
Some book links below may be Amazon affiliate links. If you choose to buy through that link, it doesn’t change your price at all, but Amazon will give me a few extra cents for the tiara research fund.
Do you love reading about royals as much as I do? If so, check out my 2023 royal reading list - all the research books I bought, borrowed, and re-read are listed here. I’m adding books as I read them, so check back to see if your picks made the list.
Just scroll down to get the info for each book, including my comments. Or use the table of contents below to jump straight to a book you’re already interested in.
Want to suggest a book for me this year? I’d love to know what titles you recommend. Click here to drop me a line.
Last updated: May 26, 2023
2023 Royal Reading List
in alphabetical order
Becoming Queen Victoria | Chère Annette | Clash of Generations | Divine Lola | The Eagles Die | The Fortress | Grand Dukes and Diamonds | The Husband Hunters | The Illustrious Dead | Je devais être impératrice | July 1914 | King Leopold’s Ghost | Kings over the Water | The Last Days of Imperial Vienna | A Mad Catastrophe | Maria Dorothea von Württemberg | Mistress of the Elgin Marbles | The Princess Spy | Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes | Romanov Relations | The Russian Dagger | Scottish Queens | Traitor King | Vienna 1814 | Waterloo
Note reviewed: fiction, out of my usual scope of research, etc.
Dead Wake | Embers (soooo good) | The Mad Sculptor | My Dark Places |

Subtitle: The Unexpected Rise of Britain’s Greatest Monarch
Author: Kate Williams
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Year: 2008
Available at: Amazon
This book has two clear trajectories: (a) the brief life and early death of Princess Charlotte, and (b) the birth, childhood, and reign of Queen Victoria until her first son was born, securing the throne. One would probably not have existed without the other, which is why these stories need to be told in tandem. It’s not a full biography of either woman, but it’s definitely everything you need to know to understand how and why the throne passed to Victoria.
As a super-quick recap, Princess Charlotte was the only daughter and heiress of King George IV. Because of his deep and abiding loathing for his wife, there was never any possibility of a sibling for Charlotte. She survived the trials and tribulations of childhood and grew up a strong-willed, tomboyish child starved for affection. Both of her parents used her in their epic battles with each other and with the royal family at large (her grandfather was King George III and her grandmother was Queen Charlotte, of Bridgerton fame).
It’s a miracle this kid grew up any kind of sane – but she did. And after refusing to marry her father’s choice of husband, the Prince of Orange, she drifted from fling to fling and finally settled on Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Handsome, grounded, and willing to move to England full-time, Leopold was just what Charlotte needed. His steadiness calmed her down, and his affection gave her confidence. She, in turn, charmed him, helped him loosen up, and gave him an identity and a purpose beyond an impoverished younger son. Until, that is, she died giving birth to their first child, who was stillborn.
Suddenly, with the only heiress to the throne gone, all Charlotte’s uncles raced to the altar and then the bedroom to try and provide a legitimate heir. Victoria’s father won that race, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Victoria section of the book goes into detail about how her mother, the Duchess of Kent, tried her hardest to keep Victoria’s public image squeaky clean – and to keep herself in the limelight as long as humanly possible. With, as you’d guess, the expected deleterious result to her relationship with her daughter. As with Charlotte, it’s a bit of a miracle this kid turned out sane, too. Luckily, her determination to do the right thing was stronger than her mother’s greed.
If you want a more complete story about the madness of King George and how it affected his family, read A Royal Experiment by Janice Hadlow. That book really sets the stage for this one – and both are incredibly readable. Princesses by Flora Fraser also covers a lot of the same territory, from the point of view of the aunts Charlotte loathes.
Should You Read It?
Yes. This is a fascinating look at first Charlotte and then young Victoria. I didn’t find much new information, but Williams’s telling felt full and complete.
Tidbits
- Princess Charlotte’s mother, Caroline of Brunswick, didn’t exactly kill it on the European marriage market. Years before, when Queen Charlotte heard that her brother – the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz – was considering proposing to Caroline, she wrote to him and was like, nope, don’t do it, for the love of God, don’t do it. And he didn’t. But when the next prospective bridegroom was her own son, Charlotte kept her mouth shut since Caroline’s mom was also her sister-in-law. (16)
- Think your ex is petty? Prince George – later George IV – hated Caroline of Brunswick so much that he “removed chairs from her private dining room, saying he could not afford to pay for them, and took back the pearl bracelets he had given her on their wedding day, presenting them instead to his beloved Lady Jersey.” (24) What a dick.
- Williams’s description of the Prince of Orange cracked me up. “’Slender Billy,’ as the Prince of Orange was known by his fellow soldiers, had never cut much of a dash…He had returned to Holland in 1813 as crown prince, a short, skinny, and ugly youth with buck teeth and wispy blond hair, and a diffident and indecisive character.” (78)
- Charlotte had a crush on Emperor Alexander I of Russia. “My ears are very ugly, but I would give them both to persuade the Emperor to come to me to a ball, a supper, any entertainment that he would choose.” Except that when Charlotte saw him, he told her to marry the Prince of Orange. Facepalm. (87)
- Napoleon had declared Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg “the handsomest man who had ever entered his Palace of the Tuileries,” according to Williams. (89)
- Princess Mary (one of Charlotte’s many single aunts) had the hots for Leopold, too. Once Charlotte realized this, it made her more attracted to him.
- When Charlotte’s baby was born dead, Williams notes: “The infant was taken directly to St. George’s Chapel and not given any service, according to the principle that stillborn children had no soul and thus needed no prayers.” (138) This struck me as so sad.
- Tsar Alexander of Russia said he wanted to be a godparent to the Duke of Kent’s new baby, which traditionally meant the baby had to bear his name. That’s why Victoria’s real first name was Alexandrina. The parents had wanted to name her Victoire Georgiana Alexandrina Charlotte Augusta, but the Prince Regent (future George IV) was like, nope, don’t like it, you can’t use that. At the christening, he said the child’s name should be Alexandrina. He vetoed Kent’s suggestion of Elizabeth for a second name, and said they could use the mother’s name, but only if it didn’t come before the emperor’s. Hence…Alexandrina Victoria. (157-8)
- I chuckled at Princess Lieven’s comment after the Duke of Kent’s death, regarding the twice-widowed 32-year-old Duchess of Kent: “She kills all her husbands.” (163)
- Victoria is a girl after my own heart. Once, when the Duchess of Clarence (future Queen Adelaide) asked her what she wanted for her birthday, Victoria said she wanted the windows at Kensington Palace cleaned. I want my windows cleaned for my birthday, too. I feel seen. (172)

Subtitle: Letters from Russia 1820-1828 The Correspondence of the Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia to her daughter the Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna, the Princess of Orange
Editor: S.W. Jackman
Publisher: Alan Sutton
Year: 1994
Available at: Amazon
I’ve had a copy of this book for years and re-read it recently because I was interested in Anna Pavlovna, one of Tsar Paul I’s daughters. She married the Prince of Orange, the future Willem II of the Netherlands. After her marriage in 1816, Anna and her mom, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, kept up a steady stream of letters between Brussels (where Anna spent most of her time) and St. Petersburg. But what do those letters tell us about them?
Also: Every time I cite this book or Romanov Relations, I type Hugh Jackman as the editor. Every. Damn. Time.
This book covers the years 1820 to 1828, when Maria Feodorovna died. These were formative years for Anna, who married in 1816. Her new husband didn’t get along with his father, like, at all – neither one trusted the other. They saw each other’s character flaws too clearly, and both wanted to be the boss. In her daily letters, Maria Feodorovna gives Anna advice on how to smooth out the disagreements between the two men, techniques she’d learned during her long years of doing the same thing for disagreements between her husband, Grand Duke Paul, and his mother, Catherine the Great.
What I liked most about this book was the mother/daughter relationship. Mom is calm and encouraging, giving her daughter the praise she needs to build her confidence. Mom also asks a lot of questions, including what the hell Anna was thinking when her palace caught fire and she left her diamonds inside it. The relationship appears incredibly open, with Anna telling her mom about her fears, expectations, and difficulties becoming the princess her mother expects her to be.
You won’t find groundbreaking history in this book – no revelations of never-before-seen palace intrigue, for example. But you will find a window into a touching relationship that reminds us historical figures were also just people, struggling with their jobs and relationships the same way we do. Nothing brings that fact home like reading correspondence.
Should You Read It?
Yes. I love books with royal correspondence – it’s like you’re right there with the subjects as they live their lives. You hear about their frustrations, their impressions of court life and political events, and see what questions they ask each other. It’s frustrating when you don’t get all the answers, either because some letters were lost or not included in the collection. But I was incredibly moved by how much these letters revealed a caring mother-daughter relationship. In some of the quotes I pulled out below, you can really see Maria Feodorovna’s caring side. I tend to focus on her controlling side, because I’m usually thinking about if and how she behaved during major historical moments, like the assassination of Tsar Paul I or the Decembrist revolt. But in these quieter moments, in private notes to her youngest daughter, she’s incredibly encouraging.
Tidbits
- As a Russian grand duchess, Anna Pavlovna received an annual payout from the Russian appanage fund. How much did she get? Over 100,000 guilders per year. (7)
- Anna’s favorite gemstone was topaz.
- On July 17, 1820, Maria Feodorovna wrote to Anna: “When I was at Mont Pléasire I threw a stone into the sea for you. I picked up another and sent it to the shop to have it polished and the date engraved on it. I will send it to you as a paper weight.” Isn’t that the sweetest thing? (27)
- When Anna’s palace in Brussels burned down in late 1820, Maria Feodorovna hounded her for details. “Tell me, dear Annette, how did you manage to lose your diamonds?” she wrote on January 4, 1821. On January 8 she wrote, “So was it true that the only gems you lost were those you were wearing the previous day? What did you lose?” On January 11, she wrote, “Tell me if you have recovered the diamonds.” (36-7)
- Maria Feodorovna mentions Anna’s talent for drawing and painting several times. She encourages her to continue and not waste her talent. She even asks Anna to send her a new drawing for a drawing for a compilation album she’s putting together. Isn’t that sweet?
- Maria Feodorovna seemed very happy that her youngest daughter had a relatively happy marriage. She wrote, “He [Willem] makes you happy and heaven, in granting you such charming children, has blessed you both. Enjoy your good fortune, dear Annette, for as long as you live. That is my special prayer for you.” (Annette, 126)
- When Anna told her mom that she thought people were gossiping about her, her mom set her straight. “I can swear, my child, that I have never heard of any Russian who has travelled say that you are not loved in Brussels. On the contrary, I have heard how popular you are…Believe me, my dear, that criticism is not worth listening to even if it is being said, and I doubt that it is.” (132-3)
- Maria Feodorovna seemed so pleased when Anna was able to be her best self. She wrote, “I hear the same old Annette speaking as we used to in the good old days when she was still in the family home… what sweeter joy or consummation for a mother’s heart than to see you becoming more and more established in such noble ways of feeling and acting.” (146)
- The year she died, Maria Feodorovna seemed so happy that Anna was working hard to control her temper and give more attention to her royal duties. She wrote, ““Persist in this noble course, in these elevated thoughts so worthy of you which assure a divine blessing and facilitate the way to solidarity. Just tell yourself that if I could love you any more I would now.” (155) Awww…that one hits me right in the feels.

