The Things They Did for Love Trivia Quiz

Answer: Tristan and Isolde

Richard Wagner wrote an opera based on the mediaeval romance of Tristan and Isolde. As the story goes, Tristan escorts Isolde from Ireland to England to marry his Uncle Mark and on the way the pair imbibes a magic potion which makes them fall in love with one another.

A promise is a promise, however, and Isolde marries Mark. Mark, when he discovers the fact that his nephew is the only object of his wife's affections, does what any king would do in the same situation - he tries to get rid of Tristan. Tristan, however, flees to Brittany, where he marries Isolde, the daughter of the Duke of Brittany (maybe it was just the name he was in love with).

Some time later, Tristan is wounded with a poisoned dagger and sends for his now-Aunt Isolde to save his life.

They arrange a signal between them - if the ship from Cornwall has a white sail, Tristan will know that Isolde #1 is aboard, but a black sail will indicate that she isn't on that ship. Isolde #2 has figured out - as wives are wont to do - that all is not as it should be between Tristan and his aunt, and, overcome by jealousy, she tells Tristan that the ship has a black sail.

In his despair, Tristan succumbs to the poison and dies. Isolde #1, on landing, hears of her lover's death and kills herself.

Answer: Abelard and Heloise

For sheer ability to make a mountain out of a molehill, this pair wins the prize! Pierre (more often referred to as Peter) Abelard (1079-1142) was an eminent scholar, philosopher and theologian and the founder of an internationally-famous school of theology in Paris.

The other half of this silly couple was Heloise, the 17-year-old niece and ward of Canon Fulbert of Notre Dame Cathedral. Heloise was not only very beautiful but she had brains, too, and Fulbert wanted only the best teachers for her, so he appointed the 36-year-old Abelard, by this time a canon of Notre Dame, as Heloise's tutor. Of course, they fell in love and Heloise had a son, Astrolabe, by Abelard.

They were even secretly married. Heloise, who may have been brainy but doesn't seem to have been too bright as far as life decisions are concerned, disavowed the marriage so that Abelard's career as a teacher/theologian wouldn't be derailed. Abelard, who seems to have had about as much on the ball as Heloise, agreed to this state of affairs, thus incurring the wrath of Uncle Fulbert. Fulbert had Abelard kicked out of his job, and had him castrated to boot - which seems just a bit over the top. Abelard became a monk in the monastery of St. Denys, and was later ordained as a priest, and Heloise became a nun and later an abbess. I don't know what happened to Astrolabe.

Heloise and Abelard were re-united in death, and are buried together in the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. If you want to read a very funny send-up of their story, get hold of a copy of Mark Twain's 'Innocents Abroad'.

Answer: Nelson and Hamilton

Lord Nelson met Emma Hamilton in Naples in 1793. In 1798, after Nelson's decisive victory over the French at the Battle of the Nile, they met again. By this time, the great naval hero was something of a wreck. He had lost one arm (in battle at Tenerife in 1797), was blind in one eye (that one happened at the Battle of Calvi in 1794), had lost most of his teeth, was subject to coughing spells, and was on the verge of his 40th birthday. Hardly a figure to make a woman's heart flutter, but Emma, nursing him back to health, was afflicted by overwhelming flutters and they fell in love. Surprisingly, Sir William Hamilton, Emma's husband saw no reason to get upset by the liaison between Nelson and Emma.

Indeed, husband and lover had great admiration for one another and were fast friends. (Nelson's wife Frances did not take such a blithe view of the affair and she and Nelson separated in 1801.) In January, 1801, Emma gave birth to Nelson's daughter Horatia and in the autumn of that year, Nelson bought Merton Place on the outskirts of what is now Wimbledon and moved Emma, the child, and the complacent Sir William there, along with Emma's mother. Nelson also moved in, and he and Emma lived openly as lovers, much to the titillation of the general public. (The public was torn between hero-worship of Nelson and condemnation of Emma, who was considered to be no better than she ought to be.

After all, everyone knew that she had been a lightskirt in her youth, an artist's model and mistress of several men - one of whom was Charles Greville, Sir William's nephew - and she had even lived in a brothel!) The couple became the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of their day, with their every move chronicled in the press. Sir William died in 1803, and Nelson returned to his naval duties shortly afterwards, leaving Emma pregnant with their second child (the baby girl died a few weeks after her birth in 1803). When Nelson was killed at Trafalgar, Emma was in desperate financial straits. Although Nelson had left Merton to her, she spent the small pension left to her by Sir William in a vain attempt to turn it into a monument to Nelson. Nelson's brother, who had inherited Nelson's estate, did nothing to help. Emma ended up in debtor's prison for a year and then moved to France to escape her creditors. She died in January 1815, of liver failure brought on by excessive drinking. Sic transit gloria mundi!

