Harry and Meghan dropped a bomb on the Royal Rota last week, announcing they would be “stepping back” from their roles as Senior Royals and splitting time between North America and England. What does it mean? We break down their statement, any precedents, the reactions of the other royals and the press, and try to decide if we are sympathetic or cynical about the whole thing.

And now we’ve come to maybe the most famous beheading of all! Yes, this week we are talking Marie Antoinette and how she was unfairly blamed for France’s troubles due to xenophobia, run of the mill misogyny, and some slight overspending, which was expected of her position! This girl got a bad reputation, and it was undeserved. 

It’s a Holiday Bonus! In this week’s episode, we are taking a break between royal beheadings to chat about how the royals have celebrated Christmas and New Year’s throughout the centuries. Starting with William the Conqueror’s coronation on Christmas Day through Queen Elizabeth II’s annual broadcast, traditions have evolved!

How does a government decide to behead its King? Religious disagreements get bad enough in England that some of Parliament decide they'd rather do without a King, and Charles I becomes the first (and last) English monarch to lose his head.

Welcome to the My Favorite Murder episode of Monarcast! We talk about the most famous cold case in English royal history, the princes in the tower. Who killed them? How did they die? Why did Edward V’s Uncle Richard seize the crown? Shakespeare didn’t even have to try to make this stuff up!

And now we get to the Wars of the Roses! You know it through the life of Elizabeth Woodville, but this time we are telling the side of the men. Spoiler alert: they mostly die! We start with King Henry VI, whose poor rule and mental illness lead his nobles to frustration, and ultimately, to a deadly conk on the head. 

Did Richard II cause the Wars of the Roses generations later? No…but kinda? We open up our fifth series with that question as we go through the bumpy reign of Richard II and his ultimate removal from the throne.

Sips tea.

We are talking about Royalty today, or should I say Royal Tea? Uh, sorry, we had to pun. But really, it works on both levels, because we do have to pause every now and then and ask ourselves, what is the importance of Royal tea in our modern times? And if you take a step back, you can really start to see the importance the gossip machine plays in keeping monarchs relevant. It’s a love/hate relationship on both sides, with few real winners, but oh my, is it fascinating!

This time, we talk about Suleyman the Magnificent, Ottoman contemporary of Henry VIII. He also had a unique approach to marriage, actually getting married! He and his wife Roxelana set a new precedent for Ottoman Sultans and concubines, one that was never repeated but blazed a trail for powerful women to follow and started a new approach to succession.

This time, we say “Aloha!” to the Kingdom of Hawaii, and then “Aloha!” about a century later. Yeah, they weren’t going for Japanese-style longevity there. But even if the Hawaiian royals were a mere blip in the islands’ long history, its a fascinating blip, and surprise surprise, America doesn’t come off so well in the story of the only monarchy in its borders.