Subtitle: A Habsburg Family Drama in the Nineteenth Century
Author: Lavender Cassels
Publisher: John Murray
Year: 1973
Available at: Archive.org
What’s It About?
Long story short: The book compares and contrasts the older generation of Habsburgs with the younger generation in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. It starts with a section on Franz Josef and Albrecht, then covers Johann Salvator and Rudolf. The final third of the book covers the tragic demise of the younger Habsburgs. I won’t give any spoilers here, even though most of you probably know what happened to Rudolf.
There’s a lot here about inter-generational angst: the older generation doesn’t get it, says the younger generation, they’re ruining everything. And the older generation says, the younger generation is going to wreck everything – can’t they see how hard it is just to hold things together? You’ll get lots of detail about army politics and court politics. Although that may sound boring, Cassels makes it interesting because it’s always in the context of how Rudolf and Johann Salvator feel stifled by these politics.
Should You Read It?
Yep. I really liked this one. It’s well-written, entertaining, and had original research (interesting quotations from Johann Salvator’s letters to his mother, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany). If you’re already very knowledgeable about the Habsburgs, there won’t be much new here for you. But Archdukes Albrecht and Johann Salvator aren’t as frequently covered as, say, Franz Josef, Sisi, and Rudolf, so it’s nice to see a larger family group discussed here than you may see in other sources. Most of the sources in the bibliography are in German, which gave me more to scope out for future research.
Tidbits
- Archduke Albrecht is almost always described as “the victor of Custozza” – the only battle the Austrians won during the war of 1866. However, his Chief of Staff, John, was the one who created the battle plan. When John died in 1876, Albrecht made sure he got John’s personal papers. The implication here is that those papers would have revealed how little Albrecht did, tarnishing his glory. (62, 69)
- Neither Rudolf nor Johann Salvator got along with Albrecht. Rudolf wrote to Franz Ferdinand in 1884: “He delights in nosing about, picking quarrels, in intriguing and doing harm…” (144)
- Johann Salvator provided the outline Rudolf used for his proposal for the 10-volume book series describing Austria-Hungary’s territories in words and pictures. I didn’t know that before.
- I’d seen the quote before describing the way Rudolf’s fiancé, Princess Stephanie of Belgium, walked down the aisle at their wedding: with “all the daintiness of a dragoon.” Turns out, that’s a quote from Archduke Wilhelm, Albrecht’s more-popular brother. (118)
- At the family dinners Franz Josef served on January 1 and once a week throughout the winter, every archduke and archduchess in Vienna was expected to attend. The problem? He was served first and ate quickly. All the plates were removed as soon as he’d finished a course. So if you were a junior archduke at the foot of the table, you probably had zero chance to taste a course before it was cleared away. (53-4)
- Johann Salvator was involved in the search for a prince to rule Bulgaria (after Sandro of Battenberg abdicated). He was hoping to be named Commander-in-Chief of the Bulgarian army as a thank-you. It didn’t happen. Later, when he’d resigned his commission in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was both jobless and penniless, he went incognito to Sofia and asked Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria for an appointment as a lieutenant in the Bulgarian army. Ferdinand refused and told him to get out of Bulgaria at once. (240)
- I had no idea Johann Salvator’s long-term mistress, Milli Stubel, was on board the Saint Margaret with him on his final voyage. That’s all I’ll say here – the chapter title “Cape Horn” was a nail-biter for me.

Subtitle: A True Story of Scandal and Celebrity
Author: Cristina Morató
Translator: Andrea Rosenberg
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Year: 2021
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Lola Montez was born In Ireland in 1821 as Eliza Gilbert. Determined to escape her circumstances first as the stepdaughter and then the wife of British army officers stationed in India, she ran away and rebranded herself as an impoverished Spanish aristocrat. Back in Europe, as “Lola Montez,” she took a one-woman dance show on the road in 1843, eventually performing in London, Paris, Berlin, and Munich.
Famous more for her beauty and violent temper than her dancing skills, in 1846, she entranced the aging King Ludwig I of Bavaria in a May-December friendship that turned into a passionate romance. He showered her with love, poetry, jewels, and all the accoutrements of a royal mistress. According to this book, they slept together at least once, but it’s unclear if that was a one-off or a regular occurrence. Mostly he was jealous of the younger, more attractive university students Lola hung out with.
Now, the Bavarian government officials and public hated Lola. Like, with a vengeance. They believed she was trying to run the country through Ludwig, encouraging him to ditch all his conservative ministers and policies. This book actually downplays any political influence she had – it mostly focuses on her personal relationship with Ludwig, and her never-ending quest for money and a title. Does that mean she didn’t have much political influence? Or just that this book didn’t really focus on it? This is the only Lola book I’ve ever read, so I can’t tell you. But between the hatred for Lola, the hatred for Ludwig’s reforms, and the revolutionary spirit of 1848, the people forced Ludwig off the throne and Lola out of the country.
After fleeing Bavaria, she took her show on the road in North America, settling in Grass Valley, California for a few years before moving on to Australia and then back to New York. She started a new life on the lecture circuit, and was reinventing herself as a public speaker and a renewed Christian, when she died in 1861.
Along the way, she had married a few more times…I lost track of how many bigamous marriages she made – two? Three? As much as I wanted to sympathize with a woman who refused to be told what to do or how to live, Lola’s violent temper (she hits people…a lot), narcissism, and continual bad decisions made that hard to do.
Caveats
- One thing that REALLY irritated me about this book was the occasional bit of poorly developed made-up dialogue. It made the book feel like a young adult novel rather than factual non-fiction. In the author’s note, she says she did this to make the book more entertaining, but Lola’s life is already pretty entertaining. It’s like being given a slab of the highest quality Kobe beef in the world (Lola’s jam-packed life story) and after the cooking (writing) process, dousing your final product with dollar-store ketchup to make sure it has enough flavor.
- In several snatches of that made-up dialogue, Lola rails against Victorian morals and morality. This made me stop and think. Would anyone in the late 1850s have referred to society’s current morals as “Victorian”? Victoria had been on the throne since 1837, but my understanding is that “Victorian” is an adjective only used later when looking back to describe the history and culture throughout Victoria’s reign. I could be wrong, but the fact that this made-up dialogue took me so far out of the book as to question its correctness ticked me off.
- I didn’t get a clear sense from this book how much political influence Lola actually had in Bavaria. She later referred to herself as the “shadow queen” of Bavaria, but the book focuses more on the personal side of her time with Ludwig. He was nuts about her, writing her letters and poetry and getting jealous when he heard she was hanging out with younger, more attractive men. She pestered him for money and for a title, believing that this title would somehow magically win her respect. Ludwig had to defend her constantly against, well, everyone else in his life, but even he knew the title wasn’t going magically bring her acceptance. And although I’m glad the author covered this aspect of their relationship in detail, it was to the exclusion of any actual influence she might have had. So I came away from the Bavarian section of the book a little unclear on how much she may have merited the hatred of the Bavarian people in terms of government meddling.
Should You Read It?
I’d recommend skipping this one, mostly due to the made-up dialogue. There are plenty of other books on Lola listed in the bibliography, so you’re not going to be short of options in Spanish, German, French, or English. If you have Kindle Unlimited, however, it’s free to read – so there’s your best option.

Subtitle: Franz Joseph, Elisabeth, and Their Austria
Author: George R. Marek
Publisher: Harper & Row
Year: 1974
Available at: Amazon
George Marek was a Vice-President and General Manager of the RCA Record Division, so this book pays special attention to music as a leitmotif. If you’ve read any of Frederic Morton’s books (A Nervous Splendor, Thunder at Twilight), you’re familiar with the way blending information from other disciplines into a historical tale can enrich it immensely. This book achieves something of a similar effect, with digressions into how composers like Johannes Brahms and Anton Bruckner lived and worked in Franz Joseph’s Vienna.
Marek provides a poetic description of Franz Joseph in his foreword as “a sovereign of little malice and intermittent kindliness, [who] was forced by his tradition and the bent of his mind to act in so retrograde a manner that one can say that he hastened the sinking of the sun. During his reign and empire slid into the dusk, and he could not understand the reason for its fading.” (xiii)
The book starts off with a chapter on the Viennese: how accurate are descriptions of them as music-loving, cheerful, happy-go-lucky people. Marek argues for a deeper strain of melancholy native to the Viennese, which is similar to what Morton argues in A Nervous Splendor.
From that point on, we get the well-known story of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth. Glancing through the pages here, I see I didn’t underline anything, so I must not have learned anything new and shocking. But I enjoyed Marek’s telling and the way he brought elements of his own memories of Vienna, composers, and other influences into a story that could have been myopically focused on the people themselves.
Should You Read It?
If your library has a copy or you can shell out a few bucks for a used copy like me, yes. It’s a fresh perspective, with more attention paid to the general setting (Vienna, Austria) than many other biographers provide.

