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History's messiest breakups make modern drama look tame! Join us as we count down the most hilariously petty and shockingly consequential splits in history! From royal feuds to scandalous courtroom battles, these divorces shaped empires, rewrote laws, and left legacies that still echo today. Which historically petty split do you think takes the crown? Let us know in the comments!
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00:00I'm Henry VIII, I had six sorry wives, some might say I ruined their lives.
00:05Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the most mean-spirited divorces that were nevertheless
00:12consequential.
00:13I won't go to court and I won't submit to anything!
00:15Yes you are, you will.
00:16No I won't!
00:18Of all the things you've ever done to me, Ian, this has to be the absolute worst!
00:22I cannot believe you believe this about me!
00:25Number 10. Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
00:29This arranged royal marriage started off well, on Louis' side anyway.
00:34Eleanor was much less impressed. According to later gossip, she said he was more monk than king.
00:41Eleanor's role as consort was to give Louis an heir.
00:45And it may be evidence of her distaste for the job, but it was eight years before she gave birth
00:50for the first time.
00:51When the coupling failed to produce a son, Louis and Eleanor became estranged, and her influence at the French court
00:57began to slip.
00:58Following a number of further rifts between them, Eleanor began to campaign for an annulment,
01:03eventually wearing Louis down and getting a papal sign-off.
01:07On what grounds?
01:08Consanguinity!
01:09Eleanor was, in fact, Louis' third cousin once removed.
01:14The reality was that church law was used by powerful men to get rid of wives who were no longer
01:18politically convenient.
01:20And it seemed that Eleanor didn't see why she shouldn't use it, too.
01:23Eleanor lost access to her two daughters by Louis in the breakup.
01:27She would marry Louis' rival, the future king Henry II of England, a mere eight weeks later.
01:33And she went on to bear him not one, but several male heirs, and one of the most satisfyingly petty
01:39mic drops in history.
01:40Good, good Louis, if I had managed sons for him instead of all those little girls, I'd still be stuck
01:45with being queen of France, and we should not have known each other.
01:50Such, my angels, is the role of sex in history.
01:53Number nine, James and Elizabeth Luxford.
01:56The first divorce in American history.
01:58A legal landmark case was also a cut-and-dry case.
02:01Let you look for some goodness in me.
02:07And judge me not.
02:12The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you.
02:15The Luxfords were Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when they divorced on December 3rd, 1639.
02:22It turned out James Luxford already had a wife back in England, prompting Elizabeth to seek dissolution.
02:36The court of assistance granted the divorce, marking a stark departure from England's common law at the time.
02:42The courts affirmed marital misconduct was valid grounds for divorce, and that marriage itself was not indissoluble.
02:49Lesson learned, no one is big enough to commit bigamy and get away with it.
02:53Who was she?
02:54Whoop.
02:57I may have deserved that.
02:58Number eight, Prince George of Wales and Princess Caroline.
03:02I've been two and a half years in this house.
03:04You've treated me neither as your wife, nor as the mother of your child, nor as the Princess of Wales.
03:10I advise you that from this moment I have nothing more to say to you,
03:14and that I regard myself as being no longer subject to your orders or your rules.
03:20Happily, albeit illegally, married to his mistress, Maria Fitzherbert, George's mounting debts and royal
03:27responsibilities eventually forced him into a union with his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick.
03:32He reportedly showed up drunk to the wedding, and things only went downhill from there.
03:37Keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live.
03:50I will.
03:52Fundamentally mismatched in temperament and physically repulsed by one another, George and Caroline
03:57somehow managed to produce a daughter before separating acrimoniously. When Caroline refused a
04:02divorce though, he accused her of unchaste behavior. Rich for a man with multiple illegitimate children by
04:08several women.
04:20Caroline got her own revenge by gaining the public sympathy, which shut down George's hopes for a
04:25formal divorce, but he still borrowed her from his coronation. Whatever the opposite of star-crossed
04:31lovers is, these two are it.
04:32I think he's very rude, and he's nothing like as handsome as his portrait.
04:37Number 7.
04:38Lance Cheezabro and Roland Mullineaux
04:41It's Not Every Day Your Divorce is also a murder investigation.
04:45Sorry, you fell in love with a serial killer,
04:47alright? But honestly, who here hasn't?
04:49Chemist Roland Mullineaux had tried to poison his rival, Harry Seymour Cornish,
04:53but the latter gave the toxin to his cousin, Catherine Adams, believing it to be medicine.
04:58Upon her death, Roland was accused of attempted murder and brought to trial.
05:02It gradually came out that Roland had married his wife, Blanche,
05:06just after the sudden death of his friend and competing suitor, Henry Crossman Barnett.
05:10Roland was acquitted, but Blanche had had enough, understandably so.
05:14She took a trip to Sioux Falls in South Dakota, which had the laxist divorce laws at the time,
05:19and filed for divorce there. You could say it was a toxic marriage.
05:24You still think I have a chance with you?
05:26I didn't think so.
05:28Number 6.
05:29Frank Lloyd Wright and Catherine Lee Kitty Tobin Wright
05:32The famous architect had marital problems. Who knew?
05:35Frank Lloyd Wright's coming to a crisis in his relationship with his wife Kitty.
05:41He's got six children. She doesn't have any time for him.
05:44She's terribly busy with these children, and one has to see him
05:48as a narcissist.
05:51Lloyd Wright left his wife Kitty for early feminist Mayma birth with Cheney
05:55while he was designing her husband's house.
05:57In 1909, they left both their spouses behind to live in Italy.
06:01While the Cheneys separated, Lloyd Wright's wife Kitty refused to do the same.
06:06Kitty refused to give him a divorce, and it was impossible for Wright to continue to live in Oak Park.
06:12And so he looked for a location to build a new house.
