White dresses, fresh flowers, family coming together–weddings are supposed to be joyful, right?
Weddings are usually celebrations of love and union, but as we go back in history, it’s easy to find some truly horrific tales of nuptials gone wrong.
From divine rage to unexpected attacks, unforeseen obstacles could make even the most thoughtfully planned ceremony go awry, leading to misery and even death!
Margaret of Valois and Henry III of Navarre
Imagine that the end of a war that had killed between two and four million people was resting on your wedding going well.
That’s what it must have been like for Margaret of Valois and her marriage to Henry de Bourbon of Navarre. Margaret was the daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine de’ Medici, making her a princess and one of the highest-ranking members of the French royal family at the time.
She and the rest of her family were devout Catholics, so her betrothal to a French Calvinist Protestant, also known as Huguenot, Henry of Navarre was controversial. However, this marriage held one important purpose above all others: to end the French War of Religions.
At first, Margaret and Henry got along well. It wasn’t their personalities that caused problems, though, it was their religions. The wedding itself went well enough, with one glaring exception when Henry was forbidden entry into the cathedral during the mass as he was a Protestant, and his place had to be taken by Margaret’s brother.
The two were wed, but the alliance between the Catholic monarchy and the Huguenots didn’t end the war as hoped. Instead, it led to even more bloodshed.
Just six days after the wedding the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre occurred.
A great number of Protestant leaders were present in Paris for the wedding, making them easy targets for the Catholic mobs that had been spurned to violence over the wedding and a recent assassination attempt on Huguenot leader Admiral de Coligny.
The violence spread out from Paris and across France, and at the end of it all, thousands of Protestants would be dead at Catholic hands.
Henry of Navarre was spared after promising to convert to Catholicism (he would eventually revert to Protestantism later in life). Margaret saved several Protestant nobles by hiding them in her quarters.
Margaret’s mother Catherine de’ Medici would offer to have the marriage quickly annulled in the face of the tragedy, but Margaret would refuse, claiming that the marriage had already been consummated and that she was Henry’s wife in all ways.
Despite surviving the Massacre, the marriage of the couple would be long and contentious. Margaret would never produce an heir, and the marriage would eventually be annulled many years later so Henry would be free to remarry and have a son.
Attila the Hun and Ildico
Similar to the doomed wedding of Jason and Glauce, the marriage of Attila the Hun and Ildico would last only hours and end with the death of one of its participants. This time though, it was the groom that perished, and not the bride.
The real question is–did the bride murder her groom, or did he simply fall victim to his love of excess?
In 453 AD, Attila the Hun would marry a beautiful young woman named Ildico. She would join the ranks of his other wives, but not for long. The true number of his marriages is unknown, but what we are sure of is that Ildico would be his last.
Greek historian Priscus was quoted,
“Shortly before he died, as the historian Priscus relates, he took in marriage a very beautiful girl named Ildico, after countless other wives, as was the custom of his race.”
On his wedding night, Attila overindulged in both feasting and drinking, eventually retiring to his chambers with his new wife late into the night. Sometime between then and morning, he would breathe his last.
There are three theories as to what caused his death on his wedding night–choking on a nosebleed while passed out, rupturing of esophageal varices, or murder by lovely Ildico.
Accounts of the morning after observed a vast amount of blood but no wounds on Attila, but later accounts, like the one by chronicler Marcellinus Comes, suggest that he was assassinated in the night by Ildico instead.
While we may never know Attila the Hun’s true cause of death, his passing would lead to the dissolution of the Hunnic empire, in no small part because of his own sons.
Heloise and Abelard
Being the most well-educated woman in Medieval Paris would be more than enough for most French women of the time, but for Heloise d’Argenteuil there was one thing she wanted more–love. Specifically, the love of philosopher Peter Abelard.
Sadly for Abelard, the love affair with Heloise would end in the loss of more than just his one true love. He would lose his manhood, too.
Heloise and Abelard would be drawn together by a shared love of writing and philosophy.
Heloise was young–somewhere between 15 and 17–when her uncle Canon Fulbert set up private tutoring with renowned philosopher of the time Peter Abelard.
Through letters exchanged between the two, and each of their many writings on the subject, we know that it was here that the attraction between teacher and student began to grow.
The two engaged in an illicit, passionate affair that would eventually lead to Heloise becoming pregnant. Panicked and fearing the fallout of discovery, Abelard sent Heloise to his sister Dionysia, where she gave birth to their only son, Astrolabe.
Canon Fulbert soon discovered the relationship between teacher and student and insisted the two be married. Heloise and Abelard both wished to continue their intellectual pursuits, which would be stymied by marriage.
Heloise in particular resisted the marriage, worried about her lover’s career, but eventually Fulbert won and the two were wed on the condition that the marriage would be kept secret.
Heloise’s uncle had other ideas, though, and Fulbert publicly announced the nuptials between the two. Enraged, Heloise pushed back and denied that the two were ever wed, which only angered her uncle more.
In a horrifying turn of events, Fulbert had a group of men break into Abelard’s home and castrate him during the night. Permanently disfigured and publicly shamed, Abelard fled and was permanently cloistered at Notre Dame.
With Heloise still technically his wife, Abelard knew that there was only one place she could continue her intellectual pursuits and pressured her to take her vows as a nun.
Now a nun at the convent in Argenteuil, Heloise was only able to communicate with her husband through letters.
The letters exchanged between the two lamented their love affair, with Abelard regretting it more than Heloise before the two eventually changed topics to that of theology. Their son Astrolabe would be raised by Dionysia, and Abelard would write about his love for his son throughout his life.
Despite the love between Heloise and Abelard, their secret affair and eventual wedding would bring nothing but violence and tragedy for both of them, making it clearly one of the most awful weddings in history.