Subtitle: The Siege of Przemyśl and the Making of Europe’s Bloodlands
Author: Alexander Watson
Publisher: Basic Books
Year: 2020
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
This book is about the struggle for control of the city and fortress of Przemyśl in 1914-1915. Located near the border between present-day Poland and Ukraine, the city was home to permanent residents and garrison members who were a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic cross-sample of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: German Austrians, Hungarians, Jews, Croatians, Hungarians, Ukrainian-speaking Ruthenians, and more. Their struggle with the invading and besieging Russian army is fascinating. Without spoiling things, there was an initial battle, a siege, a takeover, and another takeover. Both sides committed atrocities based on racial lines, which is what most reviewers commented on as new information to them.
Watson did an absolutely amazing job of finding primary source material that highlighted more than the commanders – the pilots, the regular people, the nurses, the sex workers, the rank and file, and more. One thing I really enjoyed was the female perspective that cropped up in Watson’s chosen source material. Normally, in my head, I think of war books as “boy books” because there are almost never women in them. Watson solved that problem by choosing a good number of primary sources by or referring to women. Countess Ilka Künigl-Ehrenburg, Helena z Seifertów Jabłońska, Wanda Zakrewska, and Eva Anna Welles all produced primary sources Watson consulted. Can I just say how refreshing this is?
Should You Read It?
Maybe – it depends whether you fall asleep when reading about battles or battle strategy. There’s plenty of human detail in this book – and, surprisingly, female perspectives – but if military history leaves you cold, even Countess Ilka’s diary entries might not save it for you. And there aren’t nearly enough maps, so after awhile, I just kind of gave up on actually understanding the movements described and just tried to go with the flow of the story.
But if you’re interested in why in holy hell Austria-Hungary performed so poorly in the war, this book will give you a very detailed snapshot that explains everything.
Tidbits
- Austria-Hungary’s chief strategist, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had competing priorities. He should have had extra motivation not to suck because he was super afraid that the embarrassment and shame of losing the fortress would also lose the love of his married girlfriend, Gina. He wrote, “If I fail, then I shall also lose this woman; an appalling thought for me, for then I would have to withdraw into solitariness for the rest of my life.” (49)
- The Austro-Hungarian supply chain was…shitty. This resulted in the entire garrison receiving only 4,300 cloaks and 6,000 “calf-skin rucksacks” prior to the siege. What the hell were the men meant to do with rucksacks? Well, a division of Hungarian infantry figured out how to turn them into vests. That detail made me smile. (153)
- The first ever air strike against a civilian urban population? Yep, that happened in Przemyśl in December of 1914. Russians dropped 275 bombs on the city and its surrounding area. (155)
- Conrad launched an offensive to try and relieve the fortress on January 23, 1915. He sent 175,000 soldiers up and over the Carpathian Mountains – some as high as 2,600 feet. It was a freaking disaster. The Third Army lost 2/3 of its men in two weeks, half through frostbite or illness. One man who survived later said, “Religious souls visualize hell as a blazing inferno with burning embers and intense heat. The soldiers fighting in the Carpathian Mountains during that first winter of the war know otherwise.” (192)
- The original drop-dead date for running out of food during the siege was February 18. But by getting creative, the Austrian military lengthened that about a month longer. They cut rations, slaughtered and ate horses, and diluted flour with turnip, bran, or 20% birch wood. (*gulp*) (207)
- When the Russians took over the fortress after the Austrian surrender, they expelled all the Jewish residents. It was the “largest single forced removal of a community perpetrated by the Russian military on occupied soil.” Later, Austrian authorities estimated that 17,000 Jews were forced out of the town, fortress, and surrounding area. (258)

Subtitle: The Wernhers of Luton Hoo
Author: Raleigh Trevelyan
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Year: 2012 (1st ed. 1991)
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Long story short: This book covers two generations of Wernhers: Julius, the father, who was instrumental in developing gold and diamond mines in South Africa, and Harold, the son, who married Zia, Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich’s daughter. Julius became incredibly wealthy, catapulting his wife and three sons into the British social hierarchy. His good works, philanthropy, and incredible business sense helped him earn the respect of his peers – although because most of his business partners were Jewish, he was assumed to be Jewish as well (he wasn’t). As with any stratospheric social or financial rise, the family wasn’t without its detractors, who nitpicked Julius’s wife for her extravagant fashions. Of Julius’s three sons, the youngest died in World War I, the oldest frittered away all his money, and the second (Harold) became his heir, inheriting the palatial estate of Luton Hoo.
Harold married Zia Torby, daughter of Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich. It didn’t seem to be a love match on her part, although Harold would later write that he’d been in love with Zia since age 15. After the Russian Revolution, Zia’s parents were strapped for cash and there was family friend Harold, incredibly rich. Zia had other suitors, including the future King George II of Greece, but her family refused to consider that marriage. After Zia and Harold married, he did indeed have to support her family periodically. The couple’s relationship had its ups and downs, but they remained firmly committed to each other, their kids, and the life they built together. Some of the most amusing anecdotes in the whole book are of Zia as an old woman, imperious to the last, demanding her daughter go make Queen Elizabeth II hurry when she was late for dinner.
Should You Read It?
Yes, if you’re interested in any of the following: the history of South Africa, the diamond business, late Victorian industry, British horse racing, or Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich, his wife, Sophie Countess of Torby, and their descendants. There’s also a fair amount about Harold Wernher’s contribution to D-Day and the floating harbor project. As you can see, the book covers a surprisingly diverse amount of subjects. And you won’t find a ton of gossip here – scandals are hinted at rather than explored in detail, with the exception of Derrick Wernher’s gambling/debt problems.
Tidbits
- In 1898, Julius was named one of the Life-Governors of De Beers. Yeah, that De Beers. (116)
- The author does get one thing wrong – he says Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III of Mecklenburg-Schwerin jumped out a window in Cannes to kill himself. Nope. It wasn’t a window, and it was never confirmed that he died by suicide. (205)
- When Julius Wernher died in 1912, his widow kept the letters of condolence from Princess Helena and Princess Louise (Queen Victoria’s daughters). Louise had sent Julius cornflowers while he was sick so they would remind him of where he grew up in Germany. Isn’t that sweet? (247)
- Countess Torby sold Queen Mary a diamond and sapphire necklace, which Mary later gave to her daughter (the Princess Royal) as a wedding present. It was believed to have belonged to Empress Elisabeth (although the author doesn’t specify which one – presumably Alexander I’s wife and not Peter the Great’s daughter). (282)
- According to Harold, it was his sister-in-law, Nada, who encouraged Princess Marina to marry Prince George (later Duke of Kent). (338)
- When Julius’s wife, then Lady Ludlow, died, she left Queen Mary several things from her vast collection of British porcelain. Mary returned the peacock and peahen to Harold, saying she was superstitious about them and hoped he wouldn’t be offended. (399)
- Grand Duke Michael had a number of eccentricities. He couldn’t stand the sound of rustling paper, and neither could Zia. She forbid the wrapping of Christmas presents and instead, called the family to her bedside on Christmas morning. Their presents were buried in the folds of her bedding. (431)

Subtitle: Social Climbing in London and New York
Author: Anne de Courcy
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Year: 2017
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
This book is about the late 19th century trend of rich American women marrying titled British men. In many cases, the men were in need of a cash infusion to save their ancestral estates. The so-called American “Dollar Princesses” had the cash they needed, and – often – mothers who were anxious to see their daughters get a title in return. As this book shows, the mothers often needed their daughters’ social success to create or boost their own.
Unfortunately, in most cases, these marriages were unhappy.
American society and British society functioned differently in terms of the expected role of women. In American society, women ran things while the men worked. In British society, the men ran politics, the government, and society at large while the women ran their husband’s house and not much else. American girls who’d grown up seeing their mothers in positions of social power and experiencing power themselves (over doting fathers and lovestruck suitors) found themselves with less freedom and power. No longer the belle of the ball or a cosseted daughter, these women often struggled to replicate the free and easy lifestyle they’d had in America.
Some of the people covered are:
- Alva Vanderbilt Belmont & Consuelo Vanderbilt, future Duchess of Marlborough
- Consuelo Yznaga, future Duchess of Manchester and Devonshire
- The three Jerome sisters (but especially Jennie, future Lady Randolph Churchill)
- May Goelet, future Duchess of Roxburgh
- Adèle Beach Grant, future Countess of Essex
- Anna Gould, future Countess de Castellane
- The “marrying Wilsons”: Grace, May, Belle, and Richard
- Cornelia Bradley-Martin, future Countess of Craven
- Minnie Stevens, future Lady Paget
- Virginia Bonynge, future Viscountess Deerhurst
- Maud Burke, the future Lady “Emerald” Cunard
- Tennessee Claflin, the future Viscountess of Monserrate
Caveat
In terms of organization, this book felt a little disjointed. I suspect it’s made up of chapters written at separate times for separate purposes cobbled together into a book. At times, information is repeated, which is what made me think some chapters might have been written as stand-alone articles intended for other publications. People are mentioned, dropped, then discussed again 50 or 75 pages later. Some people are only mentioned in the chapter devoted to them, such as Virginia Bonynge. Some chapters cover what it was like to live in the Gilded Age; others cover individual stories or themes. In general, the book follows a chronological timeline, but there’s lots of jumping around between people’s stories and general information about the period.
Should You Read It?
If you can get it from your library or buy the Kindle version ($3.99, as of this writing), yes. There are some great stories in here, like the chapter on Virginia Bonynge. I wish there were an entire book about Virginia’s family story – it’s worth the price of this book alone.

