When Love Became a Public Offense

History has never been particularly kind to women, especially those whose private lives became public business. What was arguably the most egregious injustice was that it never really mattered who you were. Some were queens, some were noblewomen, and some were ordinary people whose relationships were treated as threats to the social order around them. Whatever the case may be, let’s revisit 20 women’s lives that were ultimately destroyed for loving the wrong person. 

Victor François Eloi Biennourry on Wikimedia

1. Inês de Castro

Inês de Castro was a noblewoman who became the lover of Prince Pedro of Portugal, a man already married to Constanza Manuel. Pedro’s father, King Afonso IV, feared that the Castro family ties would complicate things, so he ordered Inês to be killed in 1355. It left Pedro furious enough to hunt down several of the men involved once he became king. Oddly enough, the story didn’t even end there. Pedro later claimed he had secretly married Inês, and their tombs were placed foot-to-foot so the lovers could supposedly see each other at the resurrection.

Eugénie Servières on Wikimedia

2. Agnes Bernauer

Agnes Bernauer, the daughter of an Augsburg barber, secretly became the partner of Albert III of Bavaria in the 1430s. Albert’s father, Duke Ernest, only saw the match as a problem and had Agnes accused of witchcraft before she was drowned in 1435. 

UHolz on Wikimedia

3. Héloïse d’Argenteuil

Héloïse was a brilliant young scholar in 12th-century Paris when she fell in love with her tutor, Peter Abelard. She also gave birth to their son Astrolabe. However, their secret marriage only angered her uncle Fulbert and enraged him enough that Abelard was violently punished. Héloïse was also pushed into convent life against her will. 

Jean-Antoine Laurent on Wikimedia

4. Marguerite de La Rocque

Marguerite de La Rocque sailed toward New France in the 1540s with Jean-François de Roberval, a powerful relative who was leading a colonial expedition. When she took a lover aboard the ship, Roberval completely abandoned her, her lover, and her maidservant on the so-called Isle of Demons. Marguerite survived, but her lover, servant, and baby died.

The British Library on Wikimedia

5. Katherina Hetzeldorfer

In the 1470s, Katherina Hetzeldorfer lived with a woman she told people was her sister. Court records, however, describe accusations that the two actually lived as a married couple, and in 1477, Katherina was executed by drowning. Historians today cite it as one of the earliest recorded executions of a woman for same-sex relations in Europe.

Akira Hojo on Unsplash

6. Agatha Dietschi

Of course, Katherina wasn’t the only soul punished for such things. Agatha Dietschi lived in Basel in the 1540s and was also accused of having a sexual relationship with a woman named Anna Reuli. Though the court didn’t sentence her to death, it still punished her publicly with the pillory and exile.

Czeva on Wikimedia

7. Sophia Dorothea of Celle

Sophia Dorothea of Celle was trapped in a miserable marriage to George Louis of Hanover, and no one was coming to rescue her. She managed to find solace and became linked to Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, but after rumors of their affair spread in 1694, Königsmarck mysteriously disappeared. As for Sophia Dorothea, she was divorced, stripped of her status, and imprisoned at Ahlden Castle for the rest of her life.

Henri Gascar on Wikimedia

8. Lady Arbella Stuart

Lady Arbella Stuart had royal blood close enough to make James I nervous, which made her private marriage to William Seymour in 1610 look like a legitimate political threat. The king tried to secure his position by having Seymour sent to the Tower of London and placing Arbella under house arrest. When the couple tried to flee, she was captured before they could reunite, dying in the Tower in 1615.

Unidentified painter on Wikimedia

9. Julia the Elder

Julia the Elder, the only biological child of Augustus, was married off repeatedly to serve her father’s plans. If that wasn’t bad enough, in 2 BCE, Augustus then accused her of adultery and exiled her to the island of Pandateria. She was denied any luxury and free contact with men.

