A drunken sailing accident once led to the death of England's heir apparent, plunging the country into 15 years of terrible civil war. And that's just one example of the death of a child of a British monarch throwing plans into chaos.
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00:00A drunken sailing accident once led to the death of England's heir apparent, plunging
00:04the country into 15 years of terrible civil war. That's just one example of the death
00:09of a child of a British monarch growing plants into chaos.
00:13William the Conqueror was a French duke who famously invaded England in 1066 and defeated
00:17King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, taking the crown for himself. Only a few years after
00:22William invaded, his second-born son, Richard, died. While it's not completely clear what
00:27killed him, some accounts suggest he was riding in the woods while hunting and hit
00:30his head against a branch.
00:32The exact date of his death is unknown, but records show he was alive in 1069, so the
00:37tragedy is usually dated to around 1070, although it could have been as late as 1075. Richard
00:43is thought to have been born around 1055, so he would have been a teenager when he went
00:47to the woods to hunt on that fateful day.
00:49Like his brother Richard, in the year 1100, King William II also died in a hunting accident.
00:54Because he had no children, the crown of England went to his younger brother Henry,
00:57who became Henry I. Unlike William II, Henry had lots of children, although only two or
01:02three of them were legitimate. And a single disaster would take three of his children
01:06out of the world forever, eventually leading to a civil war in England.
01:10According to the chronicler Ordiccus Vitalis in The Ecclesiastical History of England and
01:14Normandy, which was written at roughly the same time as the event, Henry's heir William
01:17Adelin, his brother Richard, and sister Matilda Fitzroy were crossing the English Channel
01:21in the white ship in 1120 when it sank. Vitalis claims that the crew of the vessel was drunk,
01:26and they made several mistakes while sailing, which eventually led to the boat crashing
01:30into a rock. He says 300 people were on board, and all but one of them died, including William
01:35Adelin, Richard, and Matilda Fitzroy. Charles Spencer told Good Morning America,
01:39In fact, the crew were drunk. We know that. And so they were just going too fast, you
01:45know, and they hit the rock, and that was that.
01:47This left Henry with only one surviving legitimate child, his daughter Matilda, also known as
01:51the Holy Roman Empress, Maud. When Henry died, Matilda was challenged for the throne
01:55by her cousin Stephen, plunging England into civil war and anarchy.
02:00In the battle for the English crown, Stephen came out on top, but he eventually made Matilda's
02:05son Henry his heir. In 1154, he came to the throne as Henry II, who had lived to see three
02:10of his children buried. Henry II's heir was called Henry the Young King because he'd been
02:14crowned a sort of co-ruler in 1170. But rather than appreciate this, Henry the Young King
02:19raised a rebellion against his dad only a few years later. The rebellion failed, as
02:24did the one Henry the Young King waged against his younger brother Richard the Lionheart.
02:28It was during this conflict that he died of dysentery. The Young King was joined in both
02:32his rebellions by his brother Geoffrey, who would also die before their father in the
02:36year 1186, although sources disagree on if he died in a jousting tournament or due to
02:40a medical issue.
02:42Henry II ultimately died in July 1189 while warring against his son Richard. He died almost
02:47at the same time as his daughter Matilda, who passed away in June or July of that year.
02:52Richard III was immortalized as a bad guy by several famous writers of Tudor times,
02:56most famously William Shakespeare. But it's generally accepted now that this was unfair
03:00propaganda by people looking to pump up the man who dethroned him, Henry VII.
03:04The horse! The horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
03:12While it's true that Richard only became king after several relatives with better claims
03:16to the throne died or disappeared, that doesn't mean he was necessarily responsible for those
03:20events. It did mean that his rule was shakier than he'd like, though, so he put a lot of
03:24emphasis on his only child, Edward of Middleham.
