Irina, however, died at the young age of 25 and soon after Peter found himself a new love, a woman named Maria who was from the Caucasus Mountains (modern day Russia). After he gave up his throne, he took his gypsy wife to what is now northern Italy.
At that time, gypsies were slaves and so Peter used his royal power to emancipate her. Peter is included on this list because of the unusual fact that he fell in love with a gypsy named Irina. In English, this is known as being drawn and quartered, a punishment which was popular all over Europe in the Middle Ages.Ħ) Peter VI the Lame (Petru Schiopul) (1574-1577, 1578-1579, 1583-1591)ĭespite prohibitions on people with disabilities holding the throne of Moldova, Peter was raised in Istanbul and was apparently a personal favorite of the sultan and thus was given an exemption. The Turks tied his body to four camels who were each facing in different directions and thus his body was pulled apart in an extremely gruesome manner. His time on the throne came to an end after he lost a battle with the Ottoman Empire. The grandson of Stefan cel Mare and son of Bogdan III the One-Eyed, John earned his nickname by murdering hundreds of competing nobles during his short reign.
Incredibly drunk, he then rode his horse towards the river and fell into the water, thus earning his nickname in the chronicles.ĥ) John III the Terrible (Ioan cel Cumplit) (1572-1574) While his reign was relatively short and uneventful, the 24-year-old prince of Wallachia’s last act was holding an enormous feast near the Dambovita River just south of Bucharest. He was able to keep his throne however because the rule preventing individuals with deformities only applied to people who were crippled before they assumed the throne, a useful loophole in the law.Ĥ) Vlad VI the Drowned (Vlad VI Inecatul) (1530-1532) However during a battle against invading Tatars he received an injury that blinded him in one eye. Leaving Ilias alive but now with an awful physical deformity, Stefan had quickly and efficiently removed his brother’s eligibility to rule Moldova.ģ) Bogdan II the One-Eyed (Bogdan al III-lea cel Chior) (1471-1517)īogdan III was the son of Stefan cel Mare and was born without any physical deformities. Ilias was the co-ruler of Moldova with his brother Stefan (Stephen) II until Stefan decided to get rid of his brother’s claims to the throne by gouging out his eyes and blinding him. The second was that anyone with a physical deformity was banned from royal succession (while that seems harsh, a rule like that would’ve saved Spain a lot of grief). The first was that illegitimate (“bastard”) children born out of wedlock were legally able to succeed their fathers. Romanian noble families had two peculiarities unique to them when it came to the succession of royal rulers that differentiated them from those in western Europe. Note: The Kantakouzene family, later written in Romanian as Cantacuzino, became a ruling (ethnic Greek) family in Romania centuries later and even today there is a Cantacuzino Palace in Bucharest which was built by her descendants.Ģ) Ilias of Moldova (1432-1433, 1435-1443) Later, after her husband died and a man named Ivaylo, originally a swineherd (man who takes care of pigs), led a popular uprising against her reign, she expediently quelled the rebellion by marrying him. Maria was married to Tsar Constantine Tikh and when he fell off a horse and was paralyzed, she took over running the (Bulgarian) empire, including engineering the poisoning of a rival to the throne. In the entirety of Romania’s history, there has only been one female ruler, Empress Consort Maria, who was technically the ruler of Bulgaria at a time when it was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and controlled most of Wallachia. I think that just about everyone with a passing knowledge of Romania’s rulers knows all the famous ones, from Vlad “Dracula” Tepes to Stefan cel Mare (Stephen the Great) and Mihai Viteazu/Bravu (Michael the Brave).īut I thought it would be fun to look at some of the most unusual and strange rulers who once held sway over parts of what is now modern-day Romania.ġ) Maria Palaiologina Kantakouzene (1269-1279) Did you know that Romania was once ruled by a homosexual, an Albanian, an Italian spy, a Jew, a one-eyed man and a Greek queen? Well it’s all true.
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