We hope you finished your summer reading! But, if not, we read Finding Freedom so you don’t have to (unless you want to)! Join us as we discuss the summer’s most excerpted book, and whether it accomplishes the goals of the authors, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Duran. We can all now put the tiara drama to rest!

The British Monarchy has still not officially acknowledged its role in the beginnings of the British slave trade and subsequent profiting off of it. Can the royals responsibly lead the Commonwealth while continuing to ignore the roots of its founding?

How many lyrics from Hamilton can we quote in this episode? We just couldn't help ourselves, because today we are talking about George III! Was he mad? Yes. Was he the oppressive tyrant American colonists made him out to be? Listen and find out!

Was King Juan Carlos of Spain brought down by bad PR? He’s led a very interesting life as head of Spain’s ruling family: born in exile, maybe killed his brother, groomed successor to a dictator, and abdicated due to his kids’ financial shenanigans. Things are definitely not boring in Spain!

The Monaco royal family is no stranger to the spotlight, and today we are talking about the headline generating Princess Stephanie, plus a catch up on modern royal gossip!

That time a Royal purse swap led to the Hundred Year's War.

Monarcast is back to distract you with a bit of today's royal gossip and some tales of royal gossip past. First up? Someone once tried to kidnap Princess Anne and learned...not to try to do that.

Edward II and his cronies were the original thugs and gangsters, apparently. How did he come to run his kingdom this way, and why did his wife help oust him? We talk all this and more about England’s maybe murdered, maybe not murdered Edward.

Harold Godwinson dies on the battlefield in Hastings and a Norman rules England. How does it get to that end? This episode, we talk about Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, and Harold, and how you can’t really have one without the other.

The last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his family were famously killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. What led to their downfall? Was it the thrall of Rasputin? The indifference of an Autocrat toward his people? We dive in to the themes that contributed to the end of the Romanovs.

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 their 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 may 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.

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.