Answer: Duke and Duchess of Windsor

The love affair between Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson caused havoc, not only in the royal family but in the British Empire, and had the U.K. on the verge of a constitutional crisis. Even today, opinions are divided. Edward (then Prince of Wales and known to the family as David) met the already twice-married-once-divorced Wallis at a house party in January 1931.

It is presumed that their love affair began in May of that year, when Edward broke with his former mistress, Lady Furness. Wallis and her husband were frequent guests at Fort Belvedere, Edward's country house, and accompanied him on trips to European fun spots like Biarritz and Cannes. By 1934, Ernest Simpson ceased to accompany his wife on these trips and in 1936 the couple divorced. While the British press maintained its traditional deferential treatment of the Royal family and never printed a word about the scandal, the foreign press had a hey-day! The government authorized background checks on Mrs. Simpson, and MI5 shadowed the couple. One report from an MI5 operative contained the comment that "Mrs. Simpson seems to have the Prince of Wales firmly under her thumb." King George V and Queen Mary were furious, and while the Queen received Wallis when Edward took her to a party at Buckingham Palace in 1934, King George flatly refused to meet her. Edward's brother Bertie did his best to persuade his older brother to drop Mrs. Simpson and find a "suitable wife", and Bertie's wife Elizabeth frankly loathed the American woman, considering her abrasive and gauche.

When George V died in 1935, Edward ascended the throne and the fur really began to fly. The government, headed by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Lang, vainly attempted to convince Edward of the unsuitability of a twice-divorced woman (as King, Edward was temporal head of the Church of England which did not recognize divorce back then), a foreign-borncommoner to boot, would be totally unacceptable as Queen. The King suggested a morganatic marriage, but that idea was turned down by every government in the British Empire. On December 10, Edward met with Baldwin and announced his intention to abdicate. On December 11, he made the now-famous "woman I love" speech in a broadcast to his subjects. The next day he left for Austria, leaving Bertie - now George VI - holding the bag containing the throne, a job for which Bertie had not been trained. Elizabeth always held that the stress of being King-Emperor hastened Bertie's early death. Bertie created the Dukedom of Windsor for his brother but Wallis was not allowed to style herself Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Windsor, but was to be referred to merely as her Grace the Duchess of Windsor. On June 3, 1937, Edward and Wallis were married in France. Shortly after the wedding, the Windsors visited Germany as the personal guests of Adolf Hitler, which did little to squash concerns that they were Nazi sympathizers. If you want my opinion, Britain did much better with George VI and Elizabeth that it would have done with Edward, who was weak, and Wallis, who was too strong.

Answer: Henry and Anne

When Henry met Anne early in 1522, she had just returned from Paris where she had been serving as a lady-in-waiting to the French Queen Claude. Anne captivated Henry with her keen intellect, sparkling wit, spirited personality and her gloss of sophistication. Even though he did not begin serious pursuit of Anne until 1525, Henry was already beginning to have doubts about his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

The marriage had produced seven pregnancies but only one living child, the Princess Mary, and Henry desperately wanted a son to secure the succession. By 1518 Catherine had passed the age of child-bearing and Henry was not going to be able to father a son on her. Rather than being the cause of the divorce, Anne was the catalyst that brought the 'King's Great Matter' to a head.

Henry began actively seeking a divorce from Catherine in 1527, citing scripture and the lack of a male heir as cause. Through the whole seven years, between 1527 and 1533, Anne played a clever waiting game, denying Henry access to her bed until it became obvious that, with or without the Pope's assent, the divorce would take place.

By the time the dust settled in 1533, England had a new queen - Anne; a new church - the Church of England; and a new heir, another girl - the Princess Elizabeth. By 1536, when Anne had failed to produce the longed-for son, she fell out of favour, and lost her place in the king's heart and her head along with it. Her greatest legacy was her daughter, who grew up to be one of the ablest monarchs ever to grace the throne of England.

