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Four of History’s Worst Romantic Breakups

Sorry starts and fiasco finishes you’ll be glad weren’t yours

Judy Millar
4 min readOct 17, 2020
Effie Gray by George Frederick Watts (PD); Broken Heart Image by Dimitri Wittmann from Pixabay; John Ruskin, Wiki Commons

SoSo he ripped your heart out and left you shattered? She spat on your very soul? Take comfort. You’ve almost certainly been one-upped in the “Bad Beginnings / Awful Endings” Historical Relationships Sweepstakes.

Attila’s Bad “Hun”eymoon

Did your romance at least get off to a good start with a happy honeymoon? That’s more than Attila the Hun can say (or could say, if he hadn’t died in Hungary in 453 AD).

The fearsome nomadic leader who struck terror in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires of his day drunkenly choked to death on his own nosebleed blood. While in the bridal chamber. Presumably doing what bridegrooms do.

For a Hun who likely valued his bad-boy barbarian reputation, that was truly a fiasco of a finish.

Effie Gray, back away

When Euphemia (aka Effie) Gray said “I do” to handsome suitor John Ruskin in Perth, Scotland in April of 1848, she must have been anticipating a passionate wedding night. Surely the man who’d written to her about his “naughty thoughts” and called her his “saucy mountain nymph” would see that their union got off to an ardent start.

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Judy Millar
Judy Millar

Written by Judy Millar

Canadian humour writer. Comedic storyteller. Overthinker. 😂 Words in Reader’s Digest 🇨🇦, Writer’s Digest, Medium + judy@judymillar.ca Twitter: @judymillar

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