10 Unusual Things Famous Historical Figures Did for Love

Everyone has their own opinion about what love and relationships should be like, but one thing is certain: they can make people do some strange things. Even some of the past’s most famous figures approached the tasks of finding and holding onto lovers in ways that seem very unusual today. Some were merely following the strange traditions of their time, while others took an entirely unique approach. Here are ten of the most odd ways famous figures captured hearts.

Related: 10 Unusual and Unique Ways People Celebrate Love

10 Warned Lovers Against Marrying Them

The English author Evelyn Waugh was a hard sell as a husband, and he knew it. While best known for the serious novel Brideshead Revisited, he began his writing career with satire. He was renowned for his wit, both on the page and in real life. But this wit often strayed into cruel territory, tarnishing his reputation as a person.

So, when he found the girl he wanted to be his second wife, he decided to approach the subject head-on. In 1936, he wrote what was meant to be a letter of proposal to Laura Herbert, although it sounded more like a warning. Rather than asking the classic “Will you marry me?” line, he asked her to think about whether she could “bear the idea” of marrying him. “I can’t advise you in my favour,” he wrote before listing his shortcomings, which included laziness and misanthropy. However, his honesty worked, and the two married in 1937.^[1]

9 Proposed Because Pros Outweighed Cons

Listing pros and cons is a widely used decision-making method, especially in business, when emotions are meant to be taken out of the equation. When it comes to love, people are more commonly told to follow their hearts. However, as a scientist, Charles Darwin was used to following his head. When he was deciding whether to seek a wife, it was only natural for him to draw up a list of pros and cons and do the math.

On the pros side were the prospect of having children, companionship, someone to take care of the house, and the fact that a wife was “better than a dog.” However, Darwin knew that this could mean sacrificing the time he spent in clubs chatting with his peers, and that he would have less money for books. Still, he eventually decided in favor of marriage and proposed to Emma Wedgwood. The couple went on to have a long and warm marriage.^[2]

8 Tried to Solve Marriage Mathematically

The astronomer Johannes Kepler also used a methodical approach when searching for a wife. His strategy was to line up 11 women and spend two years assessing the qualities and shortcomings of each one in turn. However, some of them turned him down because they thought his data-driven approach was taking too long, which turned his dilemma into an interesting math problem: how can someone maximize their chance of picking the best candidate without assessing them all?

Modern mathematicians refer to this as “optimal stopping.” Despite his work on this early variation of the problem, Kepler never solved it. He dated all the women before following his heart and marrying the fifth one. Coincidentally, this lines up with the mathematical solution, which would have been to reject the first 36.8% of the sample, then pick the next candidate that was better than all of them. In Kepler’s case, that would have meant rejecting the first four women.^[3]

7 Let Their Ex Vet Lovers

Empress Catherine the Great of Russia was known for having a large appetite for two things. One was power, and the other was, well, not food. It is true that she had many lovers, all of whom were human despite the popular misconception, but she took many of them to win their loyalty and political support rather than their hearts. However, one of them, a one-eyed soldier called Grigory Potemkin, was able to truly win her devotion.

Although said to be well-endowed, Potemkin also bonded with Catherine over politics. This allowed them to stay close when their romantic relationship ended after just two years. So close, in fact, that Potemkin would help choose new lovers for Catherine. He provided quality control, making sure that the men were fit and smart enough for the Empress. Despite having many lovers after him, Catherine’s heart always lay with Potemkin, and she was devastated when he died in 1791.^[4]

6 Held Up a King’s Hunt

Another woman who knew what she wanted and would stop at nothing to get it was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, better known as Madame de Pompadour. Taken to a fortune-teller as a child, she was told that her destiny was to win the heart of a king, and she became known as “Reinette,” or “little queen,” among those close to her. When she grew up, she married the nephew of her guardian, but it seems she never forgot her destiny.

