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“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton hadn’t written that for a Mother’s Day card, but it could have been appropriate. Royalty does not tend to make good parents.

On this day, we should pay special tribute to some of the worst mothers in royal history:

Being the sister of Caligula, Agrippina the Younger (A.D. 15-59) was brought up thinking that incest was a form of positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, her son Nero really did not need any further encouragement. Indeed, dating Mom may have spoiled him where other women were concerned. He had one wife suffocated and personally kicked to death a second–who was pregnant at the time. And he proved to be an unappreciative son; he had Agrippina murdered although he first attempted to make him look like an accident. However, most drowning victims don’t have stab wounds.

The Empress Irene (752-803) might be one reason that the Byzantines have a bad reputation. She had been selected in a beauty contest to be the wife of the Byzantine crown prince. (Doesn’t this already sound like an Aaron Spelling script?) In time, the prince became the Emperor Leo IV–but not for very long. His abrupt death at the age of 30 might seem suspicious. In any case, Irene became the regent for her son, Constantine VI. But, due to the inconveniently high standard of Byzantine life and medicine, Constantine grew up to rule in his own right–but not for very long. In 797 Irene had her son blinded and deposed; being patriotic, she was willing to occupy the now vacant throne. How did the world respond to this crime? The Pope sent his congratulations, and the social-climbing Charlemagne offered to marry her.

What happens when you have two children and only one kingdom? What is a mother to do? Isabeau of Bavaria (1370-1435), the Queen Mother of France, thought that there was a practical solution. Her son Charles was repulsive and powerless; her daughter Catherine was more likable and also the Queen of England, married to the repulsive but powerful Henry V. In fact, English armies were occupying half of France and Henry had forced the French to acknowledge him as the next king of France, following the long awaited death of Isabeau’s husband Charles VI. To Henry’s surprise, however, he died first. Then Charles VI died. That raised the question of who should succeed to the French throne: Isabeau’s son or her half-English grandson, Henry VI. Isabeau decided that she preferred her grandson, and then announced that her son Charles was illegitimate. She couldn’t deny his maternity–too many people had noticed her pregnancy–but she certainly could dispute his paternity. Isabeau declared that Charles VI was not the father of the French claimant, and so her son had no right to the throne. Of course, Isabeau was counting on a comfortable English pension for her efforts, but how many other women would confess to to being whores just to spite a child? (If disinherited by his mother, at least the dauphin was adopted by Joan of Arc.)

But let’s conclude this on an uplifting note: Catherine the Great (1729-1796) despised her son Paul and insinuated to him that his paternity was an open question; yet, if only out of etiquette, she could not bring herself to disinheriting him. I guess that makes her this list’s Mother of the Day.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Lord Acton hadn’t written that for a Mother’s Day card, but it could have been appropriate. Royalty does not tend to make good parents. You could ask Prince Charles…or his sons, and they are dysfunctional at a time when they are only pampered mannekins. Imagine what they would be perpetrating on each other if real power were at stake. (Prince Philip found impaled on polo mallet…. Prince Charles belatedly discovers that many poisons are organic vegetables.)

But on this day, we should pay special tribute to some of the worst mothers in royal history:

Being the sister of Caligula, Agrippina the Younger (A.D. 15-59) was brought up thinking that incest was a form of positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, her son Nero really did not need any further encouragement. Indeed, dating Mom may have spoiled him where other women were concerned. He had one wife suffocated and personally kicked to death a second–who was pregnant at the time. And he proved to be an unappreciative son; he had Agrippina murdered although he first attempted to make him look like an accident. However, most drowning victims don’t have stab wounds.

The Empress Irene (752-803) might be one reason that the Byzantines have a bad reputation. She had been selected in a beauty contest to be the wife of the Byzantine crown prince. (Doesn’t this already sound like an Aaron Spelling script?) In time, the prince became the Emperor Leo IV–but not for very long. His abrupt death at the age of 30 might seem suspicious. In any case, Irene became the regent for her son, Constantine VI. But, due to the inconveniently high standard of Byzantine life and medicine, Constantine grew up to rule in rule in his right–but not for very long. In 797 Irene had her son blinded and deposed; being patriotic, she was willing to occupy the now vacant throne. How did the world respond to this crime? The Pope sent his congratulations, and the social-climbing Charlemagne offered to marry her.