Subtitle: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon’s Greatest Army
Author: Stephan Talty
Publisher: Crown Publishers
Year: 2009
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
This book tells a very scary story: how typhus resurfaced during Napoleon’s march into Russia, decimated his army, and contributed greatly to the failure of his campaign there. Typhus had been around for centuries, if not millennia, but was little understood. It cropped up when armies marched across countries and continents. It had appeared in the 15th century, when Ferdinand and Isabella fought to force the Moors out of Spain. And it had cropped up again in the 16th, when Francis I of France had tried to conquer Italy.
The disease produced similar symptoms in its victims: lethargy, fatigue, fever, and spots on the torso and legs (but not the face and hands). It not only affected soldiers on the move, but people in the countryside around them – the people who fed them, housed them, and nursed them. But germ theory was not common knowledge, so people believed this disease was spread by bad smells in the air, or just the air in general.
They didn’t know it was the common louse, jumping from victim to victim.
All they knew was that the disease was killing incredible numbers of the men of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Of course, disease wasn’t the only thing killing them. Cold, hunger, thirst, and starvation took their tool, too. But this book’s argument is that typhus left those other factors in the dust.
Here are a few stats Talty provides on page 252:
- Between 550,000 and 600,000 French soldiers crossed the Niemen onto Russian territory.
- About 100,000 were captured.
- Total dead are estimated between 400,000 – 540,000, depending on the source.
- Less than 25% of those died fighting.
Of course, it’s not possible to show how many men died specifically from typhus, as opposed to hypothermia or starvation. But those numbers alone show how devastating this campaign was, and how important it is to take every factor into consideration when talking about why it failed.
Should You Read It?
Yes – I found this book fascinating and easy to read. It doesn’t have the detail of, say, Dominic Lieven’s book on the Russian campaign, but that’s not what its purpose is. You have to understand how the campaign unfolded to see how the disease took hold, so there’s enough information to understand how, where, and why the army moved where it did. Plus, it’s written for a general audience, so you don’t need to know anything about germ theory or Napoleonic warfare to enjoy the story.

Subtitle: Mémoires de la dernière princesse héritière d'Autriche-Hongrie
Author: Princess Stéphanie of Belgium, Countess of Lonyay
Publisher: Editions Frédérique Patat
Year: 2019
Available at: Google Play Books
What’s It About?
Born in 1864, Princess Stéphanie of Belgium was married to Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria-Hungary when she was barely sixteen. If you follow my book-reading odyssey, you’ll be familiar with her father, King Leopold II of the Belgians (portrayed in King Leopold’s Ghost). Stéphanie describes her childhood as cold. She longed for affection and praise and almost never got it from either parent. Her mother, she explains, walled off her emotions after her only son died young. Her two daughters, Stéphanie and Louise, found affection and companionship in each other and household staff members.
Stéphanie’s marriage was an arranged one. Her father thought it would be good to have a tie with Austria-Hungary, and that was that. The marriage started out relatively well, but quickly turned sour because Rudolf and Stéphanie had little in common. That’s not surprising – what would a sheltered teenage girl have in common with a worldly, already disillusioned man in his twenties? The couple had one child together, a daughter – not the son and heir the empire desired. But there would not be another child because Rudolf infected Stéphanie with venereal disease, destroying her ability to have another child.
Although they remained married, they were not happy. Rudolf hunted, slept with his mistresses, inspected army regiments, and wrote editorials for the Neue Wiener Tageblatt. Stéphanie was left behind to keep up appearances at court, often filling in for the absent and uninterested Empress Elisabeth.
Then, in 1889, Rudolf died by suicide at his hunting lodge of Mayerling – after shooting his teenage mistress, Mary Vetsera, in a murder-suicide pact. Stéphanie was one of the only people who had tried to help Rudolf by bringing his deteriorating mental and physical condition to her in-laws’ attention. They did nothing.
This book only covers Stéphanie’s life through Rudolf’s death. Later in life, she married Count Elmer Lonyay, a Hungarian noble. You won’t meet him anywhere in these pages, however. The book ends with a lovely condolence letter written to Stéphanie by Queen Elisabeth of Romania (Carmen Sylva).
Stéphanie usually gets a bad rap – she’s described as haughty, ambitious, silly, and unintelligent. And yes, parts of this book are extremely flattering to her, and any modern reader is instantly going to see some self-aggrandizing going on here. But at the same time, there’s more to Stéphanie than most people gave her credit for. She was devoted to her duty as the future empress – which is more than could ever be said for her mother-in-law, the actual empress. She was the only person who really tried to save Rudolf. She writes about the coldness and deprivations of her childhood and her deep need for love and affection. That kind of need, that longing, can really mess a kid up. Not to mention being married so young. I’m prepared to give her quite a bit of slack for the so-called crimes of ambition and imperial haughtiness. She was finding worth and validation through her position – which she was forced into by her parents. In my mind, she was trying to make the best of a situation she didn’t ask for.
Should You Read It?
If you’re interested in the Habsburgs and read French, yes.
In my opinion, Stéphanie doesn’t always see herself clearly. Everywhere she goes, she wants you to know that she won all hearts, that people were crazy about her, that she was universally admired and beloved. Maybe – but something rang a little false about these statements, so I took her descriptions of raving crowds and faithful peasants with a grain of salt. At one point, she admits that her “natural gift for winning hearts” came from her mother “and I had no merit in it.” (Ch. 5)
But even if her descriptions of herself can’t quite be trusted, she says some insightful things about other people.
She mentions several other women accused of being ambitious – her aunt Charlotte (Empress of Mexico) and her aunt Victoria (Crown Princess of Prussia). She couches Charlotte’s ambition as a product of vast intelligence and willingness to do good in the world. Of Victoria, she says: “Already, at that time, she was the target of violent attacks. She was said to be ambitious, proud and intriguing. They forgot to say that when a princess marries a crown prince, her desire, obviously, is to become empress or queen; and then is not this ambition entirely justified? … Like all intelligent women of quality who were forbidden to use their abilities, she suffered from her inactivity.” (Ch. 3)
I kind of love that Stéphanie brings this up – as children, these girls are given to heirs to a throne, and then punished when they like (or convince themselves they like) the perks of the job. As if they were ever given a choice….
Tidbits
- All 3 kids had small gardens at Laeken. After their brother died, Louise and Stéphanie took care of his garden for him. They arranged flower beds, dug, sowed, planted, weeded, and grafted. I love the idea of two sisters keeping their dead brother’s garden alive. Later, after Louise married, Stephanie took care of her garden until her younger sister, Clémentine, was old enough to take it over. (Ch. 1)
- She owned a painting done by her aunt, Charlotte (Empress Carlota of Mexico). (Ch. 1)
- According to Stéphanie, at age 15, her parents called her to them and her father said, “The Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary has come here to ask for your hand. Your mother and I are all in favor of this marriage. We have chosen you to be Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. Go away, think about it and give us your answer tomorrow.” That night, when she went to talk to her mom and express her doubts, her mom talked her into it. Stephanie bought into the vision of herself as a sovereign, there to ensure the well-being of her mother’s people. But the doubts about marrying a man she didn’t know lingered. “I could not have known that already at that time I had been duped. It was only later, much later, that I was told that my future husband had not come to Brussels alone, that his friend, a certain Dame F., had accompanied him.” And by “friend,” she means a friend with benefits. (Ch. 2)
- Stéphanie’s wedding gift from the city of Budapest? “…necklace, earrings, belt, chain and barrettes, a gift from the city of Budapest. All of these jewels represented a kilo and a half of gold, in addition to 32 large brilliants, a thousand smaller brilliants, three hundred opals and four magnificent rubies.” Dayum. (Ch. 3)
- Of former Empress Maria Anna, widow of Emperor Ferdinand, Stéphanie says: “Despite fifty years of residence in Austria, she had not learned German; we had to speak French or Italian to her.” (Ch. 3)
- Stéphanie was a late bloomer. In the first year of marriage, she describes being tired from what sound like growth spurts. Then, when she had her baby Elisabeth in 1883, she says that when she got up from childbed, “I was surprised to find that my dresses were too short. I had grown suddenly and was even slightly taller than the Crown Prince.” (Ch. 3)

