Since Annabella wasn’t a magician with a miracle cure for her husband’s chronically lusty ways, he continued extramarital affairs and, when he was home, made Annabella’s life miserable. Byron was plagued by financial troubles, his drinking escalated, and, as novelist Walter Scott put it, he was “irritable to the point of mental disease” (per Slate). The book “In Byron’s Wake” by Miranda Seymour chronicles the couple’s tumultuous marriage and the birth of their daughter in December of 1815. Even late in Annabella’s pregnancy, Byron tormented her, referring to her as “a nice little sullen nucleus of concentrated savageness” (via The New York Times). Perhaps her sullen savageness had something to do with him throwing his affairs in her face, and mockingly nicknaming her “Princess of Parallelograms,” because her intelligence was funny to him somehow?

In an article about Seymour’s book, Slate relates that Byron once reported to Annabella that he had spent some naked time with two prostitutes, and mulled which of them he’d bring home to live with him, Annabella, and their daughter. Understandably disgusted, Annabella consulted her parents, and they began planning his institutionalization because no person in his right mind would keep up that level of sadism to his wife. But, before that could happen, Byron left England and never returned. Little Ada, who would follow in her mother’s intelligent footsteps and go on to become genius mathematician Ada Lovelace, was four months old when he fled, and the marriage had lasted just 13 months.