Eventually, she decided not to wait for a king to come to her. Her estate was close to King Louis XV’s hunting ground, and she was allowed on the grounds if she kept her distance. However, in a brazen display of self-confidence, she decided one day to ride right in front of the king’s party. Then she did it again moments later to ensure she was seen. It worked, and she was later invited to become his mistress and adviser.^[5]

5 Proposed While Queen

Although it is more common today, it is still not the norm for a woman to propose to a man. In the Victorian era, which was known for its stuffy attitudes and rigid social conventions, it was practically unheard of. Women had to let their partners know that they were ready for a proposal in subtle ways. However, Queen Victoria was the one who asked for her husband Albert’s hand in marriage.

Yet this caused no scandal at the time. As queen, she was not only allowed to ask a man to marry her, but had to. The rule that a man must propose to a woman was overruled by a royal tradition which forbade proposals being made to a reigning monarch. Although she and Albert were already together, they were not engaged by the time of her coronation in 1838, meaning she had no choice but to propose to him.^[6]

4 Wore a First-Date Disguise

Following tradition was also how Henry VIII, one of England’s most controversial monarchs, sought to woo his fourth wife a few centuries earlier. It did not go as well. Beheading his second wife had hurt his reputation among Europe’s princesses, so he tasked his top adviser with finding him a match. He found Anne of Cleves, had her portrait painted, and the king approved. All that was needed was for Henry and Anne to hit it off in person.

The king had a plan to impress Anne. It was a tradition at the time for noblemen to wear a disguise when first meeting a potential wife. If she fell in love with the mysterious stranger, they could know their love was true. But when Henry showed up wearing a cloak and mask, he was ignored by Anne, who was oblivious to this practice. The king was insulted. For political reasons, he still married her, but quickly sought an annulment.^[7]

3 Painted a Holy Portrait

Henry VIII famously had trouble getting the Pope’s permission to marry his second wife. Perhaps if he had known how the Spanish painter Salvador Dali would approach the task centuries later, he would have had more luck. By the time of his meeting with Pope Pius XII in 1949, Dali had been civilly married to Gala, his muse and manager, for more than a decade. However, they also wanted a religious marriage, but Gala’s background was a problem.

She had been married to the poet Paul Eluard when she met Dali in 1929. She broke off her marriage to be with him, but the Catholic Church does not ordinarily recognize a new union while a former spouse is still living. So, Dali tried to win the Pope over by presenting him with a painting that depicted Gala as the Virgin Mary. It worked, and they married religiously in 1958, remaining together until Gala died in 1982.^[8]

2 Responded to an Anonymous Critic

When the author Honore de Balzac reached out to an anonymous critic through a classified ad in 1832, he had no idea it would lead to a love story that was itself worthy of a novel. All he was doing was responding to “L’Etrangere,” or “The Stranger,” who had sent him a letter criticizing one of his novels. They left no return address, but from later letters he learned that his pen pal was a Polish countess called Ewelina.

It turned out she was a fan of Balzac’s work, just not that particular novel. The two began to write to each other regularly, and Balzac soon became smitten. Their letters became love letters, but Ewelina was married, so they also sent platonic letters that acted as red herrings. They met briefly in 1833, but their relationship only existed on paper until 1850, when they finally married. Tragically, Balzac died just months later.^[9]

1 Held a Staircase Orchestral Concert

Writing songs and serenading loved ones may not be very strange, but the German composer Richard Wagner took things to a whole new level in 1870. He not only composed a beautiful piece of music for his wife, but he hired a small orchestra to play it on the stairs of their charming Swiss home overlooking Lake Lucerne. Cosima Wagner woke up on Christmas Day in 1870 to the sounds of her husband’s “Symphonic Birthday Greeting.”

In her diary that day, she wrote how she and her entire household were moved to tears by the music. She renamed it the “Tribschen Idyll,” after the area where they lived, but it is now known as the “Siegfried Idyll,” as the piece was also intended to celebrate the birth of Wagner’s son of the same name a year earlier.^[10]