Royalty in All Ages The Amusements, Eccentricities, Accomplishments, Superstitions and Frolics of the Kings and Queens of Europe

The spirit of the age in which they lived must, in most cases, account for the superstitious turn of mind of many sovereigns in the past. The fact that we are now acquainted wit...

Royalty in times past has had many an accomplished epicure, as learned in culinary lore as in the practice of the cuisine. Charlemagne took a warm personal interest in the manag...

It is impossible to account, in many cases, for the strange and extraordinary freaks of bygone sovereigns on any other ground than eccentricity or madness. It is true that Charl...

From the earliest times history records many an amusing anecdote illustrative of royal wit and humour, and it is related how when Leonidas, King of Sparta, was informed that the...

It is affirmed that the ex-monarch Dionysius died of excess of joy at receiving intelligence that a tragedy of his own had been awarded a poetical prize at a public competition....

The fashion of keeping Court and household fools, writes Voltaire in his _Age de Louis XIV._, was for a time the _grande mode_ of all the Courts of Europe. Some sovereigns, howe...

It is recorded that Nero, during a dangerous illness, made a vow that if he recovered he would dance the story of Turnus in Virgil; and the great Scipio Africanus amused himself...

Gambling, under one form or another, has always been a fashionable diversion at Court. Plutarch tells a story of Parysatis, mother of Cyrus, who played with the King, her husban...

Perhaps no chapter in the social history of royalty has given us a more vivid insight into the merry doings of the sovereigns of the past, in our own and other countries, than t...

That horse-racing was in vogue, and practised to some extent by the Saxons, may be deduced from the fact of King Athelstan having received as a present from Hugh the Great--fath...

Some two hundred and fifty years ago, a fashionable colour was a peculiar shade of brown known as the “couleur Isabelle,” and this was its origin: Soon after the siege of Ostend...

From an early period there have been monarchs possessed of as much skill in music as their best bards, or minstrels. Thus, as it has been observed, if Alfred the Great could ent...

It is said that before Alfred the Great was twelve years of age, “he was a most expert and active hunter, and excelled in all the branches of that most noble art, to which he ap...

It has been remarked that nothing can explain the almost universal mediocrity of royal compositions, despite the great and manifest advantages enjoyed by their authors. The supe...

It has often been remarked that persons of the most rough and unfeeling disposition have displayed extraordinary tenderness towards their favourite animals, illustrations of whi...

To avoid the dangers inseparable from war, or to seek a temporary concealment in political troubles, has caused many a monarch in times past to assume the most varied disguises,...

At Court in bygone years, on occasions of festivity, it was customary for the whole company to appear in borrowed characters, a practice which may be traced back as early as the...

In this country sports and pastimes of most kinds have generally had the patronage of royalty, many of our sovereigns having excelled in such modes of recreation. According to a...

Whether it be Nero constructing his hydraulic clocks, or Prince Rupert experimenting in his laboratory, or Philip of Burgundy contriving houses full of _diableries_, such as hid...

It is recorded how a certain Spaniard, who once attempted to assassinate a king, Ferdinand of Spain, on being put on the rack could give no other reason for his strange conduct...

The great Mogul Emperor was a chess player, and was generous enough to rejoice when he was beaten by one of his courtiers, which was the exact reverse of Philip II. of Spain, wh...

The custom of keeping dwarfs as retainers to ornament the homes of princes, and to provide amusement--which was much in fashion in the old days of the Roman Empire--has survived...

Few of the old Court customs practised in past years were more curious than that of “whipping by proxy.” It appears that the office of whipping-boy doomed its unfortunate occupa...