Previously published stories

The Last of the Habsburgs

Charles II was the last Habsburg to reign over Spain. At his death, the War of the Spanish Succession broke out among the great European powers and lasted thirteen years. His personal physician noted in his journals, with a frankness that posterity forgives him: "Rarely has a man suffered so much without ever understanding why."

Published on 20 mai 2026

The King Without a Title

Tamar of Georgia — King of Kings, Queen of Georgia, 1184–1213
Under her rule, Georgia reached its territorial and cultural zenith, holding sultans, atabegs, and marriage suitors at bay with equal ease. The Orthodox Church canonized her. The greatest poet of her time dedicated his entire oeuvre to her. History called her Tamar the Great.

Published on 18 mai 2026

The Queen Who Refused to Be One

She abdicated at twenty-eight, had her favourite executed in a gallery at the Château de Fontainebleau, and spent the rest of her life in Rome quarrelling with popes. Christina of Sweden fit none of the categories her century had prepared for her — neither wife, nor obedient sovereign, nor grateful convert. She was simply, and stubbornly, herself.

Published on 12 mai 2026

Elagabal, the Poorly Sacrificed God

Elagabal (203–222) reigned from 218 to 222 under the official name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He was subjected to damnatio memoriae after his death — the formal erasure of his inscriptions — before some modern historians partially rehabilitated him as the victim of a system he had never chosen, and of a grandmother who had chosen for him.

Published on 30 avril 2026

The Woman Who Held the Sky

In 1470, the Khan of Mongolia stared at the ceiling of his yurt with the serene tranquility of someone who smokes too much. Someone had to hold the empire together. That someone was his wife. He died without an heir. She took care of it.

Published on 22 avril 2026

The Escape from the Piombi (Leads)

Escaping from the Piombi prison was said to be impossible. Casanova escaped. The news caused a sensation throughout Europe.

Published on 18 avril 2026

Hatshepsut – The Name we no longer speak

Thutmose III spent decades erasing Hatshepsut's name, and it is precisely this erasure that intrigues Egyptologists three thousand years later and resurrects her.
(Narrated by Thutmose III, Pharaoh of Egypt.)

Published on 16 avril 2026

The Night of the Moika

The night of December 16, 1916, four men gathered in the basement of the Yusupov Palace in Saint Petersburg. They had a plan. What followed defied it entirely. History remembers Rasputin. It remembers him as a mystic, a scandal, a legend. It remembers him, above all, as a man who was remarkably difficult to kill. This is not his story. It is the story of the man who pulled the trigger — and had to keep pulling.

Published on 12 avril 2026

The Buckingham Meteor.

Buckingham is the very archetype of the character who transcends fiction - no novelist would dare invent someone so outrageous without being criticized for his implausibility.

Published on 10 avril 2026