Subtitle: Countdown to War
Author: Sean McMeekin
Publisher: Basic Books
Year: 2014
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
McMeekin’s thesis is that Russia and France should carry more of the blame for starting the war than traditionally assigned. You usually see blame assigned to Germany and Austria-Hungary, not members of the Triple Entente. McMeekin presents Russia and France as led by politicians who willingly withheld information from their allies to make the situation look worse than it was. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians, by contrast, are largely presented as bumblers, at cross purposes with each other despite being allies.
This book highlights how dysfunctional the Austrian government really was. When Foreign Minister Berchtold and General Conrad were eager for war, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Tisza, held them back. Not because of humanitarian concerns, but because war wasn’t good for his home country of Hungary. Now, in most cases, holding someone back from starting a war is a good thing. But in this case, a quick war against Serbia – begun before the Russians could mobilize, and with the full support of Germany – might have been the best way out of a global conflict. But because of the power Franz Josef had had to give to Hungary as a member of the Dual Monarchy, there was nothing he could do when Tisza cock-blocked the idea of a short, fast war against Serbia. Tisza’s attempt to safeguard Hungarian interests at the expense of Austria’s comes off as one of the key moves that made a larger, deadlier conflict inevitable.
So how does McMeekin attempt to prove the Russians and French had a hand in engineering the war? Well, for starters, Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov straight-up told the French ambassador they were doing so. As McMeekin notes, on July 24: “In less than three hours , Russia’s foreign minister had (1) instructed Serbia’s minister not to comply with Austria’s ultimatum and promised that ‘Serbia may count on Russian aid’ (although it is unclear whether he also spelled out what form this ‘aid’ would take); (2) warned Germany’s ambassador that Russia would go to war with Austria if she ‘swallowed up’ Serbia; and (3) informed France’s ambassador about Russia’s impending mobilization measures.” (190)
The fact that France knew about Russia’s mobilization and hid it from the British (and did nothing to stop it) brings them in for some measure of blame. They knew Russia was mobilizing and let it happen. As McMeekin notes: “Addressing journalists at the Chamber of Deputies, Jaurès was seen to ‘explode’ in anger over Russia’s malign influence on French foreign policy: ‘Are we going to unleash a world war because Izvolsky is still furious over Aehrenthal’s deception in the Bosnian affair [of 1908–1909]?’” (322) The answer, apparently, was yes.
I won’t go into more detail here – no spoilers. But it was definitely interesting to read McMeekin’s arguments. I’m not sure I agree with them, but they’ve given me more to think about.
Should You Read It?
If you’re interested in WWI, yes.
If you’d rather stick with royal women, this is probably too wide a scope for you to enjoy. Franz Josef, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II are all prime movers in this story, but women are few and far between.
Tidbits
- Franz Ferdinand had a psychic moment. As Franz Ferdinand travelled to Sarajevo in June of 1914, the wiring in his train car was on the fritz. Candlelight was the only available light, and Franz Ferdinand’s reply was prescient: he said traveling in that train car was like traveling “in a tomb.” (5)
- The British ambassador to Vienna dropped the ball. Not everyone in the Austro-Hungarian government wanted war. While the Austro-Hungarians were still trying to get their shit together in mid-July, retired Austrian ambassador Heinrich Lützow left Vienna for his country estate. His neighbor just happened to be the British Ambassador to Vienna, Sir Maurice de Bunsen. On July 15, Lützow actually told de Bunsen what Austria was up to, what with the ultimatum to Serbia being intentionally designed to provoke a belligerent response. “As far as we can glean from Lützow’s memoirs , his own intention was to frustrate Berchtold’s designs by warning the British about what was brewing , in the hope that they might act to restrain Serbia , France , and Russia.” And what did de Bunsen do with this information? Nothing. He did not forward this information to London. SMH. See something, say something, dude. (128)
- French president Raymond Poincaré was not super-impressed by Tsar Nicholas II’s palace at Peterhof when he came for a visit in late July (20-23). “Poincaré was less than impressed by the park, which he found ‘a rather fadé replica of Versailles.’ His ‘heavily gilt,’ white satin–lined suite, too, he found overdone, ‘being somewhat of a piece with the over-decorated galleries and the great saloons, the gorgeousness of which seems rather to run riot.’” (149)
- Grand Duchess Anastasia, wife of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, may have let too much slip to the French ambassador. During Poincaré’s visit, she told France’s ambassador to Russia, Maurice Paléologue, exactly what was up. “When the champagne started flowing, the mood grew more euphoric still. Grand Duchess Anastasia, as if taking Paléologue into confidence, told France’s ambassador that ‘there’s going to be war. There’ll be nothing left of Austria. You’re going to get back Alsace and Lorraine. Our armies will meet in Berlin. Germany will be destroyed!’ She may have been just warming up, but a ‘stern gaze’ from Tsar Nicholas II cut off this belligerent reverie. Anastasia was, after all, married to the host, a possible commander in chief of the Russian armies.” (163)
- Kaiser Wilhelm II only read Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia in the newspaper. The Austrians had not sent it to Germany ahead of time, despite relying on Germany’s “blank check” in terms of support for a war against Serbia. As McMeekin notes: “What angered Wilhelm most was that he had finally learned that day [Monday, July 27]of the text of Austria’s Thursday ultimatum to Belgrade — not from Jagow or Bethmann, but from the Wolff news agency.” (225)
- Berchtold lied to Franz Josef to get him to approve the declaration of war on Serbia. On the morning of Tuesday, July 28, Berchtold went to the emperor at Bad Ischl and persuaded him to declare war. How? By telling him that Serbian troops had already fired on Austrians on the Danube. They had not. (244)
- When Austria finally declared war on Serbia on July 28, Serbian officials thought it was a joke. The telegram declaring war came through at 11:10 am on Tuesday morning, July 28. The Serbians deciphered it at 12:30 pm. “…Berchtold’s telegram was unaccompanied by any military action, which appears to have left the Serbians in doubt as to its veracity. Pašić, indeed, thought it was a hoax, not least because the direct telegraphic line to Austria had been cut off and he was not sure how the telegram had reached Serbian territory. Serbia’s prime minister went so far as to wire to Petersburg, Paris, and London to inform friendly powers ‘of the strange telegram he had received and to ask whether it was true that Austria had declared war on Serbia.’” (245) A fiction writer couldn’t make this stuff up.

Subtitle: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
Author: Adam Hochschild
Publisher: Mariner Books
Year: 2020 (first edition, 1998)
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Long story short: During the late 19th century “scramble for Africa,” Leopold took advantage of European explorers and missionaries and used them to seize control of the Congo, which he took possession of as a personal colony in 1885. And then he ruthlessly exploited its people and resources to make money. His decisions led to the mass murder of an estimated 10 million of Africans. Let that sink in – an estimated 10 million. Leopold never cared about anything but profit, earned mostly from wild rubber. Prestige and power were nice, but secondary to the cold, hard cash. The court of public opinion eventually forced him to sell the Congo to Belgium, but the damage had been done. And he was never sorry about any of it, not until the day he died.
Should You Read It?
Yes. This book is very well-written – Hochschild uses fictional techniques like foreshadowing and cliffhanger chapter endings. Like every other English major on the planet, I read Heart of Darkness in college. Like 99% of the books I read in college, it meant little to me at the time. But now, as a 45-year-old woman, with a better idea of how hard and horrible the world can be, the tie-in with the subject matter of Conrad’s most famous novel was very appealing.
Hochschild populates this book with a lot of memorable characters: writer Joseph Conrad, explorer Henry Stanley (of “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” fame), and of course, the chief asshole, Leopold himself. What’s even better is the depiction of courageous people who saw what was happening and spoke up: English shipping clerk Edmund Morel, African-American journalist George Washington Williams, African-American missionary William Sheppard, and Irish nationalist Roger Casement are all worth meeting. Mark Twain, Booker T. Washington, and Arthur Conan Doyle also make appearances.
Tidbits
- Leopold married Archduchess Marie Henriette of Austria. A month later, she wrote, “If God hears my prayers, I shall not go on living much longer.” Doesn’t that break your heart? (35)
- When Leopold visited Seville as a student, he was more interested in money than in sightseeing. He wrote, “I am very busy here going through the Indies archives and calculating the profit which Spain made then and makes now out of her colonies.” (36)
- The U.S. was the first country to officially recognize the Congo as Leopold’s possession. Stellar work.
- The invention of the rubber bicycle tire in 1887 transformed the Congo into Leopold’s personal ATM. His soldiers and employees forced Africans to gather rubber for them. If they didn’t meet Leopold’s quotas, they were maimed or murdered or their families were kidnapped or maimed or murdered or starved or all of the above.
- When Leopold’s daughter Stephanie remarried a Hungarian count (her first husband, Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, famously died by suicide), Leopold would only refer to her second husband as “that shepherd.” (135)
- Kaiser Wilhelm II and his wife both loathed Leopold. Wilhelm once called him “Satan and Mammon in one person.” (239) Augusta Viktoria once had a room he had stayed in exorcised after he left.
- According to the author’s estimate, the population of the Congo was halved between 1880 and 1920, reduced from 20 million to 10 million. That’s due to disease, starvation, and murder.
- After Leopold’s death, it took decades for investigators to uncover where he’d hidden all his money. It was a trail of shell company after shell company. By 1923, they finally got a handle on things and realized some of the money he’d appropriated had belonged to his sister Charlotte, still alive but mentally ill.
- Jules Marchal, a leading historian who studied Leopold and the Congo, estimates that Leopold made 220 million francs ($1.1 billion in today’s money) from the Congo. (277)
- 9 out of 10 New York publishers turned down this book because they thought American readers would not be interested in African history.