06:15After Mayma and her children were murdered by a servant, long story,
06:20Kitty finally granted Frank his divorce in 1922, on the condition that he wait a year before he
06:25married his new mistress. What a mess.
06:28He started to design houses for very attractive women,
06:34and they would fall in love with him as an architect. He would fall in love with them as individuals.
06:40Number five, the Duke and Duchess of Argyle.
06:43Ethel Margaret Sweeney married Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyle in 1951.
06:47It was a disaster by all accounts.
06:50I knew I loved him. I knew I wanted to save in Barrera, desperately, badly.
06:57What he felt, I don't know.
06:59The Duke suffered from substance use disorder and had violent, abusive tendencies.
07:03When he suspected Margaret was cheating on him, he hired a locksmith to break open a cupboard.
07:08There, he found photos of a naked Margaret engaging in sexual activities with various men.
07:13Well?
07:20See you in court.
07:22Margaret in turn accused the Duke of cheating on her with her stepmother and got slapped with a
07:27lawsuit for libel. In the end, the presiding judge granted divorce. Thank goodness.
07:32What do you want?
07:39I want peace and quiet.
07:41Number four, George and Caroline Norton.
07:44Socialite Caroline Sheridan first married George Norton in 1827.
07:49Unfortunately, George was a jealous husband with substance use problems and a violent streak.
07:54Marriage is a constant challenge.
07:56Some we bend to, some we bend to us.
07:59Caroline embarked on a career as a successful author, finally leaving her husband in 1836.
08:05In response, George claimed the money she made from her literary work,
08:08kidnapped their two sons, and accused her of having an affair.
08:12He sued her alleged lover, Lord Melbourne, a case that nearly shut down the government.
08:16The jury had seen the case for what it was.
08:19Hurt feelings, being paraded for political reasons.
08:23Lord Melbourne was a Whig, and the Norton family were ultra-Tories.
08:31The judges sided with Melbourne, but by then Caroline's reputation was ruined.
08:36George kept the kids, and Caroline dedicated her life to expanding rights to married and divorced women.
08:41Surely, in this country where hatred of all oppression is made a national boast,
08:49when all liberal opinions are encouraged and fostered,
08:53it is a strange and crying shame that the only despotic right an Englishman possesses
09:00is to wrong the mother of his children.
09:04Number three, Nero and Claudia Octavia.
09:07The contentious Roman Emperor had an equally contentious marriage.
09:11With my first wife, dear Octavia, I showed truly bad behavior,
09:15chopped her head off and gave it to my girlfriend, who I then killed too, I'm bad!
09:20Nero married his stepsister, Cloudy Octavia, when he was 16.
09:25With his extravagant lifestyle and extramarital affairs, the marriage was not a happy one.
09:30Octavia was the quintessentially modest Roman wife, and popular with the Roman populace,
09:35which did her no favors.
09:37Nero eventually divorced Octavia, citing her lack of a male heir as a sign of infertility.
09:43A week later, he married his mistress, Papaya, and both began to accuse Octavia of adultery with a
09:48flute player.
09:49But their plan to humiliate Octavia backfired.
09:53They'd not only underestimated the loyalty of her servants,
09:56but they'd also reckoned without the affection of the Roman mob, who adored their old empress.
10:01After the Romans rioted in protest, they got her exiled and eventually executed on those grounds.
10:07You could say he had the heart of Nero.
10:10Wife killer. Mother killer.
10:12Quiet woman, you'll have us all.
10:13Everybody knows. He's a beast.
10:16Number 2. Charlemagne and Desiderata
10:19Speaking of emperors hating their wives for no good reason, here is Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.
10:25This princess was to marry Charlemagne, thereby making the Lombards allies and putting pressure
10:31on his brother's realm, controlling him from the north, south and west.
10:35There is debate over the exact name of Charlemagne's first or possibly second wife,
10:41Desiderus' daughter. Either way, Charlemagne first married her as a political alliance with
10:46the Lombards in 770 AD.
10:48That marriage to the Lombard princess seemed very useful.
10:52The Lombard king had married off his daughters to other prestigious people,
10:59and Charlemagne was sort of buying into an already existing constellation of power.
11:06However, he soon grew tired of her after only a year of marriage and sent her back to her father.
11:11Also, he already had a romantic relationship with another noblewoman, including a son with her.
11:17Charlemagne pressured his brother's widow Gerberga to marry him instead,
11:21which caused her to flee to the Lombards. As a result, war with the Lombards ensued.
11:42How pointless.
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12:08Number 1. King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon.
12:12Have you no kind things to say?
12:15Kind?
12:17To your wife, the mother of your child.
12:21You treat me so unkindly and in public neglect me.
12:25Catherine, you must accept the inevitable.
12:27Henry's marriage to his brother's widow Catherine actually began as a love match,
12:31albeit with many infidelis on Henry's part.
12:34Unfortunately, after decades without a male heir,
12:37Henry decided to annul his marriage to Catherine on the grounds of consanguinity.
12:41He was also very keen on marrying his newest flame, Anne Boleyn.
12:45There are some who on good authority care not for popes.
12:49These writers say that the king is both emperor and pope absolutely in his own kingdom.
12:56Which writers?
12:59I have a book to show you.
13:00When the Catholic Church dragged its feet,
13:03Henry established himself as the head of the Supreme Church of England,
13:06dissolving the monasteries and initiating the English Reformation.
13:09Henry then promptly married Anne Boleyn.
13:11While Catherine died in exile, Anne Boleyn and most of Henry's other wives were not so lucky.
13:17Divorced, beheaded, died.
13:24Divorced, beheaded, survived.
13:28One word, yikes.
13:29Which of these divorces do you think was the meanest?
13:32Let us know in the comments down below.
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