03:27Edward was born somewhere between 1473 and 1477, and he became Prince of Wales when Richard
03:33III ascended the throne in 1483. However, all the political maneuvering in the world
03:37couldn't save the boy from illness. Richard hadn't even been on the throne for a year
03:41when Edward came down with an illness and died in April of 1484.
03:46Henry VII defeated Richard III at the Battle of Botsworth Field in 1458, thus beginning
03:50probably the most famous dynasty in English royal history, the Tudors.
03:55Henry VII was the father of the infamous Henry VIII, but the younger Henry was never supposed
03:59to be king. Henry VII's eldest son, Arthur, was born a year after his father won the throne.
04:05Henry VII betrothed Arthur to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, and the two
04:09were wed when Arthur was just 15. Unfortunately, though, Arthur died just five months after
04:14the wedding. Catherine stayed in England in a kind of limbo after she became a young widow,
04:18eventually marrying Arthur's brother after he became King Henry VIII.
04:22Henry VIII is famous for the number of wives he went through, at least partially in order
04:26to get some male heirs.
04:28"...fat, gluttonous, sex-crazed, the king who married six wives and chopped off two
04:33of their heads."
04:34In the end, he ended up with three healthy children, all of whom would sit on the throne
04:37after he died — Mary I, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I.
04:42Before that, though, he mourned the loss of several other children. His first wife, Catherine
04:45of Aragon, had many pregnancies over the years. However, almost all of them resulted in miscarriages
04:50and stillbirths, with only Mary living to adulthood.
04:54Aragon's longest-living child besides Mary was Henry, Duke of Cornwall, who died just
04:58a few weeks after he was born in 1511.
05:01Queen Anne was pregnant 17 times, once with twins, but she outlived every single one of
05:06her children. In fact, they all died before she even became queen in 1702.
05:11Anne married Prince George of Denmark in 1683. Many of her pregnancies ended in miscarriages
05:16or stillbirths, but several children were born alive. These included Princesses Mary
05:20and Anne-Sophia, who both died of smallpox within the same week, in 1687. Another Mary
05:26was born in 1690, but only lived a couple of hours. The same was true of a son, George,
05:31born in 1692.
05:32The only child to live more than two years was William, Duke of Gloucester. Born in 1689,
05:37he looked likely to become king one day, since the then co-regents of England, William III
05:42and Mary II, had no children of their own. But Anne would not even be on the throne herself
05:46before William died, aged just 11, in 1700. The modern medical consensus is that he died
05:52of pneumonia.
05:54George II and his wife, Queen Caroline, had eight children, but several of them would
05:57die before the plot. The youngest, Louise, married the future king of Denmark and was
06:01very popular in her new country, but died from pregnancy complications in 1751. Another
06:07daughter, Princess Caroline, never married, dying three years before her father in 1757.
06:12A third daughter, Princess Anne, died in 1759, the year before the king. However, the situation
06:17with his son was even worse. In 1717, the then Prince George fathered a boy, but the
06:22new baby George only lived for a few months before dying in early 1718.
06:27Dynastically, though, the biggest blow to George II was the loss of his heir, Frederick,
06:32Prince of Wales, who died in 1751 at the age of 44. Personally, though, it was not such
06:37a painful event, because the two hated each other with passion.
06:41George's son, George III, became king in 1760 at just 22, inheriting the crown from
06:46his grandfather, George II. In a long line of arranged marriages that ranged from indifference
06:51to disasters, it is notable that George III and his wife, Queen Charlotte, were madly
06:55in love. This was reflected in many ways, the most obvious being the 15 children she
07:00gave birth to. Sadly, due in part to his long life, a number of George III's children died
07:05before him.
07:06The princes Alfred and Octavius were still just toddlers when they both died after being
07:10inoculated against smallpox, which was at the time a dangerous treatment but worth the
07:14risk to avoid catching the horrific disease. Alfred was not yet two when he died in 1782,
07:20and Octavius was four when he died the following year.
