience,

the former is Nepotism while
the latter would be Cronyism,

but both of them are still very bad.

And even worse was the development that
these two camps did not like each other.

This came crashing down in 755
when the foreign-born general An Lushan-

-escalated a local spat with
the Yang family-

-into a full rebellion against
the Emperor.

And you thought this was a love story.

Hah, You Fool!

The REAL sorrow here is the decline of
good governance!

An Lushan’s rebellion didn’t quite work
out how he wanted,

as he died just two years in, but it
would ravage China for-

another several years, and this is where
our lovers enter into the picture again.

The emperor and Lady Yang were forced to
flee the palace by the rebelling army,

and the Tang soldiers complained that
this was all lady Yang’s fault —

— which, mmmmm? —

— and they forced her to kill herself.

Technically the Emperor was consulted
beforehand, but clearly in a-

“hey just so you know, we are doing this”

-kind of way as opposed to
asking permission.

So lady Yang died and the emperor was
heartbroken, so he abdicated to his son,

who spent the rest of his reign
fighting the rebellion.

This marks the second worst thing Xuanzong
ever did to his son aside from, y’know,

the inciting incident.

As I mentioned at the start, this story is
most famously recounted in poetry;

but weirdly, the story is set all the
way back in the Han dynasty?

In that version of the story,
the systemic corruption is glossed over,

and Lady Yang dies to motivate the
emperor to focus on winning his battle,

and after the victory everyone is just
sad for 100 lines-

-without stopping to note that the couple
brought this all on themselves.

It would seem the poet was uninterested in
the long-term consequences of-

-severe government neglect, which is
precisely why I don’t write love stories.

Okay, now that we’ve just witnessed a
debacle, let’s take a look at a tragedy.

We all know that arranged political
marriages were rarely fun for anyone-

-involved, but nothing tops the marriage
of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

The first two tales in this video were not
what I could consider “fun”,

but this story is just Awful Everything.

So after the 7 Years War shuffled the
diplomatic map of Europe,

France and Austria found themselves
needing to forge an alliance,

so the sitting royals arranged for
princess Marie to marry-

-into the French monarchy
via Dauphin Louis.

The pairing was an immediate disaster, as
a firework display on their wedding night-

-blew over from stiff wind and
caused the crowd,

whom the rockets were now firing into,
to panic and stampede,

killing anywhere from
a couple hundred to a few thousand people.

The couple went out of their way to
financially compensate families affected-

-by the tragedy, but man that’s a
rough start, and it did not get better.

Thing is, neither Louis nor Marie
wanted anything to do with this situation.

When he was born, his grandfather Louis XV
was still king, and his older brother was-

in line for the throne; by 1774
his brother, father, and grandfather died,

leaving this poor 20-year-old as
King Louis XVI when the shy,

indecisive homebody would have been much,
happier just reading and locksmithing.

Marie, by contrast, was social,
showy, and ‘spensive,

having a taste for fine clothes,
sprawling gardens, and chocolate.

She started every day with a cup of hot
chocolate and whipped cream,

which is a powerful morning routine.

Well, “morning” is a stretch, because
she woke up around noon-

-after spending every night on the town.

So there was a pretty clear disconnect
between the pair, and the conspicuous-

-lack of a child fueled 7 years of gossip
since their marriage in 1770,

on top of the garden variety complaints
that anything and everything was her fault-

-because she was an icky gross foreigner
who went to parties.

And of course, rumors of Marie’s
infidelity circulated from the start,

but come on, who did they think
she was, Caesar?

Heh, roasted.

Now, the lack of an heir could have been
for a lot of reasons,

and remains the subject
of far too much speculation.

Contemporary accusations that Louis
suffered from “PP Too Small”-

-were a result of the perceived connection
between weak political performance-

-and insufficient manliness.

But if the uncomfortably thorough
court records on the subject-

are anything to go by, — sigh— Louis was
more likely afflicted with:

“Ouch, PP too big”.

Yup.

This was not made better by the fact that
the King and Queen slept in separate rooms-

-connected by a very public corridor that
passed right in front of the royal court,

who would have known exactly what Louis
was up to at that hour of the evening.

7 years into this nightmare, the Queen of
Austria sent Marie’s brother to give-

Louis the pep talk and/or surgery that he
needed to begin having children with Marie.

Coooool, awesome, just fantastic,

I hate everything about this.

Why can’t you people just let this poor
library-ace just live his life?

Sickos!

Anyway, as if this situation
couldn’t get worse,

then the French Revolution happened.

Faced with colossal state debt and
factionalism in the court,

Louis was beset by interlocking problems
that even a much more capable monarch-

-would crumble under.

One thing leads to another,
I’m not getting into it,

and soon Louis was public enemy #1.

Eh, #2, people still hated
Marie Antoinette more.

And for what it’s worth, the
“Let them eat cake”

business was a misattribution from
one of two earlier sources.

In 1792 the royals attempted to sneak out
to Austria and lead an army in-

to reinstate the authority of the monarchy,
but it failed,

allegedly because Marie’s perfume was
so strong it gave them away.

The monarchs were tried for treason,
which, to be fair,

yeah that is kinda treason,

and they both met their ends at the
guillotine the next year.

These two definitely were not saints,
but man did history do them dirty.

What a mess.

Though we’ve been talking about the joyful
subject of love,

I would still like the record to show
that I distinctly did not have fun today,

so I’m firmly marking these
tales as “Blursed”.

But that aside, what can we learn
from all this?

Well, that’s tough, but let me
try to spin this.

First: Don’t have affairs —

— you never know when your mistress’
son might just Stab You.

Second: Maintain a healthy work-life
balance, and while you’re at it-

-maybe don’t steal your child’s spouse.

And Third: Uh, recognize when a pairing is
just…

not good,

for anyone.

Truly, every detail I learned while
researching this video made me wish-

I had never started, and I’m frankly
shocked that our Disaster Species was-

-ever allowed to make it this far.

Thank you for watching.

Researching this video forced me to
actually Google search the phrase:

“Louis VXI Penis”

and no amount of therapy can make
that un-happen.

I now consider myself burdened with
forbidden knowledge and will-

-very much need a year of
psychological cleansing-

-before I attempt this
again for next Valentine’s Day.

Special thanks to the patrons for
subsidizing my suffering,

and I will see you all in the next video.

… Thank god that’s done.