Tainted Love: The 7 Greatest Romances You'll Wish You Never Heard Of

Ah love, it can be a beautiful, inspiring and, in some cases, kind of sickening thing. Unlike the candlelit world of romantic comedies, real life relationships often involve ball gags and people with more than one set of genitals. Here are some of the freakiest couples in history and what we can all learn from their example.


Chang and Eng Bunker and Adelaide and Sarah Yates

The basis for the term “Siamese twins” Chang and Eng Bunker were born in, you guessed it, Siam in 1811. Chang and Eng were two of the 19th century’s biggest celebrities, but eventually the thrill of being ogled and prodded by strangers began to wear off and the twins yearned for a quiet life living the American dream.

Now you may think Siamese twins joined at the sternum would have a hard time passing themselves off as your average 19th century American citizens, but damned if they didn’t try, moving to the hills of North Carolina, buying a farm, changing their last name to “Bunker” and buying themselves a whole lot of slaves to complete the illusion. Why you’d swear their ancestors were straight off the Mayflower.


They even started courting local belles Adelaide and Sarah Yates to which their fellow North Carolinians reacted with the kind of open-minded tolerance that remains that state’s trademark to this day. Love triumphed though, the couples got married, hit the double-double bed and got seriously busy with Eng eventually fathering 11 children and Chang 10 (in your face Chang).


It wasn’t all kinky conjoined sex though. The twins were wiped out financially when that inconsiderate jerk Lincoln abolished slavery, and the Yates sisters had a falling out, necessitating two separate houses be built. In a scenario out of a sit-com written by David Lynch the twins would alternate houses, with the "guest" brother having to do everything the "host" brother said. Eventually the brothers themselves would start feuding with Chang even threatening Eng with a knife at one point which not only goes to show that Chang was kind of retarded, but that even sharing essential organs won’t keep two people from acting like complete cocks to one another.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Remember that your significant other and their family are a package deal. Occasionally they may actually be connected via a fleshy bridge of cartilage, but most of the time they’re simply bonded together by guilt, obligation and passive aggressiveness. These days the former may actually be easier to sever.


Caligula and Incatitus

Roman Emperor, tyrant, lunatic, subject of the most expensive porno of all time and er, equestrian enthusiast; you could apply many labels to Caligula, none of them flattering (well except for the porno thing). Caligula was of course famous for his sexual deviance, but that’s nothing unique. It was pretty much a Roman tradition for Emperors to stick their dong in anything that moved (and a few things that didn’t). No, where things went from merely pervy to crazy with Caligula was in his relationship with his prize horse Incatitus.

Caligula loved his horse dearly and built it a marble stable, ivory manger, adorned it with jewels and had it attend glamorous banquets and dinner parties (where we imagine it drolly discussed pressing matters of the day over a nice salt lick). It’s been said he even appointed his horse to the position of senator and head priest, which admittedly couldn’t help but make Church a lot more entertaining. When it came time to produce an heir, Caligula was torn between marrying Incatitus or, you know, somebody human (clearly whoever gave Caligula the birds and the bees talk was hitting the opium pipe pretty hard beforehand). Sadly Caligula eventually chose the human option over Incatitus and with cruel biology keeping them apart Caligula reverted to the only thing he had much interest in other than screwing; killing stuff. Incatitus was taken out behind the marble stable and beheaded in an ending we’d call sad if the story hadn’t been about man/horse love.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

It doesn’t have to be a special occasion to give your mate a gift. Try surprising them with flowers, jewelry or a gilded, caviar filled feedbag.


Pope Julius III and Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte


Innocenzo was born in 1532 in Italy, the son of a beggar mother and a deadbeat father. Thankfully though the tow-headed urchin was saved from life on the street when Cardinal Giovanni Maria Del Monte adopted him. Now before you applaud the good Cardinal for his altruism we should inform you that, shockingly, the man had ulterior motives for plucking a good looking, eager to please 14-year old boy off the streets. Yes, those kind of motives.


With God apparently distracted looking down wench’s tops for most of the middle ages, Cardinal Giovanni Maria Del Monte managed to get himself elected Pope in 1550 (thankfully the process has improved significantly since then; these days they only elect former Nazis). The newly minted Pope Julius III immediately made Innocenzo a Cardinal then quickly elevated him to the Vatican’s top office and everyone involved knew exactly why, with the joke being that Innocenzo was promoted for being the keeper of the Pope’s “monkey” (proving dick jokes have the blessing of the Catholic Church). Julius would defend himself claiming he and Innocenzo were simply sleeping together in an innocent, non-sexual way like a father would with a child. So yeah, the Michael Jackson defense was being used as far back as the 1550s. By the Pope.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Don’t let religion get in the way of a promising relationship. More than a few of the guys to wear the ol’ Papal miter certainly haven’t.


Marquis de Sade and Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil

Ah the Marquis de Sade, the all-time grand poobah of perverts. A man so famous for his violent writing and sex life that his name is the basis for the term “sadism”; we don’t have the room (or the stomach frankly) to list all the forms of debauchery de Sade indulged in during his lifetime. Ironically though despite espousing a lifestyle free of restraints, religion or morals, de Sade was in fact married. A religious, reserved woman, Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil was nonetheless utterly devoted to her husband and apparently coped by treating his bodily fluid soaked adventures as just another mundane 19th century task to be managed between beating lepers and cooking dinner.