Published by Guillaume Rouille (1518?-1589) on Wikimedia

10. Valeria Messalina

Valeria Messalina, wife of Emperor Claudius, became entangled with the senator Gaius Silius in a scandal that became headline news at the time. According to Roman accounts, she went so far as to marry Silius while Claudius was away, which made the affair look like a direct challenge to imperial power. As you can imagine, Claudius didn’t like that and had both executed in 48 CE.

Unknown artist on Wikimedia

11. Yang Guifei

Yang Guifei was the beloved consort of Tang Emperor Xuanzong, and while that sounds nice, his devotion to her actually became a liability during the An Lushan Rebellion. As the imperial court fled Chang’an in 756, soldiers blamed the Yang family for the disaster and demanded her death. Eventually, Xuanzong allowed her forced suicide at Mawei.

Kawanabe Kyōsai (Japan, 1831-1889) on Wikimedia

12. Consort Qi

Consort Qi was a favorite of Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han, and she even bore him a son named Liu Ruyi. However, after Gaozu died, Empress Lü targeted both Qi and her son, and Chinese histories say that she was killed in an especially brutal act of revenge. 

Unknown author on Wikimedia

13. Princess Gaoyang

Princess Gaoyang of Tang was remembered for an alleged affair with the Buddhist monk Bianji, but you might want to take that with a grain of salt. Though modern histories remain a bit fuzzy, accounts say Bianji was executed after the affair was discovered, while Gaoyang’s reputation was permanently blackened at court. 

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14. Francesca da Rimini

Francesca da Rimini was married into the Malatesta family of Rimini around the late 13th century (yes, as part of a political arrangement). She fell in love with Paolo Malatesta, her husband’s younger brother, and Giovanni killed them both after discovering the affair. 

Peter Hoffer on Wikimedia

15. Maria d’Avalos

Maria d’Avalos was the wife of Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa— a composer now known as much for murder as for music. In 1590, he found Maria with her lover Fabrizio Carafa, and while surviving records don’t tell us exactly why she risked so much for him, Carlo had both of them killed in Naples.

Léon Lebègue on Wikimedia

16. Anne Boleyn

You’ve heard her name, but you might not know her story. By 1536, Anne Boleyn had become dangerous to the king’s plans. She was accused of everything from adultery to treason, and was executed by a French swordsman brought to the Tower for the occasion. To this day, the charges remain heavily debated.

Unknown , English on Wikimedia

17. Catherine Howard

Catherine Howard was only a teenager when she became Henry VIII’s fifth wife, and her past lovers soon became a matter of state. After allegations about Francis Dereham and secret meetings with Thomas Culpeper surfaced, Parliament condemned her without a normal trial. She was executed at the Tower of London in 1542.

After Hans Holbein the Younger on Wikimedia

18. Mary, Queen of Scots

Mary, Queen of Scots, made one of the most disastrous marriages in royal history: marrying James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, in 1567. The reason it was so hairy was that Bothwell had been accused of involvement in the murder of Mary’s previous husband, Lord Darnley. Sure enough, she was imprisoned at Lochleven Castle and forced to abdicate in favor of her son, James VI, who was only an infant at the time.

Unidentified painter on Wikimedia

19. Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo

Eleonora di Garzia di Toledo married Pietro de’ Medici as a teenager and entered one of Renaissance Italy’s most powerful families. You’d think it was all pie in the sky until 1576, when Pietro killed her at the Villa Medici at Cafaggiolo after accusations of infidelity and political disloyalty. 

Alessandro Allori on Wikimedia

20. Edith Thompson

Edith Thompson was a London milliner whose affair with Frederick Bywaters became the center of a sensational murder trial in 1922. The story goes that Bywaters killed Edith’s husband, Percy, but prosecutors used Edith’s letters to argue that she was the one who had encouraged the crime. Despite Bywaters's insistence that she hadn’t, Edith was still hanged in January 1923.

Oona Wikiwalker on Wikimedia