Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica, and welcome to Gaughan Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history.

We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the

crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were.

And how we got here.

One of the huge perks of working at history hit is that sometimes I'm let out of the gone medieval dungeon and allowed to visit our sister podcasts.

Recently, I did just that going over to After Dark to hang out with Anthony and Maddie, who are absolute gems.

We had a brilliant time while I ranted about who medieval Europe's most evil monarch is.

I had so much fun, in fact, that I wanted to make sure all you wonderful gone medieval listeners could check it out too.

Today, our guest is, I think, possibly the only person who we could have on for this. It's Dr. Eleanor Yarniger back again. Hello. Hello. We love to see it. Now, Eleanor, if you don't know, first of all, are you under a rock? What's going on? I thought she said, are you on dry rot? That's right. Girl, get on a dry rot.

If you're not like, what are you doing?

Ellen is, for anyone who doesn't know,

host of our sister podcast from History Hit gone medieval alongside the brilliant Matt Lewis.

And she's the star of a lot of history hit documentaries, right?

You have racked them up, girl.

In luxurious locations, we go to Yorkshire, she goes to Avignon. Yeah, we've been really whining about this today. Ellen's latest medieval apocalypse out now? Out now, yeah. Yeah, it's the cracker. Go and watch it. You've picked a smorgasbord of awful monarchs for us today. And we're going to go through the list and then we're going to announce a winner. We're going to crown a winner of the worst ever monarch. But first of all, don't give

us any names, but give us a sense of just how awful some of these people are going to be today.

Okay, so we have rulers who are pursuing their own vendettas, which may or may not end up involving cutting people's hearts out.

We have rulers who are doing things like just getting kind of bored of this whole prisoner thing and killing everybody.

We have got rulers who are also, it's going to give the game away, impaling rather a lot of people. Oh, I do. We know that's going to be. What do you want me to do? It's Richard III, right? Sure. So, yeah, there's like a lot of different ways to be a dickhead when one is a ruler. That needs to be the next title of this episode. A lot of different ways to be a dickhead in when one is a ruler.

That needs to be the next title of this episode.

A lot of different ways to be a dickhead. Different ways in history to be a dickhead. Right. Okay. So I'm going to start with one of them now. We're going to name and shame. One of the dickheads. One of the dickheads. The first being, I've never heard of this person. Like this is my first encounter.

Pedro the Cruel.

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