Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home or explore the castles that made up Henry

the 8th's English stronghold? With a subscription to history hit, you can dive into our Tudor

past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You also unlock hundreds of

hours of original documentaries with a brand new release

every single week. Covering everything from the ancient world to World War II, just visit

historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.

Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,

the podcasts in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs,

from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise,

relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft.

Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Julia Tafana is often described as one of history's most notorious female serial killers.

A 17th century poisoner who allegedly helped hundreds of women murder their husbands

using a colorless, tasteless toxin known as Aquitaphana.

It's a story that has proved irresistibly durable, part true crime, part moral panic, part Gothic legend, repeated

and embellished for centuries. But when we look more closely, Julia begins to blur. The archival

record is fragmentary, contradictory and full of silences. Was there really a single mastermind

behind a vast underground network? Or are we dealing

with a story stitched together from fear, gossip, and the prosecution of a group of women

caught in a moment of crisis? At its heart, the Julia Tafana story is not just about poison.

It's also about power, secrecy, and the narrow confines of women's lives in early modern Europe.

It forces us to think about marriage as a legal trap, about violence that left no easy escape,

...