Expert history with a wicked twist: Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things is the podcast that goes behind palace doors and beyond the balcony smiles, to uncover the stories that the history books have politely skipped.
Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things reveals the schemers, lovers, plotters and even the pets who’ve made the British monarchy the world’s longest-running reality show.
Hosts, Royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams trace how power, passion and paranoia have shaped every crown. There are queens who ruled better than their husbands, and princes who partied harder than their people. We meet saints, sinners and those hovering somewhere in between – from the man formerly known as Prince Andrew to the less-vilified Richard III.
Sometimes we get reflective: how monarchy survives scandal, how image-making began long before Instagram, and why royal women have always been the best crisis managers in the room. Other times we’re just here for the gossip: who wore what, who slept where, and who accidentally started a war over breakfast.
Think of it as history with its crown slightly askew. If you like your royal stories with equal parts grandeur and chaos, step into the world of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things because behind every coronation lies a cover-up, behind every portrait a scandal, and behind every great monarch… a very patient servant wondering how to get the blood out of the carpet.
New episodes out every MONDAY, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Expert history with a wicked twist: Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things is the podcast that goes behind palace doors and beyond the balcony smiles, to uncover the stories that the history books have politely skipped.
Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things reveals the schemers, lovers, plotters and even the pets who’ve made the British monarchy the world’s longest-running reality show.
Hosts, Royal biographers Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams trace how power, passion and paranoia have shaped every crown. There are queens who ruled better than their husbands, and princes who partied harder than their people. We meet saints, sinners and those hovering somewhere in between – from the man formerly known as Prince Andrew to the less-vilified Richard III.
Sometimes we get reflective: how monarchy survives scandal, how image-making began long before Instagram, and why royal women have always been the best crisis managers in the room. Other times we’re just here for the gossip: who wore what, who slept where, and who accidentally started a war over breakfast.
Think of it as history with its crown slightly askew. If you like your royal stories with equal parts grandeur and chaos, step into the world of Queens, Kings & Dastardly Things because behind every coronation lies a cover-up, behind every portrait a scandal, and behind every great monarch… a very patient servant wondering how to get the blood out of the carpet.
New episodes out every MONDAY, wherever you get your podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Wars of the Roses is the real-life Game of Thrones - the conflict that inspired George R. R. Martin’s world of rival houses, contested thrones, formidable queens, and sudden, shocking reversals of fortune.
But long before fantasy claimed it, this struggle was one of the pivotal turning points in British history.
In the first of a two-parter, Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams trace the origins of a conflict that splintered a dynasty and set two branches of the same royal family on a collision course. What begins with a boy-king, a warrior queen, and a realm weakened by loss soon becomes a landscape defined by blood feuds, personal vendettas, and battles in which neighbours and brothers met across the field as enemies.
This is England at its most combustible: a nation undone by ambition, and ultimately reshaped by the dynasties fighting for its crown.
Join us as we return to the moment the red rose and the white first entered the national imagination, a struggle of extraordinary brutality, brilliance, and consequence.
Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams
Series Producer: Ben Devlin
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Bella Soames
Hosts: Robert Hardman and Professor Kate Williams
Series Producer: Ben Devlin
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Bella Soames
A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.
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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.