Subtitle: The Saga of the Stuart Pretenders
Author: Theo Aronson
Publisher: Lume Books
Year: 2020 (digital edition)
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
King James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, but that didn’t end Stuart hopes of ruling Britain. James’s son, also named James (the Old Pretender), tried to invade and conquer Britain in 1715. It didn’t work out. It also didn’t work out in 1745, when James’s grandson, Prince Charles Edward (the Young Pretender) tried it. This book covers both of those famous risings, and a whole lot more.
The story begins with James II and Queen Mary of Modena as they fled England for France and set up a shadow court under the good graces of King Louis XIV. After a few initial missteps with Louis’s brother, Monsieur (a stickler for etiquette), Mary of Modena became the respected leader of the Jacobin court in exile. Her grace, intelligence, sensible judgment, and devotion to her aging husband made her a beloved figure. Their children, James III (to Legitimists) and Princess Louise, were the shining lights of the Stuart dynasty for a short time.
Unfortunately, the beautiful and intelligent Louise died young. And James III failed to regain his father’s throne. He married a Polish princess, Maria Clementina Sobieska, and had two sons: Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and Henry. Although both of those sons were known as King Charles III and King Henry IX by their followers, they became “also-rans” in the history books, both dying with no legitimate male heirs.
When Henry IX died in 1807, the Stuart legitimists had to consult the family tree to find their next pretender. By that point, it was mostly an exercise in nomenclature. The Hanoverian kings had a firm grip on Britain, and no foreign power was going to risk supporting a Stuart in yet another rising. It’s a fascinating story, made even better by Aronson’s eye for anecdotes and personal details.
Should You Read It?
Yes. I really enjoyed this, mostly because the stories were new to me. Aronson is a good writer who always keeps the focus on the personalities rather than the politics, which I appreciate so much.
Tidbits
- James II and Mary of Modena’s son, Prince James Francis Edward, was subject to a strange ritual of 18th century childcare: “He should have been swaddled at all times, not only at night, ran one criticism; and was it really necessary, ran another, for him to be tossed up, gurgling, into the air in order to prevent him from contracting what the English called ‘Ricket’?” (81)
- James II had two illegitimate sons with Arabella Churchill. The first, the Duke of Berwick, joined the French army and married the daughter of one of Mary of Modena’s ladies-in-waiting. The second, Henry Fitzjames, was described by the Duc de Saint-Simon as “the stupidest man on earth.” Ouch. (106)
- James III (the Old Pretender) fell in love with Princess Benedicta of Modena, a cousin of his mother and the oldest daughter of the reigning duke. But the duke was too afraid to piss off King George I by letting his daughter marry the guy angling for George’s throne. He refused to allow the marriage, and broke James’s heart.
- Emperor Charles V arrested James III’s intended bride, Maria Clementina Sobieska, at the request of King George I. George really didn’t want James to marry the wealthy Polish princess, produce heirs, and continue the struggle to regain the throne. George even offered a huge bribe to anyone else who would marry Maria Clementina. She refused all comers, however, since she’d had a dream that she would one day be queen of England.
- While in hiding in Scotland after his failed rising, Charles III (the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie) fell in love (or at least in “like”) with his host’s niece, Clementina Walkinshaw – who had been named after Charles’s mother. Previously uninterested in women in general, he developed a bond with Clementina because she wasn’t out to seduce him. It was one of the few untroubled relationships he ever had with a woman. Years later, in 1752, they ended up living together in Ghent. Aronson says it’s unclear if he asked her to join him or if she volunteered. (241)
- In 1750, Charles III converted to Anglicanism. I don’t know why I never knew this before. What a silly choice – it alienated all his Catholic supporters, and didn’t win him any new English ones. He was already a lost cause and they knew it.
- Bonnie Prince Charlie had an illegitimate daughter with Clementina Walkinshaw named Charlotte, who late took the title Duchess of Albany. He did not have any children with his wife, Princess Louise of Stolberg (Queen Louise, to Stuart legitimists). When they married, she was a beautiful but poor 20-year-old and he was 52. Ouch.

Author: Robert Pick
Publisher: Dial Press
Year: 1976
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
The book opens on October 21, 1916 – with a murder. Austria-Hungary’s Prime Minister, Count Karl Stürgkh, was shot and killed while eating lunch at the Hotel Meissel and Schadn. I love that the author included details about what the doomed man ordered, based on an interview with the restaurant’s head waiter who was there at the time: “a bowl of mushroom soup, a dish of boiled beef with mashed turnips…and a farina confection which ‘wasn’t bad at all.’ A tumbler of dry white wine mixed with seltzer was served with the meal.” (2-3) This assassin, Dr. Friedrich Adler, fired three shots into Stürgkh’s head and shouted, “Down with absolutism! We want peace!”(5)
It’s a dramatic scene, and a good introduction to the fall of an empire.
This book doesn’t focus on royalty, like most of the books I read. It’s more about the overall political scene in Vienna. You get an in-depth look at the political parties active at the time: the Social Democrats, the Christian-Socials, and the Communists. Emperor Karl plays a large role, of course, but he’s just one spoke in the wheel (and not its hub). The story takes us from the prime minister’s assassination to war shortages to workers’ strikes to the Sixtus Affair to the government’s collapse. You get a good balance of quotes and descriptions from primary sources (diaries and letters) as well as newspaper articles from the time.
You really get a good sense of what it was like to live in Vienna as food and fuel grew scarce, as strikes loomed, as a war-weary people began to question what the war was really all for. The author is deft with details: a soap shortage leading to coffeehouses that smelled worse than usual, wooden shoes clattering on cobblestones in the inner city, etc. All in all, you can feel the exhaustion as you’re reading this. Joseph Redlich’s diary entry on the day Franz Josef died reads: “…a deep tiredness, close to apathy, is hovering over Vienna. Neither sorrow for the deceased nor joy over his successor can be noticed.” (14) Throughout the book, the author has a knack for picking great quotes from his sources, including Redlich’s diary.
Should You Read It?
If you’re interested in a wider view of the Habsburg dynasty’s fall, yes. If you’re only interested in royal women, this veers too far from that path and would probably bore you.
That being said, I’m not usually interested in politics myself, but the details and quotes Pick chose bring the story alive and make political goings-on more interesting than I would have imagined. So even if you don’t think the struggles of the Social Democrats against the Christian-Socials sound very interesting, give it a shot. You’ll have a broader understanding of what Karl and Zita were up against.

Subtitle: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire
Author: Geoffrey Wawro
Publisher: Basic Books
Year: 2014
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Long story short: This book is heavily focused on the initial period of World War I, from Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination to the last gasp of Austro-Hungarian-led military offensives in 1915. After these initial campaigns in Galicia, Serbia, and the Carpathians exhausted Austria-Hungary’s capabilities, the Germans were forced to come to their rescue. The Austro-Hungarian army was reduced to a supporting actor in the war, and Wawro summarizes the rest of these efforts in much less detail in the final couple chapters.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Wawro has opinions, which I like reading. There are lots of places to get the basic facts of who marched where and which battle took place on which date. It’s much more interesting to find out what the author actually thinks about the events he’s writing about.
Take, for example, Wawro’s characterization of Franz Joseph: “As a supreme commander, he was a butcher. As a strategist, he was a knight errant. As a statesman, whose longevity might have allowed him to fix or temper Austria-Hungary’s enfeebling problems, he was absent.” (383) Wawro rails against the “historical picture of the lone figure who presided over this unfolding human catastrophe” as “the bewhiskered old father of the empire whose heart was in the right place.” (383)
Ouch, right? But it’s valuable to get different takes on the situation because it forces you to start thinking. Who do you agree with? How should these historical figures be judged? We each have to make up our own minds. And to do that, I like to consider strongly voiced opinions like Wawro’s.
He also assigns Austria-Hungary more blame than most for causing the war in the first place. This makes me really want to read Sean McMeekin’s The Russian Origins of the First World War for a competing perspective (Russia and Germany started the war).
See, this is what’s amazing and devastating about history. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know.
Caveats
I’ve seen this situation happen in history books that focus on politics and war – they get small details about the royal figures involved wrong. I get it – that’s not their focus. To them, the royal figures are on the periphery of the action, supporting actors, and it’s not likely the authors spent years researching them before writing. But it does beg the question: what else might be glossed over or not looked into thoroughly? What other incorrect conclusions might the author have come to?
- Wawro puts a weird (and, to my mind, incorrect) spin on the timing of Franz Ferdinand being “named Austria-Hungary’s crown prince and heir apparent” in 1898. According to him, “everyone assumed – until 1898, when they gave up assuming – that the emperor would simply remarry and produce another son, rendering his nephew irrelevant. But the emperor, besotted with Frau Schratt, never bothered remarrying, and the so the monarchy was stuck with Franz Ferdinand.” (45) WTactualF. How could anyone in the empire, let alone “everyone,” assume up until 1898 that Franz Joseph would remarry…when he was still married to Elisabeth? Divorce was out of the question, as it had been for Crown Prince Rudolf prior to his death by suicide in 1889. It was only after 1898 and Elisabeth’s assassination that any question could even be raised of 68-year-old Franz Joseph’s remarrying. I seem to recall a minister or someone bringing this up to Franz Joseph, and it pretty much died on the vine. He was old, he had loved Elisabeth desperately, and never took the idea seriously. So up until 1898, the only people (the mysterious “everyone,” according to Wawro) who could possibly have considered the idea of the emperor remarrying were either misinformed or willfully ignorant. But, if he had decided to remarry, it would have been purely out of a sense of duty to the empire, his raison d’etre. The relationship with Katharina Schratt would not have prevented it. She was always meant to be a behind-the-scenes character in his life, and the presence or absence of Empress Elisabeth didn’t change that. This entire passage made me stop and write “WTF” in the margin because it didn’t make sense. It felt extremely unfounded, and had no footnotes or supporting information. Again, who is “everyone”? A minor point in the grand scheme of the book, but so wildly off course in terms of what I know of Franz Joseph that it made me question the author’s work in total.
- Wawro repeatedly refers to the Russian commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, as Nicholas II’s uncle. Nope. One quick look at a Romanov family tree would show you that the commander-in-chief was not a brother of the tsar’s father (uncle), nor the father of any of the tsar’s actual uncles (great-uncle). The tsar and his commander-in-chief both descended from Tsar Nicholas I, making them cousins once removed. Again, not a deal-breaker, but this sloppiness reveals a willingness to trust details without verifying them. The more I learn about history (and the study of history), the more I realize you can’t trust anyone. Like, literally no one. Even if all of your sources refer to Nikolasha as the tsar’s uncle, you still have to go back to the family tree and double-check that yourself.
Should You Read It?
If you’re at all interested in World War I, yes. If you’re interested in Austria-Hungary, yes. Or if you’re interested in an alternate perspective on who should bear guilt for starting the war, yes.