07:23Princess Amelia, George's youngest and favorite child, was unwell most of her life, suffering
07:28from tuberculosis. She finally died from her illness in 1810 at the age of 27, and her
07:33death completely destroyed her already broken body. Suffering from severe mental health
07:37issues, he withdrew from public affairs for the rest of his life, though just how mad
07:41he was remains a matter of debate.
07:43I've read the doctor's reports and the king's correspondence in the royal archives, and
07:48I concluded that yes, he was ill, but he was not insane.
07:53Prince Edward, the father of the future Queen Victoria, only pre-deceased George by six
07:56days, dying of pneumonia on January 23, 1820. By then, however, George had not been in his
08:02right mind for a very long time, and would not have known.
08:05George IV grew up with the perfect example of how to make an arranged marriage work,
08:09as his parents, George III and Queen Charlotte, genuinely loved each other. But George IV
08:13wasn't so lucky, as he and his spouse, Carolina Brunswick, grew to hate each other. This meant
08:18that they only managed to have one child together before they separated, and everyone accepted
08:22that Princess Charlotte would be queen one day. But tragically, after marrying the Belgian
08:26Prince Leopold, Charlotte died, giving birth to a stillborn child in 1817 following a truly
08:31agonizing two-day delivery.
08:34This meant that there was no clear line of succession until George IV's brother, Prince
08:37Edward, finally managed to father the future Queen Victoria in 1819, shortly before he
08:42died.
08:43Prince Edward's daughter, Queen Victoria, came to the throne in 1837 and stayed there
08:47until 1901. She and her husband, Prince Albert, had nine children, all of whom lived to adulthood.
08:53However, being quite long-lived herself meant that the queen still buried several of her
08:57children.
08:58Princess Alice was the third child of Queen Victoria. After her marriage, she became the
09:02Grand Duchess of Hesse. She had seven children of her own, but sadly, one of them died during
09:07a diphtheria outbreak that affected almost every member of her family. While comforting
09:11another one of her ill children, Alice caught the disease herself. She died at age 35 on
09:16December 14, 1878, which was 17 years to the day after Victoria lost her husband, Albert.
09:22Queen Victoria's son, Prince Leopold, also died young, though it was also a miracle he
09:26lived as long as he did since he was born with hemophilia and suffered from epilepsy.
09:30However, he managed to attend Oxford, get married, and have his own children before
09:34he died in 1884. Sadly, while in France, he tripped and injured himself badly enough that
09:39his hemophilia made it impossible to recover. He was 30.
09:43Finally, Prince Albert, who'd entered the navy when he was 14, died less than a year
09:47before his mother in 1900, making it to the age of 55. He died from throat cancer.
09:52Edward VII became king after his mother, Queen Victoria, died in 1901. By then, he was a
09:57relatively old man himself, less than a year from his 60th birthday, and by that time he'd
10:02already buried two of his six children. One of them, the last child of Edward and his
10:06wife Alexandra, was named Alexander after his mother, but tragically the baby died the
10:10day after he was born in 1871.
10:13The couple's first child and the heir to the throne was Prince Albert Victor, named after
10:17both his paternal grandparents. He was in his late 20s by the time he had time to settle
10:21down, having spent the previous decade attending Cambridge, enlisting in the army, and taking
10:26a seven-month tour of India, among other things.
10:29The woman who finally agreed to marry him was Princess Mary of Teck, and a date was
10:32blocked off in their calendar for their wedding when Albert Victor became unwell. There was
10:36a particularly bad flu pandemic at the time, and Albert Victor's case led to pneumonia,
10:41which killed him. He was 28 and died only six weeks before he was supposed to get married.
10:46Ultimately, it was decided that Princess Mary should instead get hitched to the next brother,
10:50Prince George, the Duke of York, who was now in direct line to the throne.
10:54Some months after her first fiancé's death, Mary married his brother, who would go on
10:58to become King George V.