LGBTQ Rulers and their Fairy Tale Castles

You might not think there have been many LGBTQ rulers in world history.  But you would be wrong!  From Alexander the Great’s Macedonia to Mad Ludwig’s Bavaria and beyond, there have been rulers (and members of ruling families) with many different sexualities and gender identities throughout world history.  And a number of them, unsurprisingly, have left behind fantastic palaces and castles.

Shady Ladies Tour, an intro

People often ask how I went from doing gay secrets tours to shady ladies. How did a gay historian get interested in the history of female prostitution? First of all, a gay historian works on the history of sexuality, so the history of heterosexuality is not very far away from his topic, intellectually speaking. But it has much more to do with my tours of the Metropolitan Museum.