Subtitle: Ein Leben für Ungarn
Author: K. Eberhard Oehler
Publisher: Ernst Franz Verlag
Year: 2003
Available at: Abe Books
What’s It About?
First things first - information about Maria Dorothea is hard to come by. Neither the Habsburgs nor the Württemberg family has any documents on her, according to the author. The archives of the former palatine of Hungary no longer exist. A couple of Hungarian-language biographies and some church archives/biographies had most of the information available on her. So needless to say, this is a short biography but it covers what it’s possible to know about her.
Born in 1797 in Carlsruhe, Silesia, Maria Dorothea married Palatine Joseph of Hungary, the brother of Emperor Franz II of Austria. As one of only two Protestants who married into the Habsburg family, she had a rough time of it. They didn’t trust her, and worried she would try to convert the Hungarians her husband governed in the emperor’s name. She did all she could to support the existing Protestants in Hungary, but knew better than to openly defy her husband’s family. Still, when he died, the emperor recalled her to Vienna, unwilling to let her stay in Hungary. She was too dangerous, they all thought. In reality, she was a devout and pious woman who wanted to help anyone who needed it. The move to Vienna nearly broke her heart – she loved Hungary and the Hungarians. She died unexpectedly while on a visit to Hungary in 1855 and is buried in Budapest.
Should You Read It?
If you (a) read German, and (b) are obsessively interested in the Habsburgs, Hungary, or the Württemberg royal family, then yes.
If not, this might be a little arcane for you.
Because of the lack of information on Maria Dorothea, some parts of this biography are thin. Other times, the author tells you something but doesn’t provide any evidence or support. For example, after Maria Dorothea moved to Vienna as a widow, he writes of Emperor Franz Josef: “The young, educated and upright monarch adored the Protestant woman. Even as a young man, he often visited the Augarten with his brother Maximilian, who later became Emperor of Mexico.” (117) Okay, that’s great, but how do we know this? Did Franz Josef write to her? Praise her to others? This is all we get, a tidbit in passing. I have no doubt it’s true – the author did a great deal of research just to get us this far. But I wish there was more backup or detail for statements like this.
Tidbits
- Her dad, Duke Louis Eugene of Württemberg, spent money like water. At one point, he was in debtors’ prison in Warsaw and his brother, the king of Wurttemberg, had to negotiate for his release. That brother, Friedrich I, and his sister Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia, had to help him out with periodic cash payments. (15)
- Maria Dorothea’s sister Pauline married King Wilhelm I of Württemberg (her cousin).
- Maria Dorothea’s brother Alexander married Countess Claudine Rhedey morganatically – their children became the Counts and later Dukes of Teck (and, through Princess Mary of Teck, ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain & Ireland).
- In 1819, she became the third wife of Archduke Joseph, the Palatine of Hungary (brother of Emperor Franz II, both nephews of Marie Antoinette). His two previous wives had died in childbirth. His second wife left him with a set of twins, Stephen and Hermine.
- None of Joseph’s 3 wives were Catholics. This did not make for smooth sailing in the Habsburg family. When he married Maria Dorothea (a staunch Protestant), Emperor Franz II is supposed to have said: “I would like to pray for the life of this woman myself, because if she dies, your fourth wife will surely be a Jewess.” (32)
- Maria Dorothea learned Hungarian and fell in love with her adopted country. She spent just about every dime she had on charity that benefited the people of Buda and/or Hungary.
- The court in Vienna talked a lot of smack about her because, apparently, she did super weird things like let her kids see her and talk to her whenever they wanted. Perish the thought.
- Her daughter Maria Henriette married King Leopold II of the Belgians. They had a disastrous marriage, which sucks considering how happy her parents’ marriage was and what a good childhood and upbringing she had.
- After the emperor forced her to move to Vienna as a widow, she had to resort to underhanded methods to stay in touch with Protestants in Hungary. Franz Josef’s mother pressured her to convert to Catholicism, but she refused. She slipped letters to her Protestant friends using go-betweens like a ship’s campaign, doctor, and chambermaid. (101)

Subtitle: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin
Author: Susan Nagel
Publisher: Harper Collins
Year: 2004
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Born in 1778, Mary Nisbet of Dirleton was a wealthy Scottish heiress, the great-granddaughter of the 2nd Duke of Rutland. She married a fellow Scot, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine in 1799. That same year, they left for Turkey, where Bruce would be England’s new ambassador. But while in Turkey, it was Mary who took on the starring role in their partnership. She broke barriers by charming Sultan Selim III and befriending his mother, his Grand Vizier, and the Captain Pasha. She was the only Western woman invited to the Seraglio and Topkapi Palace. In a time when women were relegated to the harem, Mary shone like a star.
Their stay in Turkey is what gave Lord Elgin the proximity and permission to excavate and remove the famous Parthenon marbles from present-day Greece (then an Ottoman possession). He used Mary’s money to finance his passion for archaeology. Mary herself seems to have had little to do with it. Elgin ordered the excavation, paid for it with Mary’s money, and left her to handle the travel arrangements to get the marbles back to England.
But what’s more interesting about her life story is the way she tried to take control of her own body – and was put through the ringer for it. She didn’t enjoy being pregnant, and after an incredibly difficult pregnancy with her fifth child, she told her husband she absolutely wasn’t going to do that again. He didn’t accept her decision, told her he wanted another son, and the marriage disintegrated from there.
Of course, it didn’t help that Mary had also fallen in love with one of her husband’s old friends, Robert Ferguson. By this point, her husband was in “take no prisoners” mode. He decided to divorce Mary, which meant putting her and Robert on trial for adultery. The scandal rocked the entire country.
Mary and Ferguson were found guilty; an Act of Parliament divorced Elgin and Mary. Unfortunately, Elgin had thought he’d walk away with Mary’s money, too. Nope. Mary’s family used the legal system (their wills and good lawyers) to prevent that from happening.
After the scandal, Mary married Ferguson and they lived their lives exactly how they wanted – together, quietly, with no further pregnancies for Mary. It took decades for her to re-establish a relationship with her surviving children, but it happened eventually. As for Elgin? Without Mary’s money (and her ability to rein in his spending), he went broke and sold the Elgin marbles to the British government in 1816.
The marbles, although they feature in the book’s title, play almost no role in the story. They’re just the frame, and possibly the hook, to get you to read it. The rest of the story is what’s most rewarding.
Should You Read It?
Yes – because the story of Mary’s fight to control her own body was astonishing. The excerpts from her letters detailing how awful she felt during her pregnancies and how hard it was for her to recover were painful to read at points. You can’t help but root for her as she tells Elgin she won’t do it again. It’s worth reading just to know how hard a struggle it was for a woman to do something as simple as say “no” in those days.

Subtitle: The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones
Author: Larry Loftis
Publisher: Atria Books
Year: 2022
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Aline Griffith was an all-American girl, born in Pearl River, New York in 1920. Tall and beautiful, Aline found work as a model in New York City. But when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, her brothers enlisted in the military. Aline wanted to help, too, but modeling wasn’t going to win the war. So when she met a mysterious man at a dinner party named Frank Ryan, she told him she wanted to go to Europe, where the action was.
Turns out, Frank Ryan was a spy recruiting agents for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). When Aline accepted his offer of a position in Europe, he sent her to a place called The Farm near Clinton, Maryland. There, OSS agents learned to shoot, fight, make dead drops, and crack safes.
After weeks of training, Aline was sent to Madrid, Spain. Spain was a neutral country, but it was a hive of activity for Axis and Allied spies. Her station boss was Gregory Thomas, code name ARGUS. Her code name? BUTCH, an ironic name for a beautiful model.
From her arrival in February 1944, Aline had to hold down a day job as cover in Madrid - as well as mingle with high society and learn as much as she could about any Nazi plans. And she was good at it. Right away, she met one of the most famous bullfighters in Spain, Don Juan Belmonte, who took her out on dates to the most fashionable restaurants and nightclubs. There, she gathered information on suspected Nazi spies like Princess Maria Agatha of Ratibor and Corvey and Prince Maximilian Egon von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who knew high-ranking Nazis including Himmler and Göring.
This book follows her adventures as she helps uncover details on Nazi contacts in Spain, and then – after the war – fleeing Nazis and stolen art. As if all that wasn’t exciting enough, it turns into a love story when Aline falls for Luis Figueroa, was one of the wealthiest nobles in Spain. His grandfather, the Count of Romanones, had been one of King Alfonso XIII’s ministers before his abdication. Can a relationship survive when one partner is a spy, lying to the other? If you read this book, you’ll find out.
Should You Read It?
Yes. This is a fantastic read. The author describes this as a nonfiction thriller, and he’s right. He uses the techniques of a novelist, including cliffhanger chapter endings and dialogue, to propel you through book. All the dialogue, however, is real – it comes from reports, statements, memoirs, and other nonfiction sources.
I really appreciated Loftis’s effort to include only incidents that can be confirmed. Aline’s three memoirs, as it turns out, are full of contradictions, fictional elements, conflations, and name changes. Loftis gets to the bottom of most of it, and boy, even without the fictional elements, it’s one hell of a story. I enjoyed the notes section thoroughly, where Loftis points out why he included what he did (and what didn’t make the cut).
Aline is bold, brave, and fun to root for. Highly recommended.
Tidbits
- Want to know where Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain got her chocolate? Loftis has the answer: “He turned on Calle Peligros and stopped in front of a store called La Mahonesa. Inside, the owner, Don José, greeted Juanito with several bows and then turned to Aline. ‘Señorita, it is an honor to have you visit this shop. For one hundred and sixty-six years, my ancestors and I have made Spain’s best chocolates. We have served the royal family and the country’s most illustrious citizens. The señorita shall have a box just like the ones we used to prepare for Queen Victoria Eugenia.’” (54)
- Prince Maximilian Egon von Hohenlohe was suspected of being a spy for Nazi Germany. “He had numerous Nazi connections, OSS reports indicated, including Himmler and Hermann Göring, Germany’s Reichsmarschall. He was also a confidant of Walter Schellenberg, Himmler’s foreign intelligence chief, and it was possible that he was rendering political services to the Gestapo.” (59) Was he really working for Hitler? I won’t spoil the story…
- Bullfighting is a leitmotif in this book. You’ll read a lot about it here, and although I struggle with the cruelty of it, the way it’s described in this book (with quotes from Hemingway, Steinbeck, and bullfighters themselves) helped me see what aficionados see in it: the poetry, the lifestyle, the bravery, and the acceptance of fear. And if you’re wondering where the royals used to watch bullfighting, Loftis has our answer: “Next they went to the Plaza Mayor, a seventeenth-century square surrounded by ancient buildings with iron-railed balconies. ‘That’s where the royal family and the court used to watch the bullfights,’ Juanito said. ‘When the matador was especially successful, the ladies sometimes threw pearls into the ring.’” (84)
- Here’s a Steinbeck quote Loftis cites that resonated with me, as someone with an office job: “‘I like bullfighting,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘because to me it is a lonely, formal, anguished microcosm of what happens to every man, sometimes in an office, strangled by the glue on envelopes.’” (131)
- Thanks to Aline’s secretive trips outside Spain on spy missions, her relationship with Luis had its ups and downs. During one of the downs, she was in Paris and he was reading about her in the newspaper. “…one day Luis surprised her by calling her at the office. This time the line was crystal clear. ‘I’ve been reading the Paris newspapers,’ he said. ‘What were you doing at Maxim’s with the king of Yugoslavia?’ Aline smiled. King Peter II was only three years her senior and was quite handsome. Before she could answer, Luis added: ‘I played golf with him and he’s not only a bad golfer, but he’s also a big bore.’ Aline mumbled an answer, pleased that Luis was jealous.” (201) I am here for Luis’s royal gossip.

