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Famous Super Couples: Timeline/Chronology

Who were the first super couples? Who were the most famous super couples? The super couple is far from a modern invention, and the first "power couple" may still be the most famous ...

49 BC — Julius Caesar meets Cleopatra; she becomes his mistress and bears him a son.
46 BC — After Julius Caesar's assassination, Cleopatra has an affair with his successor, Marcus Antonius (Marc Antony), and bears him twins.
37 BC — Cleopatra marries Marc Antony.
30 BC — There were rumors that after Marc Antony's death Cleopatra tried to form a third union with Octavian (Caesar Augustus), but she ended up committing suicide.

Our Top Ten Super Couples and Power Couples

Cleopatra and Julius Caesar
Ferdinand and Isabella
Martha and George Washington
Napoleon and Josephine
Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy
Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio and JFK
Princess Diana and Prince Charles

Honorable Mention: Adam and Eve, King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Paris and Helen of Troy, King Arthur and Guinevere, Robin Hood and Marian, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Richard III and Anne Neville, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Abraham Lincoln and Anne Rutledge, Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln, Clementine and Winston Churchill, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, Priscilla and Elvis Presley, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, David Bowie and Iman, Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Prince William and Kate Middleton, Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, Amal and George Clooney, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Johnny and June Carter Cash.

All dates from this point forward are AD.

