20 Royal Banishments That Tore Families Apart

King Yeongjo did not want his son, Crown Prince Sado, to inherit the throne. Sado was a bit of a rebel and even killed some servants and eunuchs. It’s safe to say that the two hadn’t had the best relationship in recent years. However, if Sado were punished for treason, his wife and son would lose royal status under the collective punishment laws in Korea. So, King Yeongjo demoted Sado to a commoner in July 1762 and ordered him sealed in a rice chest, where he starved and suffocated to death after eight days.

Eleanor of Aquitaine wasn’t the biggest fan of her husband, King Henry II of England, so when her sons planned a revolt against their father in 1173, she was all on board. Unfortunately for Eleanor, Henry came out on top in 1174 and held her as a sort of prisoner for the next 16 years. She was moved from English stronghold to English stronghold, mainly to Winchester Castle, where she lived in royal quarters with her own funded household, rather than in chains. When Henry died in 1189, his son Richard I finally set Eleanor free.

When Edward VIII gave up the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, an American socialite, his relationship with his brother was never the same. King George VI took over and was bitter that Edward had left him in a role that he never wanted. So, he told Edward that he wasn’t allowed to return to Britain unless he was invited, and made his £25,000 annual allowance conditional on remaining outside Britain. This worked. The former King remained outside Britain throughout his wartime term as Governor of the Bahamas and spent most of the rest of his life in France.

Sophia Dorothea was having a secret affair with Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. Sophia couldn’t keep her secrets hidden forever, though, and when her husband George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later King George I of Britain) found out about her lover, he was understandably livid. Philip disappeared from the court in July 1694, having likely been assassinated by court guards. George divorced Sophia, removed all of her titles, and banished her to 32 years of confinement in Ahlden Castle. She wasn’t even allowed to see her children.

Julia the Elder, Augustus’s only biological child and therefore central to the Roman succession, was banished by Augustus in 2 BC for adultery. She lived on the island of Pandateria without wine, luxuries, or male company before later being moved to Rhegium. Despite this, Julia survived Augustus by a few months, dying still in exile at Rhegium in 14 AD, the same year Augustus died.

Loveless marriages were pretty common in the past, but this one ended badly. George, Prince of Wales, didn’t like his wife, Caroline of Brunswick, and only married her for political and financial reasons. After they married in 1795, he shut her out of court. When he became George IV in 1820, he tried to legislate her out of her royal status, but Parliament would not consent to it. Caroline was excluded from her husband’s coronation on July 19, 1821, at Westminster Abbey, where he instructed armed guards to prevent her from entering. Caroline fell ill and died just 19 days later.

In 1897, Princess Louise, King Leopold II’s eldest daughter, left her abusive marriage to live with Count Géza Mattachich. You’d think her family would’ve been supportive of that decision, but her father decided to team up with her awful husband instead. In 1898, the two of them worked with Austrian authorities to have Louise declared insane and sent to an asylum in Vienna, an act that cost her any royal prerogatives and appears to have had more to do with politics than psychiatry. Leopold formally disowned his daughter, never communicating with her again. This story doesn’t end completely hopeless, as Louise escaped from her confinement in 1904.

In her struggle for power with Cardinal Richelieu, Marie de’ Medici sought the favor of her son, King Louis XIII, and demanded the dismissal of Richelieu on November 10, 1630. However, Louis XIII went against his mother and supported Richelieu. In February 1631, he banished Marie to Château de Compiègne. Fearing she would lose her freedom indefinitely, she fled to the Spanish Netherlands and died in exile in Cologne in 1642.

Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer had deposed her husband Edward II in 1326 and ruled England as regents. Her 18-year-old son Edward III wanted justice for his father, so in 1330, he staged a coup at Nottingham Castle and executed Mortimer. He stripped his mother of power but not comfort, keeping her under house arrest at Castle Rising for 28 years on a £3,000 annual allowance.

In 1536, Lady Margaret Douglas became betrothed to Lord Thomas Howard without her uncle Henry VIII’s consent. The King requested an attainder against his niece, who had a claim to the throne of her own, and had her imprisoned in the Tower of London. She was only released when Howard died in 1537. The story doesn’t end there, though, because Margaret yet again fell in love with the wrong man. In 1541, after an affair with courtier Sir Charles Howard, Margaret was placed under house arrest at Syon Abbey and Kenninghall a second time. I guess she refused to learn her lesson.

