Queen Elizabeth I is mostly remembered for her fierce independence, defeating the Spanish Armada, and out-maneuvering the men who tried to control her. But underneath the velvet and pearls, the Virgin Queen was an absolute mess of toxic beauty hacks and terrible dental hygiene. After a nasty bout of smallpox in 1562 left her severely scarred, Elizabeth turned to Venetian Ceruse—a deadly mixture of white lead and vinegar—to maintain her iconic pale complexion. It worked like a charm, provided your definition of "charm" includes severe hair loss, skin peeling, and gradual lead poisoning.

As if slathering her face in toxic paint wasn't enough, Elizabeth had an absolute chokehold on the era's hottest new commodity: sugar. She loved sweets so intensely that her teeth eventually rotted and turned completely black. Because she was the ultimate trendsetter of the 16th century, black teeth bizarrely became a status symbol among the English nobility, who desperately tried to prove they were rich enough to afford tooth-decaying sugar. By the end of her life, her teeth were in such bad shape that foreign ambassadors reported they could barely understand a word she was saying.

Her commitment to the royal aesthetic reached frankly terrifying levels as she aged. She reportedly owned over 2,000 dresses and wore elaborate red wigs to hide her lead-induced baldness. To keep up the illusion of eternal youth, mirrors were allegedly banned from her presence in her twilight years. Legend has it that when she was finally nearing her end, she refused to sit or lie down for over a dozen hours, convinced that if she gave in to exhaustion, she would never rise again. When she finally died, historians claim she had nearly an inch of toxic makeup caked onto her face.