Answer: Caroline Lamb

Lady Caroline Lamb (nee Ponsonby) was the only daughter of the third Earl of Bessborough. Growing up with few restraints, she was thoroughly adored and consequently over-indulged by her parents. When she was 19, Caroline fell in love with and married Sir William Lamb, heir to Lord Melbourne.

At first the marriage was happy, but William's political ambition superseded devotion to Caroline, and the birth of two sons - one of who appears to have been autistic while the other died young - put further strain on the marriage.

It didn't help that William's mother was not overly fond of her unconventional daughter-in-law and kept putting her spoke in the wheel of domestic bliss. In 1812, when Caroline, a society leader, was 27, she met 24-year-old Lord George Gordon Byron, the poet who was the current lion of society.

Another thoroughly spoiled child, Byron was the son of an indolent mother who protested her love for him but couldn't be bothered to have a surgeon correct the malformation of his right foot, a malformation which resulted in a limp that caused Byron unhappiness all of his life. By any standards, Byron was bad news.

He was sexually promiscuous from his teens on, and had countless love affairs with women and young men of high and low birth, including his own half-sister (he was suspected of being the father of his half-sister's child), and had fathered at least one illegitimate child (with Mary Shelley's half-sister Claire). He was, in short, an all-round cad. He would pursue and seduce his lovers, and as soon as he had accomplished his goal, he'd abandon his lover and be off on another romantic quest. Byron pursued Caroline with protestations of undying love and threats of suicide, and when she succumbed, it took only four months for him to tire of her. To add insult to injury, Byron married William's cousin Anne Milbanke. (The marriage didn't last. Lady Byron left her husband, disgusted by his sexual peccadilloes, and divorced him.) Caroline never got over the Bad Lord Byron, even though she wrote a very thinly-disguised negative literary portrait of him in her novel 'Glenarvon', published in 1816. Twelve years after the end of the affair the sight of his funeral cortege pushed her over the edge. She reportedly died insane, with William at her side, even though they had separated finally in 1825. As for William, he went on to inherit his father's title and became Prime Minister in 1834. He was Prime Minister when Victoria came to the throne in 1837 and remained her Prime Minister until he resigned in 1841. Melbourne, Australia is named for him.

Answer: Shah Jehan

Prince Kurram was the son of the fourth Mughal emperor Jehangir and grandson of the great Akbar. When he succeeded to the throne as the fifth Mughal emperor in 1628, Kurram took the name Shah Jehan, which means Emperor of the World. In 1612 he married Arjumad Banu Begam, also known as Mumtaz Mahal. Mumtaz was his second wife, but this was no court marriage-of-convenience.

The couple was passionately in love and remained so throughout their 18 year marriage. Mumtaz accompanied her husband on all his journeys, even to the battlefield.

She encouraged Jehan to show compassion for the weak and the needy, and was the inspiration for his many charitable activities. Mumtaz bore Jehan 14 children, and it was in giving birth to the last child in 1630 that she died.

She had accompanied him to Burhanpur in Deccan on one of his military expeditions. The Shah was overcome with grief and went into seclusion for several weeks, with only one of his daughters to care for him. He ordered all festivities in his empire to cease, and commanded all his subjects to mourn the death of Mumtaz.

She had been so beloved by the people that they would have mourned her even if the Shah had not ordered them to do so. Six months after her death, Shah Jehan carried his wife's body to the Mughal capital, Agra, where she was buried, and he began construction of a magnificent tomb over her burial site. He was determined to perpetuate her memory with a monument to eternal love - the Taj Mahal (which means either 'Crown of the Palace' or 'Crown Palace'). The monument was not completed until 1648, and required the efforts of over 20,000 workmen and master craftsmen. Legend has it that when the tomb was finished, Shah Jehan had the master builder beheaded and the calligrapher blinded so that they would not be tempted to create another structure more magnificent. I wonder what the compassionate Mumtaz would have said about that?

Answer: Tracy and Hepburn

When Katharine Hepburn was introduced to Spencer Tracy by Joseph Mankiewicz in 1941, the slender actress was wearing high heels that made her taller than her about-to-be leading man. "I'm afraid I'm too tall for you, Mr. Tracy," she commented in her clipped New England accent. Mankiewicz responded with, "Don't worry, he'll soon cut you down to size." From 1942, after the release of 'Adam's Rib', their first film together, Tracy and Hepburn were a pair - both on screen in eight more movies, and off-screen. An odder pairing would be hard to imagine than that of the sophisticated, independent Miss Hepburn from the well-to-do family in Connecticut, and the Irish-Catholic boy from a working class family in Milwaukee, but their love affair lasted for over 25 years, until Tracy's death in 1967.

