Some Families Had Their Hands Full
Being somebody’s daughter could come with plenty of rules, especially when your father was an emperor, king, or famously controlling Victorian patriarch. While most of these women spent their lives walking on eggshells, that doesn’t mean they made their families’ lives any easier either. Some secretly married unsuitable men, embarrassed their families in public, or rubbed elbows with some rather unfortunate names from history. Come with us as we explore which 20 daughters were nothing short of a handful.
1. Julia the Elder
Emperor Augustus promoted strict Roman marriage and adultery laws, only for his only daughter, Julia, to deliver the biggest slap in the face. In 2 BCE, accusations that she had affairs with several men resulted in Augustus banishing her to Pandateria. The scandal turned even more heads because he had made respectable family life part of his public political program.
2. Berenice IV
When Ptolemy XII fled Egypt in 58 BCE, his daughter Berenice IV didn't sit around waiting for him. No, she made moves, becoming queen and ruling until 55 BCE, which effectively replaced her still-living father while he scrambled for help abroad. Ptolemy eventually marched back into Egypt with military support, regained his throne, and Berenice was executed.
Anonymous 18th century engraver on Wikimedia
3. Lucilla
If you’re a Gladiator fan, you’ve definitely heard of Marcus Aurelius's daughter Lucilla. What you might not have heard of, however, was that she had already been an empress through her marriage to Lucius Verus, which is why seeing Commodus rule was such a pain. In 182 CE, she got tangled in a conspiracy whereby an assassin was supposed to stab Commodus, but things went horribly awry. Lucilla was exiled and later executed.
4. Honoria
Honoria, daughter of Emperor Constantius III, wanted out of a marriage her brother arranged to the Western Roman emperor Valentinian III. Around 450 CE, she secretly sent money and her ring to Attila the Hun, asking for help. Attila chose to interpret the message very generously and later demanded Honoria, along with an enormous share of the Western Empire, as his bride and dowry.
5. Anna Komnene
Byzantine princess Anna Komnene had once been close to the imperial succession before her younger brother John was born. She and her mother pressured Emperor Alexios I to favor Anna's husband, Nikephoros Bryennios, even while Alexios was dying in 1118, and Anna was later implicated in a plot against John after he finally became emperor. Her ambitions failed, but her later Alexiad ensured that she got the final word about her father's reign.
6. Joan of Acre
Edward I was busy arranging a political second marriage for his widowed daughter Joan when she quietly solved the problem herself. In 1297, she married Ralph de Monthermer in secret, a former squire in her first husband's household. Edward was obviously furious, confiscating Joan's lands and imprisoning Ralph. But Joan didn’t back down, and the king eventually reneged on all his punishments.
Anonymous (likely some monk) on Wikimedia
7. Isabella of France
Isabella of France really jump-started one of the biggest scandals in history, and it all started on a trip to France. In 1314, she noticed that two knights were carrying purses she had given to her sisters-in-law. She promptly told her father, Philip IV, which triggered the infamous Tour de Nesle affair, in which Margaret and Blanche of Burgundy were accused of adultery and thrown in prison.
8. Cecilia Vasa
Of course, Isabella isn’t the only one at the center of a major royal scandal. In 1559, guards repeatedly saw John II of East Frisia climbing into Swedish princess Cecilia Vasa’s bedroom. If that wasn’t scandalous enough, they eventually caught him there in a compromising state. The incident became so famous that it was remembered as the “Vadstena Rumble.”
Unidentified painter on Wikimedia
9. Henrietta Berkeley
Lady Henrietta Berkeley managed to create a scandal that not only involved adultery, but a disappearance, a courtroom spectacle, and a furious father as well. In 1682, she ran away with Ford Grey, Lord Grey of Warke, who happened to be married to Henrietta's older sister. Henrietta then made things even worse by publicly insisting that she had left home willingly.
George Perfect Harding, possibly after Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt on Wikimedia
10. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Evelyn Pierrepont wanted his daughter Mary to marry Clotworthy Skeffington, an aristocratic match she had no intention of accepting. Instead, after years of clandestine correspondence, Mary eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu and secretly married him in 1712. It was a good thing, too—she became far more famous for her writing and advocacy of smallpox inoculation than for doing what her father expected.
11. Mary Shelley
Mary Godwin was only 16 when she fell in love with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married at the time. Her father, William Godwin, obviously disapproved, but Mary left England with Shelley in 1814 anyway. They didn’t go alone, either; her stepsister went with them, making the whole escape even harder for the family to ignore.
12. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Edward Barrett didn't want any of his children marrying, and Elizabeth knew perfectly well that choosing Robert Browning would cost her relationship with her father. That didn’t stop her, however, and the poets secretly married in 1846. They then left England for Italy, where her health and literary career flourished. Her father, however, stuck to his word by disinheriting her and never speaking to her again.
Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen on Wikimedia
13. Jessie Benton Frémont
Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton initially saw explorer John C. Frémont as an unsuitable husband for his teenage daughter Jessie. Well, Jessie took umbrage, and in 1841 she eloped with Frémont at 17, leaving her father furious when he caught wind of what happened. Benton did ultimately relent and became an important political supporter of his new son-in-law.
14. Lady Caroline Lamb
Lady Caroline Lamb was already married to William Lamb when she began a highly visible affair with Lord Byron in 1812. The flame only lasted a few months, but Caroline kept corresponding with him after her husband took her to Ireland. The breakup went on to feed years of gossip and increasingly public hostility.
15. Princess Louise of Belgium
Leopold II's oldest daughter Louise may have been married to Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg, but that doesn’t mean it was a good union. Because of that, she eventually developed a relationship with Croatian officer Géza Mattachich. The affair became an international scandal; Leopold refused to rescue her and remained badly estranged from her.
16. Clémentine of Belgium
Funnily enough, Louise wasn't Leopold II's only daughter willing to fight him over her private affairs. Clémentine wanted to marry Prince Victor Napoléon, but Leopold rejected the match because he feared offending republican France. It led to bitter arguments between the two, but Clémentine waited him out and finally married Victor in 1910, less than a year after Leopold's death.
The original uploader was Alexvonf at Polish Wikipedia. on Wikimedia
17. Victoria Melita
Queen Victoria had personally encouraged her granddaughter Victoria Melita's marriage to another grandchild, Ernest Louis of Hesse, and the union quickly fell apart. Victoria Melita wanted out, something her grandmother opposed, and the marriage only ended in 1901 after Queen Victoria died. She later married her cousin Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich without the Russian tsar's approval.
18. Alice Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt's eldest daughter became such a celebrity that her refusal to behave conventionally was practically national entertainment. She did everything you weren’t supposed to: smoked cigarettes, bet on horse races, and carried a small snake named Emily Spinach. Most notably, she responded to her father's ban on smoking in his house by smoking on top of the White House instead.
Unknown photographer on Wikimedia
19. Unity Mitford
Few aristocratic daughters created a family problem as explosive as Unity Mitford, daughter of Britain's 2nd Baron Redesdale. During the 1930s, she became an enthusiastic supporter of the wrong side of history. She also moved within Hitler's social circle and remained personally devoted to him. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1939, Unity shot herself.
Unidentified photographer for Bassano Ltd on Wikimedia
20. Jessica Mitford
On the other hand, Unity's younger sister Jessica caused her parents a completely different kind of panic when she fled Britain with Esmond Romilly in 1937. The 19-year-old had been saving money for years in what she called her aptly named “Running-away account.” The pair headed toward Spain, sending her family into a panic as they tried to track her down, but Jessica married Romilly a few months later and remained deeply estranged from her father afterward.
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