What happens when you have two children and only one kingdom? What is a mother to do? Isabeau of Bavaria (1370-1435), the Queen Mother of France, thought that there was a practical solution. Her son Charles was repulsive and powerless; her daughter Catherine was more likable and also the Queen of England, married to the repulsive but powerful Henry V. In fact, English armies were occupying half of France and Henry had forced the French to acknowledge him as the next king of France, following the long awaited death of Isabeau’s husband Charles VI. To Henry’s surprise, however, he died first. Then Charles VI died. That raised the question of who should succeed to the French throne: Isabeau’s son or her half-English grandson, Henry VI. Isabeau decided that she preferred her grandson, and then announced that her son Charles was illegitimate. She couldn’t deny his maternity–too many people had noticed her pregnancy–but she certainly could dispute his paternity. Isabeau declared that Charles VI was not the father of the French claimant, and so her son had no right to the throne. Of course, Isabeau was counting on a comfortable English pension for her efforts, but how many other women would confess to to being whores just to spite a child? (If disinherited by his mother, at least the dauphin was adopted by Joan of Arc.)

But let’s conclude this on an uplifting note: Catherine the Great (1729-1796) despised her son Paul and insinuated to him that his paternity was an open question; yet, if only out of etiquette, she could not bring herself to disinheriting him. I guess that makes her this list’s Mother of the Day.

Her father declared her a bastard and beheaded her mother, her half-sister imprisoned her as a traitor and nearly ordered her execution.  Elizabeth I would seem entitled to a psychosis or two, but she seemed to regard these “episodes” as part of her job description. 

Aside from the obvious dysfunction, the Tudors were unique for a royal family:  they were intelligent and hard-working.  The Tudors actually earned the throne. 

After 85 years of civil war, the English throne had become quite democratic: anyone could seize it. Henry Tudor was a middle-class Welsh adventurer who even lacked the distinction of being legitimate. His claim to royal blood was as the half-second cousin, once-removed, of Henry VI. The successful usurper, proclaiming himself Henry VII, sought immediate respectability by marrying the eldest daughter of the rival royal house. (He then made sure that the rest of her family disappeared: in convents, the Tower of London, you get the idea) The crafty king took nothing for granted. He certainly didn’t trust the nobles, most of whom had better claims to the throne than he did.

To control a restless aristocracy, Henry VII created a force that remains as terrifying now as it was then:  the civil service.  His bureaucracy remorsely taxed the nobility into a passive stupor: nobles could still afford all of their vices but not an armed rebellion.  In dealing with his other subjects–townspeople and small landowners–Henry had a novel approach:  good government.  The King had a most solicitous attitude.   Any proposal or project that would resolve problems and nurture prosperity had his support.  (That’s how the nobles’ taxes were spent.) 

Henry VIII had his father’s political shrewdness.  He may have been a serial husband but he maintained a monogamous romance with Parliament.  That English institution had been founded in 1265 by English barons who realized that the Magna Carta had left a few loopholes. Its assembly of gentry, clergy, and burghers formed a permanent council: no law could be enacted without its consent.  For two centuries, however, the Parliament had acted only like a notary public: approving and filing the royal decrees.

But to the crafty Tudors, Parliament was more than a bureaucratic eccentricity. Its members represented constituencies; the town burghers and small landowners were potential allies against the aristocracy and even the Catholic Church.  Henry VIII applied his seductive skills to wooing Parliament.  If a serenade of Greensleeves was insufficient, a knighthood on a status-starved burgher  or the deed to an estate (freshly confiscated from the Catholic Church) usually proved irresistible.  Of course, Henry’s approach also had an element of menace.   Imagine the choice confronting a member of Parliament: the King’s munificent patronage or being publicly disemboweled. Under those circumstances, you, too, might agree that the King was entitled to a divorce and that Thomas More was just being obnoxious. 

If Elizabeth I could survive her family, she could easily contend with Spain, the Jesuits and her idiot cousin Mary.  She possessed all of the Tudors’ talents, few of their vices (just a bit of her father’s vanity), and a charm uniquely her own.  Unfortunately, a Virgin Queen is bad for a dynasty.

Her glorious reign began this day in 1558.