He died shortly after 'Guess Who's Comin to Dinner', their last film together, was released. Tracy, a devout Roman Catholic, never divorced his estranged wife, Louise Treadwell whom he had married in 1923, and he and Hepburn never lived together until the last few years of his life. Even then they maintained separate addresses for the sake of Louise and the children (who by then were quite grown up). Throughout, they avoided the press, seldom appeared in public together, and used back entrances to studios and hotels. Surprisingly, the press took a hands-off approach to the couple and never published any stories about them. Perhaps that was out of respect for two of the finest actors ever to grace the movie screen.

Answer: Henry and Eleanor

Henry II of England was 19 when he married the 30 year old Eleanor of Aquitaine - at her request. Eleanor had married Louis VII, then the Dauphin of France, in 1137 when she was 15. As Duchess of Aquitaine by virtue of being sole heir of her father William, Duke of Aquitaine, Eleanor was one of the wealthiestand most powerful women in Europe and a prize on the marriage market.

However, the marriage between the strong-willed, wordly Duchess and her weak-willed, pious husband was not a raging success and in 1152, Louis sued the Pope to grant a divorce, based on reasons of consanguinity (Eleanor was his third cousin) and the divorce was granted. On her way from Paris to her estates in Aquitaine, Eleanor was almost kidnapped by nobles who were bent on marrying her and gaining control of her vast estates and wealth. Safely back home in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to her vassal Count Henry of Anjou (whose father, Geoffrey the Fair, was rumoured to have been one of her lovers!) urging him to present himself at her court forthwith to marry her.

Henry responded positively and the couple was married, without any pomp or ceremony on May 18, 1852, just two months after her divorce. For the next 16 years, Eleanor and Henry tested each other's mettle in one of the liveliest marriages on record. If Eleanor was strong-willed, Henry was equally so. He had ascended England's throne in 1154, and he and Eleanor had eight children, five boys and three girls. Six of the children survived to grow up. Eleanor also had two daughters by Louis. Despite Henry's non-stop infidelities, Eleanor was his staunch ally in battles with the French, the Scots, and anybody else who messed with Henry! By the late 1160s however, the marriage was under considerable strain, and sometime between 1168 and 1170, Eleanor returned to Aquitaine, taking to of her sons, Richard and Godfrey, with her. The murder of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Henry's instigation, horrified all of the Christian world. Eleanor had no difficulty in expressing her disgust at the deed and her contempt for Henry, and from then on, she actively encouraged her oldest son Henry and his brothers to wage war on their father. In 1173, Henry II arrested Eleanor, and for about a year her whereabouts were unknown. However, in 1174, King Henry returned to England, taking Eleanor with him, and he promptly locked her up. Eleanor was incarcerated for 15 years, until Henry died at the age of 56, and Richard came to the throne (his older brothers had died in the meantime). While Richard was off on crusades, she ably managed his kingdom for him. She arranged for Richard's ransom and carried it to his captors, even though she was in her seventies at the time. Eleanor died in 1204, five years after John had succeeded Richard on the throne and 15 years after her husband.

Answer: Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend

One wonders what Princess Margaret's life would have been like had she been able to marry the great love of her life, Group Captain Peter Townsend. Margaret was still a teenager when Townsend was appointed equerry to her father George VI in 1944. The handsome Townsend, 16 years Margaret's senior, was a decorated war hero, married with two small sons. Townsend's eleven-year marriage ended in 1952, and in 1953 he was assigned as Air Attache to the British Embassy in Brussels.

There was conjecture that the assignment was due to the romance developing between Townsend and the Princess.

In 1955, when she reached her 25th birthday, and no longer needed the monarch's ( in this case, her sister's) approval to marry, declared her intention to marry Townsend.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and senior politicians made it clear that this was not a wise decision, and Margaret was bought to understand where her duty to England lay! She caved in to the pressure, and on October 31, 1955, in a public broadcast, she announced her decision not to marry Townsend, "mindful of the church' teachings on the indissolubility of marriage". Years later she told a friend that her marriage to Anthony Armstrong-Jones was prompted by a letter she had received from Townsend announcing his engagement to a Belgian girl.