Mixed families can bring all sorts of drama, and this was the case for Leonora Christina, the daughter of King Christian IV of Denmark. When she visited England in 1663, she was handed over to Denmark and imprisoned for 21 years and 9 months in the Blue Tower in Copenhagen, without ever being charged with a crime. Her imprisonment was by administrative decree, resulting in part from the treasonous alliance of her husband, Corfitz Ulfeldt, with Sweden and her subsequent unpopularity with her half-brother, King Frederick III, as well as the personal hatred of Frederick’s wife, Queen Sophie Amalie. In 1685, when Sophie Amalie died, Leonora Christina was finally released.

Li Chengqian was a Tang crown prince. Paranoid about his father, Emperor Taizong, showing more favor to his younger brother Li Tai, in 643 AD, he conspired with general Hou Junji to launch a coup in the palace. When his plot was revealed, although treason meant death under Tang law, his father took pity upon him and stripped him of his royal title, demoted him to a commoner, and banished him to Qian Prefecture, where Li Chengqian passed away two years later.

Li Xian was made the Crown Prince in 675 AD. He was very popular for his administrative ability. In 680 AD, he was accused of treason by Empress Wu Zetian, who ignored Emperor Gaozong’s pleas for mercy after weapons had been found in his stables. He probably should’ve done a better job at concealing them! His titles were removed, and he was exiled to Ba Prefecture. After the emperor died in 684 AD, Wu Zetian forced Li Xian to commit suicide.

Prince Yuntang was the ninth son of the Kangxi Emperor. When his half-brother, the Yongzheng Emperor, came to the throne in 1722, he moved against his rivals, and in 1725 Yuntang had his titles stripped, was cast out of the imperial clan, was given a derogatory alias, ‘Sesihei,’ which translates as dog, and was placed in solitary confinement in Baoding. He died in 1726, officially of an illness, though some suspected he was poisoned.

Eudoxia Lopukhina had been the first wife of Peter the Great. Eudoxia was a bit of a rebel. She resisted Peter’s Westernizing reforms, and as you can guess, Peter didn’t appreciate that. Upon Peter’s return from his Grand Embassy in 1698, he effectively ended the 1689 arranged union by forcing her to take the veil (rather than formally divorcing her) and banished her to the Intercession Convent in Suzdal. After nearly three decades of isolation, Eudoxia was finally released from the convent by her grandson.

Peter the Great had a few family feuds in his lifetime. Another was with his half-sister, Sophia Alekseyevna, who was regent of Russia between 1682 and 1689. Upon Peter’s coming of age in 1689, Sophia lost power and, by his order, was sent under guard to Novodevichy Convent in Moscow. She did try to restore her power, but the rebellion was unsuccessful. Sophia was then obliged to take religious vows as Sister Susanna. She remained in solitary confinement until her death in 1704.

Minamoto no Yoshitsune’s victories in the Genpei War made his clan the dominant power in Japan. However, Yoshitsune’s popularity, as well as the assumption of titles from the court without permission, made his half-brother, Yoritomo (head of the Minamoto clan), suspicious of him. Yoshitsune was branded a fugitive from justice in 1185, and his lands were confiscated. He was later forced to end his life when cornered at Koromogawa in 1189 after fleeing around the country for four years.

Prince Albert’s mother, Louise of Saxe-Gotha, married Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in 1817 at the age of 16. Although both parties were unfaithful, Louise was banished to St. Wendel in 1824 due to her affair with an equerry named Alexander von Hanstein. By 1826, she and the Duke were divorced, but she was forbidden to see her sons, including Albert, ever again. She died in 1831 at the age of 31, still in exile.

In 1911, Infanta Eulalia of Spain prepared to publish her book The Thread of Life. Her nephew, King Alfonso XIII, demanded to review it before publication, but Infanta Eulalia refused. So, the King decreed her banishment from the Spanish court and from Spain itself for publishing the book without his permission, and she had to live in France for the rest of her life. I still think she made the right choice; she deserved to publish her book in exactly the way she wanted.

Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia was second in line to the throne, but that all went up in flames when, in October 1912, he secretly married a commoner, Natalia Wulfert, in Vienna. His brother, the Tsar, was not pleased that Michael didn’t ask for consent to marry his true love, so in December, Michael was banished, relieved of his military commands, and had his properties confiscated. Michael did, however, return when the war started in 1914. And get this: when the Tsar briefly abdicated in his favor in 1917, Michael declined the crown.

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