Hadley Meares
Hadley Meares is a historical journalist based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in outlets including Aeon, LA Weekly, LA Magazine, Curbed LA, LAist, and Atlas Obscura. She is also a historical tour guide in Los Angeles. You can find her recent work and upcoming appearances at hadleymeares.com.
Articles From This Author
How Royals Tested English Support for the Crown in the 17th Century
For centuries, people have questioned the taxpayer’s role in funding the British royal family. During the rein of the Stuarts in the 17th century, that role was challenged to an extreme as a series of spendthrift monarchs treated their subjects like a bank that was always open to ...read more
The Most Contentious Royal Sibling Feuds Through History
When family members are also co-workers, things can get messy. This is never truer than in royal families, where the interplay of private passions and public displays of affection or dissatisfaction are broadcast on an international stage. While some royal feuds remain minor, ...read more
The 1969 Documentary That Tried to Humanize Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Family
A well-groomed, staid British family sit around the breakfast table. Two young adult children and their middle-aged parents are dressed formally, without a hair out of place. In a high-pitched voice, the mother tells a funny story about her great-great grandmother, while everyone ...read more
How Versailles' Over-the-Top Opulence Drove the French to Revolt
In the early morning of October 6, 1789, hundreds of starving, defiant women and men (some disguised as women) from Paris stormed the palace of Versailles, the legendarily extravagant seat of government in France. They tore through the gilded halls, beating and beheading palace ...read more
Why Royal Guests Have Always Been a Royal Pain
Every summer, Queen Elizabeth I and her massive court set out on a months’ long progress, with a mile-long train of dozens of carriages, carts and over a thousand horses. For this elaborate summer vacation, no regular inn would suit the Virgin Queen. Instead, Elizabeth stayed at ...read more
Naked Cooks, Excrement, Rats: The Secretly Disgusting History of Royal Palaces
In July of 1535, King Henry VIII and his court of over 700 people embarked on an epic official tour. Over the next four months the massive entourage would visit around 30 different royal palaces, aristocratic residences and religious institutions. While these stops were important ...read more
Why Royal Women Gave Birth in Front of Huge Crowds for Centuries
On November 1, 1661, Queen Marie-Therese, the shy, retiring Spanish wife of King Louis XIV of France, went into labor. As soon as the Queen’s contractions began, her quiet palace rooms, in which she had been ceremonially confined for days, began to fill up with Princesses, Dukes ...read more
How ‘Unicorn Horns’ Became the Poison Antidote of Choice for Paranoid Royals
Being a king or queen has always been a treacherous job. Between homicidal enemies, duplicitous courtiers and back-stabbing family members, royals had every reason to constantly fear for their lives. And there was one form of assassination that particularly terrified them: ...read more
The Wildly Different Childhoods of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots
Queen Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots were two of the greatest, most legendary rivals in recorded history—although they never even met. In one castle was Elizabeth, the childless “virgin” queen: bawdy, brilliant, tactical and cynical. In the other, Mary: ...read more
Why 100 Imposters Claimed to Be Marie Antoinette’s Dead Son
Louis-Charles de France grew up in the gold-trimmed rooms of Versailles, the happy, handsome and charming son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. At the age of four, he became the heir to the French throne when his brother died, and from that day forward, the whole palace staff ...read more
The Unsolved Mystery of the Lubbock Lights UFO Sightings
August 25, 1951 was a quiet summer night in Lubbock, Texas. That evening, a handful of scientists from Texas Technical College were hanging out in the backyard of geology professor Dr. W.I. Robinson, drinking tea and chatting about micrometeorites. It was quite the brain trust: ...read more
Fierce Revolutionary Women Through History
Women have always played vital roles in revolutionary uprisings, contrary to popular patriarchal narratives. Throughout history, thousands of women have fought against regimes they perceived as oppressive, either with the pen, the podium, or their own fists. In honor of July ...read more
7 Images That Changed Royal History
Throughout history, royal families have carefully crafted their images, using artists and photographers to portray them in a majestic and iconic light. Sometimes these images had serious consequences—whether they were the ones intended or not. Here are the stories of some of the ...read more
How Unflattering Royal Portraits Could Break a Marriage Contract
For much of their courtship, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s romance spanned an ocean. Although they are from different countries and radically different backgrounds—one a British royal, the other an American actress—modern travel and technology made their trans-Atlantic romance ...read more
Six Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement
While their stories may not be widely known, countless dedicated, courageous women were key organizers and activists in the fight for civil rights. Without these women, the struggle for equality would have never been waged. “Women have been the backbone of the whole civil rights ...read more
The Tragic Austrian Empress Who Was Murdered by Anarchists
On April 25, 1854, a shy and melancholy bride married into a major European royal house. Trembling and overcome with emotion, 16-year-old Elisabeth, known by her childhood nickname Sisi, was wed to the 23-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, the absolute monarch of the ...read more
The Delusion That Made Nobles Think Their Bodies Were Made of Glass
One day in the late 1840s, Princess Alexandra Amelie, the 23-year-old daughter of the recently abdicated King Ludwig I of Bavaria, was making her way through the corridors of the family palace. Her relatives noticed that the obsessive, highly intelligent young woman—who only wore ...read more
6 Spurned Royal Women Who Triumphed Over Their Husbands
For many women over the centuries, marriage to a royal consort has not been the fairytale we believe it to be. They battled drunk husbands, loveless marriages, led coups, killed off husbands, or sometimes quietly waited for good fortune to come their way. These women took fate ...read more
7 Female Adventurers Who Broke All the Rules
Since the beginning of recorded history, bold women have been casting off the shackles of conventional life and traveling land, sea and sky to explore the world. Read on to discover the stories of seven of these courageous women—who ruled empires, discovered lost cities and ...read more