De Montreuil would organize orgies, haggle with prostitutes, hide her husband’s harem of young girls from the police and during his many stints in jail made sure he was provided with the essentials (which in Sade’s case consisted mostly of drugs and dildos). At one point she even disguised herself as a man and organized her husband’s daring escape from prison, but de Montreuil couldn’t protect de Sade against his greatest enemy; her mother. De Sade’s mother-in-law held a lifelong grudge against him and was responsible for many of his stints in prison, all because he had an affair with his wife’s sister. In the end for all his sexual misadventures the person de Sade ended up screwing the hardest was himself.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Take an interest in your loved one’s hobbies. Guys, give scrapbooking a try and ladies, you’ll never know how fun a sadomasochistic orgy can be until you try!


Juan Baptista dos Santos and Blanche Dumas

Juan Baptista dos Santos, born in 1843 in Portugal, was known across Europe as “the 3-legged Man.” While that may sound like innuendo, it’s not; Santos actually had three legs. If you wanted to get clever you’d be better off calling dos Santos the human coffee table, as in addition to his three legs he also happened to have two penii and three or four testicles (that’s right, the man has so many balls he couldn’t keep track of them).


To quote a man who photographed dos Santos, “the sight of a female is sufficient to excite his amorous propensities. He functions with both of the penes, finishes with one, then continues with the other." This not only confirms that dos Santos was a pretty awesome dude, but that there may be some undiscovered 3-legged man amateur porn out there waiting to be posted on 4chan.

Yes, dos Santos had celebrity and more freak show groupies then ever he could handle, but would he ever find that special someone? Well as luck would have it around this same time in Paris, Blanche Dumas was making her name as the “3-legged Courtesan.” Like Santos, Dumas had three legs, two sets of genitals and reportedly a voracious sexual appetite (you weren’t a truly accomplished deviant back then unless you’d pulled off the infamous Dumas-Clap). Upon hearing of dos Santos, Dumas expressed a strong desire to get down to some freak freakiness with him and it’s believed the two did just that in a scene we imagine resembled a porn shoot that had been run over by a train.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

There’s a soul mate out there for everyone. Regardless of your flaws, missing genes or superfluous limbs, fairy tales do come true!


Nero and Sporus

Yup, another Roman Emperor made the list. We told you some messed up shit was going on underneath those imperial togas. Now considering ancient Christian scholars pegged him as the Antichrist himself, it’s not surprising Nero also had a rather unconventional sex life with dwarves, animals and his own mom have all said to have been in on the act. Of course this is hard to verify and may just be the ancient equivalent of slash fiction (once a guy is literally declared the devil the gossip really gets going) but we do know his relationship with a slave named Sporus was very real.

Sporus was an underage boy who Nero fell madly in love with and since he was a Roman and not Greek Emperor this was actually an issue. Nero was a problem solver though and wasn’t about to let this keep him down (so to speak). He had Sporus castrated and essentially made a woman out of him, marrying him with all pomp and circumstance you’d expect, including Sporus being done up in full dress and bridal veil (we can only imagine how many people in the wedding party were put to death when it came time to ask if anyone objected to the union). Nero nicknamed Sporus “Sabina” which in a charming twist was also the name of his 2nd wife who died after Nero kicked her in the stomach when she was pregnant. Nero paraded Sporus around town dressed as an empress, making out amorously and even putting on simulated sex shows with the kid (next time you find yourself embarrassed by George Bush, just take solace in the fact that at least the current most powerful man in the world isn’t a giddily outspoken member of NAMBLA).

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Don’t be afraid of public displays of affection. The occasional public cuddle, kiss or live sex show can show your mate just how much you care. Castration and forced sex changes on the other hand may not be for every couple.


Count Carl von Cosel and Elena Hoyos

The man you’re going to read about went by many names, but the one we’re using is “Count Carl von Cosel” since it sounds straight off of Bela Lugosi’s list of credits.


In actuality, the real Count Carl only looked marginally less sinister and his life was more macabre than anything you’re likely to see on the silver screen.


A German immigrant and doctor, Von Cosel became obsessed with 20-year-old Cuban tuberculosis patient Elena Hoyos. Intent on saving her Von Cosel subjected Hoyos to numerous cures of his own invention, but sadly brain frying electric shocks did little to cure her lungs (go figure). Despite his efforts she passed away and Von Cosel not only paid for her funeral but a lavish mausoleum. Gee, wasn’t that nice of him?

Problem was, to the Count the mausoleum wasn’t so much an eternal resting place for Hoyos as a secluded love shack where their romance could bloom amongst the maggots. For two years Von Cosel spent almost every night inside the mausoleum, before apparently deciding it was time to take the relationship to the next level and have Elena move in with him. In the dead of night Von Cosel stole her body from the cemetery, dragged the corpse to his house on the back of a toy wagon and reconstructed his beloved with wire coat hangers, wax and plaster. Oh, and what a job he did.


Von Cosel would live with Hoyos for seven years, keeping the body in his bed (where we certainly hope nothing untoward happened; they were unmarried after all). Elena’s sister finally began to suspect something was up (perhaps after noticing the door to his sister’s mausoleum hanging open for seven years straight) and the Count was arrested. He got off Scott free though as the statute of limitations on his crime had expired, plus we imagine neither the judge or jury wanted to spend any time in the same room with the dude.

The body was put on public display attracting nearly 7000 gawkers (proving folks back then were all about class) and eventually buried in a secret unmarked grave just in case ol’ Carl started jonesing for some mummified tail. As for the Count himself he became a minor celebrity, created a life-sized effigy of Hoyos and made money inviting tourists into his home (again, class). Von Cosel would even write an autobiography, which appeared in respected literary publication “Fantastic Adventures.” Fantastic indeed.

What We Can All Learn from This Relationship

Your mausoleum doesn’t have to feel like a tomb! No wait, that’s stupid. Uhhhh, don’t throw away your old wire coat hangers? Okay, we give up on this one.

Nathan Birch also writes the fantastic adventure filled webcomic Zoology.