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It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History

 Author: Jennifer Wright

Have you ever been in the mood for some light snark peppered into nonfiction vignettes with enough bite to make you laugh while you learn? If so, meet It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History. I came to this book from an Audible sale, and finally pressed play one day when I wanted some entertainment, was out of true-crime YouTube fodder (where are you lately Bailey Sarian!?), and didn’t want to invest too heavily in something that required immense concentration. It Ended Badly was perfection. Author Jennifer Wright combines just the right-amount of over-the-tea cups drama with florid tongue-in-cheek humor (don’t you just hate it when your ex-crafts a sex-doll that looks like you and brings it everywhere) and schadenfreude to keep the collection entertaining. Whoever said history was dull? Romance may be dead, but revenge is doing just fine.

The stories run the gauntlet of ancient to modern – from Roman emperors to Victorian authors to famous actors. Wright kicks us off with a histrionic Nero, who in his rage kills his pregnant second wife. The solution is simple though: have the boy who looks like her castrated, dress him like her, and insist that everyone pretend it IS her. Kind of makes drunk texts to your ex look downright moribund.

While Nero’s story is perhaps the most shocking, each of the 13 tales has a twist and many have violence and death. We have Oskar Kokoschka who deals with his failed relationship with Alma Mahler by making a sex doll that looked like her and taking it everywhere. We have Caroline Lamb who during her on-again-off-again relationship with the effete Lord Byron sends him what she considers a seductive bit of mail: a bloody hank of her own public hair. We have Lucrezia Borg who

Image by William Boateng from Pixabay

convinces a jury of her virginity while heavily pregnant, achieving the annulment she wanted. We even have two Hollywood Starlets, Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, who are split by love of the same man (Eddie Fisher) and who realize that it should always be chicks before dicks.

Those are just a few of the stories. We have some of the obvious – the head-chopping Henry VIII, the famously thwarted and scandalized Oscar Wild, and the violent Norman Mailer. This collection has at least one or two stories that will tickle your neck-craning need to look into the ugly secrets of other lives, and it will make history come alive too (you’ll have all new reasons to hate Nero.)

It Ended Badly isn’t a book you’ll necessarily remember, although a few of the weirder details will definitely linger and make it into your own gossipy talks with nerdy book friends, but it will keep you entertained, delightfully scandalized at one moment (they tried to do WHAT!) and amused at another. It’s a short read, a book that can be picked up and put down at any moment, with stories that are just long enough to pique your interest without belaboring the point. If you’re trying to step outside of the usual approach to history and see it not as a list of facts and dates but as a living tapestry of fellow humans with vibrant, sometimes dangerous emotions, this is the place to start. Recommended.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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