30 — According to some accounts, Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were a couple, but orthodox Christianity maintains that he died a virgin.
770 — Charlemagne marries Desiderata, daughter of the Lombard King Desiderius.
871 — Alfred the Great marries Ethelswitha, unites the Anglo-Saxons, then defeats the Danes and becomes the first king of a united England.
1050 — William the Conqueror marries Matilda of Flanders after dragging her off by her hair when she said she was too low-born for him! (Or so the story goes.)
1292 — Dante's Vita Nuova ("New Life") explores his love for Beatrice, which appears to have been unrequited and unconsummated.
1310 — Dante publishes his Divine Comedy and further immortalizes Beatrice. 
1327 — Francesco Petrarch, the creator of the sonnet ("little song"), meets Laura, but their love was also apparently unconsummated.
1483 — Richard III and Anne Neville were crowned together, but they both died two years later, separately.
1486 — Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York, uniting the houses of Lancaster and York and cementing the Tudor dynasty.
1503 — The birth of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), called "the Father of English Poetry." According to rumors he had an affair with Anne Boleyn. 
1509 — Henry Tudor marries Catherine of Aragon and reigns as King Henry VIII.
1526 — Thomas Wyatt travels to Italy  and returns with a passion for the sonnets of Petrarch; he begins to translate Petrarch into English.
1527 — Henry VIII seeks the Pope's permission to divorce Catherine of Aragon but is refused, leading to Henry's subsequent "divorce" from the Roman Catholic Church.
1529 — Henry VIII declares himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England. The "Reformation Parliament" passes legislation that will lead to the English Reformation. 
1533 — Henry VIII marries Anne Boleyn; Pope Clement VII excommunicates Henry. Thomas Wyatt's sonnet Whoso List to Hunt may have been written with Boleyn in mind.
1534 — Around this time, Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard introduce the English sonnet, modeled after the Petrarchan sonnet.
1535 — Sir Thomas More is executed for refusing to recognize Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England.
1536 — Anne Boleyn is beheaded; Henry VIII marries his third wife, Jane Seymour. Thomas Wyatt, imprisoned in the Tower of London for his alleged affair with Boleyn, may have written Whoso List to Hunt around this time. 
1540 — Henry VIII marries his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, but the marriage is annulled and Henry marries his fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Thomas Cromwell is executed for treason.
1542 — Catherine Howard is executed for treason. James V of Scotland dies and is succeeded by his six-day-old daughter Mary (later, Mary Queen of Scots). Sir Thomas Wyatt dies. 
1543 — Henry VIII marries Catherine Parr, his sixth and last wife.
1565 — Sir Walter Raleigh, a poet and explorer, is a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I.
1569 — The birth of the English poet Emilia Lanyer, who has been proposed as Shakespeare's mistress.
1578 — Sir Philip Sidney writes a masque in honor of Elizabeth I.
1579 — Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender has been called "the first work of the English literary Renaissance." He dedicates it to Elizabeth I.
1582 — William Shakespeare marries Anne Hathaway.
1583 — Sir Philip Sidney marries the daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham.
1584 — Walter Ralegh founds the first American colony, names it Virginia after Elizabeth I (the "Virgin Queen"), and is knighted.
1587 — Sir Walter Ralegh is appointed captain of the Queen's guard.
1589 — Walter Ralegh visits Edmund Spenser and helps him publish the first three books of The Faerie Queene.
1593 — Sir Walter Ralegh is released from the Tower of London and becomes a member of Parliament.
1603 — The death of Queen Elizabeth I. Sir Walter Ralegh is sent to the Tower of London on charges of treason.
1614 — Sir Walter Ralegh's History of the World was composed while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of treason.
1617 — Sir Walter Ralegh is released from the Tower of London and sets sail in search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.
1618 — Sir Walter Ralegh fails in his last expedition to find El Dorado and upon his return to England is executed on trumped-up charges of treason.
1628 — Ann Dudley marries, becoming Anne Bradstreet.
1650 — Anne Bradstreet's The Vanity of All Worldly Things is the first notable poem by an American poet.
1759 — Martha Dandridge Custis marries George Washington; she was a young widow and heiress.
1776 — Thomas Jefferson, the seemingly noble author of the American Declaration of Independence, fathered children on his slave Sally Hemmings.
1788 — The birth of George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824). He would have a number of scandalous affairs. 
1792 — The birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). His wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, would write Frankenstein.
1803 — The Napoleonic Wars begin when Great Britain declares war on France. Napoleon and Josephine were a notable "power couple."
1810 — Lord Byron leaves England, swims the Hellespont, and begins composing the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
1814 — Oxford University expels the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley for writing a tract on the necessity of atheism.
1815 — Napoleon escapes from Elba and raises an army, but loses at Waterloo and surrenders. This marks the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
1815 — The birth of Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate child of Lord Byron. She may have been the first computer programmer because she formulated the first algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. The computer language Ada was named after her.
1818 —The novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is a landmark Gothic/Romantic work, but also an early work of science fiction, with electricity being harnessed to create life.
1821 — John Keats dies at age twenty-five; Percy Bysshe Shelley writes the long poem Adonias as a tribute to him.
1822 — Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns in a boating accident at age thirty, on the Don Juan, with a book of Keats' poems in his pocket.
1840 — Queen Victoria weds her German first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, at St James’s Palace on 10 February 1840.
1846 — Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning secretly marry at St. Marylebone Church in London: they would become poetry's first "super couple."
1863 — Samuel Langhorne Clemens uses the penname "Mark Twain" for the first time. He would marry Olivia Langdon Clemens.
1884 — Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn takes a strong stand against racism and slavery. Huck says he would rather go to hell then turn in his friend Jim, the escaped slave.
1885 — Ezra Pound, an American modernist poet and critic, is born. He would marry Olivia Shakespear.
1904 — Meeting briefly at a ball, Winston Churchill was "transfixed and tongue-tied; Clementine [Hozier] unimpressed."
1921 — Adolf Hitler is elected leader of the Nazi Party in Germany. He would marry Eva Braun just before they both committed suicide.
1926 — Gracie Allen and George Burns were the first super couple of comedy, vaudeville, radio, film and television.
1944 — Eva and Juan Perón meet at a charity event and marry soon thereafter.
1953 — John F. Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier; the American Camelot has its royal wedding.
1956 — Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes marry, forming a poetic super couple.
1957 — Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz took their marriage public with the TV show I Love Lucy.
1963 — Bob Dylan becomes famous for folk songs and protest songs like "Blowin' in the Wind." He would have an affair with Joan Baez.
1964 — The Beatles top the American charts for the first time and Beatlemania has begun. John Lennon and Yoko Ono would soon be an item.
1968 — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. His wife Coretta Scott King would carry on his work.
1971 — Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito met backstage at an off-Broadway play. They went on to become one of the shorter super couples!
1984 —  Madonna becomes a pop star with "Like a Virgin." Chances are, she wasn't!
2016 — Great Britain leaves the European Union in a movement known as "Brexit." Donald Trump is elected president of the United States in a shocking upset.

And who can guess what the future will hold? ...

Related Pages in Chronological Order: Song of Amergin, Caedmon's Hymn, Bede's Death Song, Deor's Lament, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife's Lament, Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings, How Long the Night, Ballads, Sumer is Icumen in, Fowles in the Frith, Ich am of Irlaunde, Tom O'Bedlam's Song, Now Goeth Sun Under Wood, Pity Mary, Sweet Rose of Virtue, Lament for the Makaris

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