20 Historical Royals Who Had Some Seriously Strange Habits

We’ve searched through the annals of history to track down the weirdest royalty of all time. And we’ve got to say there are some gold-plated eccentric humdingers here. How about a princess who thought she’d swallowed a glass piano? Or a pickpocketing sultan? Then there’s the pickle-addicted czar. Read on for a rundown of history’s strangest monarchs.

20. Emperor Caligula of Rome

Caligula really was a piece of work — so much so that we’ll draw a veil over some of his more unsavory activities during his reign from 37 to 41 A.D. Instead we’ll concentrate on his obsessive relationship with one Incitatus. Who was a horse. According to the historian Suetonius, Caligula lavished his favorite steed with extravagances such as an ivory feedbox, a marbled stable and a collar studded with diamonds. 

Mad about the horse

Another Roman historian, Cassius Dio, wrote that Caligula had flakes of gold mixed in with Incitatus’ daily bran. Things went so far that Caligula apparently planned to promote the horse to high political office, the position of consul. In fact, the only thing that stopped him was that his disgruntled underlings assassinated him before he could put his proposal into action.

19. King Maximilian Ludwig II of Bavaria

King Maximilian II of Bavaria died in 1864. Just as you’d expect, his 18-year-old son Ludwig II succeeded him to the throne. So far, so normal. But as Ludwig settled into his new role as ruler of all he surveyed things began to veer off the rails. So much so in fact that history has given the monarch the title of “Mad King Ludwig.” 

Castles galore

Ludwig attracted this uncomplimentary epithet because of his castle habit. He just couldn’t stop building them, the grander and more elaborate the better. Unfortunately, this plunged him into enormous debt. This triggered a palace coup and Bavarian officials deposed Ludwig on the grounds of insanity in 1886. A contemporary German psychologist, Professor Heinz Häfner, has even given a name to Ludwig’s condition; “compulsive palace-building syndrome.”