Author: Theo Aronson
Publisher: Lume Books
Year: 2020 (first published 1972)
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
Try this fact on for size: “Born six years after the death of King George III, the Empress Eugenie was to die six years before the birth of Queen Elizabeth II.” (264) This kind of blew my mind when I read it. I mean, I knew Eugenie lived a very long life, but I hadn’t placed it in quite that context.
But this isn’t a book about Eugenie – not exclusively. And that’s what made it so enjoyable. I really liked seeing the threads of these relationships all displayed together. Napoleon III knew how to flatter Alfred. He knew how to flirt with Victoria. He charmed them both at their initial meeting in Paris. It’s also interesting to note how Victoria always felt Eugenie was a delicate, wilting sort of flower – when, to others, she displayed incredible tenacity and vivacity. Clearly, she put on her best behavior for Victoria…and the habit stuck. The two women became fast friends, which was my favorite part of the book. Both long-lived women survived the crushing sadness of their loved ones’ death. They knew what it meant to hurt and grieve, and they respected that depth of feeling in the other. If you want an unexpected feel-good story about women supporting each other, this book fits the bill.
As always seems to happen these days, there are some OCR errors because a lazy publisher failed to pay someone to proofread the eBook after it was converted from the scanned physical copy. Expect to see quite a few mentions of “Empress Eugenic,” a very unfortunate result. I’m available, if anyone’s paying attention.
Should You Read It?
If you’re a fan of Victoria or Eugenie, yes. Or if you just want to see two royal women who cared deeply about each other, yes. Politics, schmolitics. This female friendship had me glued. It’s like The Golden Girls, but with only two cast members. If they were alive today, could someone have convinced them to start a podcast? Probably not – that would be way too public and undignified. But good lord, I would have paid a lot to hear the gossip-loving Victoria sit down with Eugenie for a coffee klatch.
Tidbits
- When Queen Victoria visited Paris, it was a big freakin’ deal: “The Queen’s room had been designed to resemble, as much as possible, her own at Buckingham Palace. The zealous decorators had even gone so far as to saw the legs off an exquisitely proportioned table lest it prove too high for the diminutive Queen.” (60)
- Queen Victoria didn’t have much fashion sense…and the French knew it. But, as this anecdote shows, sometimes there was a damn good reason: “Princess Mathilde was appalled to see the Queen setting out with a huge home-made handbag on which was embroidered a multicoloured parrot. The embroidery was the handiwork of one of her daughters, explained the Queen with disarming pride to the astounded Princess.” (67)
- As politics began to poison the two countries’ political alliance, the occasions their rulers saw each other became less magical, too. In August of 1858: “The rather strained visit over, Victoria could hardly wait to get back to reading ‘that most interesting book, Jane Eyre’. (107)
- I love this quote.” ‘One of the first duties of a sovereign,’ Napoleon III used to say, ‘is to amuse his subjects of all ranks in the social scale. He has no more right to have a dull Court than he has to have a weak army or a poor Navy.’” (128)
- I love this quote, too. “Henry Ponsonby always claimed that he knew of only two people who were quite unafraid of Queen Victoria: the one was John Brown and the other the Prince Imperial.” (183)
- Who doesn’t appreciate a good prank? I know, I know – the person upon whom the prank is played. But you have to adore the fact that Eugenie’s son, Louis, and the Prince of Wales (despite being a generation apart in age) worked together on this one: “Both princes shared the contemporary passion for practical jokes, with Louis proving particularly resourceful. Lillie Langtry, then in the first flush of her social success, tells the story of a seance, attended by both princes, at which Louis was discovered emptying bags of flour over Bertie’s head. On another occasion the two men, having hoisted a live donkey through a bedroom window, dressed it in nightclothes and tucked it up in a guest’s bed.” (185) Gives new meaning to the phrase “donkey show”…
- Was there something between Princess Beatrice and Prince Louis? Eugenie seems to have believed so: “Some time after Louis’s death, the Empress Eugenic [sic – see my comment above about lazy eBook publishers] presented Queen Victoria with a little package. The Queen was to promise that she would not open it until after Eugenie’s death. Victoria promised, but curiosity getting the better of her and emotion the better of the Empress, they decided to open it together after all. It contained a magnificent emerald cross—the gift of the King of Spain to Eugenie on her marriage to Napoleon III. The Empress had intended it, she told the Queen, for Louis’s bride.” (189)

Subtitle: The Private Correspondence of Tsars Alexander I, Nicholas I and the Grand Dukes Constantine and Michael with Their Sister Queen Anna Pavlovna 1817-1855
Editor: S.W. Jackman
Publisher: Macmillan
Year: 1969
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
The star of the show, in this collection, is Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna. In 1816, she married Prince Willem of Orange, heir to the throne of the Netherlands. Throughout her tenure as Princess of Orange and later Queen of the Netherlands, some pretty crazy stuff happened: the theft of her jewels in Brussels in 1829 and the Belgian Revolution in 1830, in particular. Later in life, Anna’s daughter-in-law, Sophie, had horrible things to say about her, so it’s interesting to see Anna’s personality in these letters to get a feel for the woman who brought out pure rage in Sophie.
The three youngest Romanov siblings – Anna, Nicholas, and Michael – formed a club called Triopathy (of which their mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna, was an honorary member). Anna mentions the Triopathy a handful of times, including the membership rings they had made, showing what a close bond these three younger siblings had. Although Michael is barely represented here, you can tell she’s always keen to see him and hear about what he’s doing based on what she tells Constantine and Nicholas.
Anna and Willem had four surviving kids: Willem (their heir heir), Alexander, Henry, and Sophie. It’s heartwarming to see the otherwise ferocious and fractious Grand Duke Constantine ask about “Miss Orange [i.e., Sophie]” and say wise and sweet things to his sister. He comes off as balanced, rational, kind, and compassionate – not words that were used to describe him outside the family circle.
That’s the great fun of reading private letters. You get to see sides of historical figures they might not have revealed anywhere else.
Should You Read It?
Yes. If you have any interest in the Romanovs, this will be a fun read. There’s nothing here that’s earth-shattering – no great revelations, no political secrets. The Romanovs all mention saving the juiciest details for messengers to deliver in person; no one wanted their dirty laundry aired if the mail went astray. Still, it’s the day-to-day details and musings on current events that I most want to read, and all of those things are in these letters. You’ll find Anna asking her brother Nicholas for favors, Anna defending William and her father-in-law when they do things the Russians don’t understand, Anna smack-talking a Russian minister, and Anna gushing over getting to spend time with her nephew Sasha (the future Tsar Alexander II).
Tidbits
- Anna’s Willem is the same Willem (William, in English) of Orange who was originally slated to marry George IV’s daughter, Princess Charlotte of Great Britain. She balked, and Willem was available when Anna’s oldest brother, Tsar Alexander I, was looking for a husband for her.
- Anna’s mom (Empress Maria Feodorovna) gave this advice when Anna was caught between her feuding husband and father-in-law: “The surest weapon for leading him back to the paths of conciliation and love is gentleness, dear Annette, and it is the only one which you must use. You must temper the animation, the rage of the father, by your gentle winning manners, by friendship and endearments…” (71)
- After the 1825 Decembrist revolt in Russia, Constantine – who steadfastly refused the throne of Russia in favor of his younger brother Nicholas – wrote to Anna: “I shall never forget our conversation in the barouche between Frankfurt-am-Main and Mainz, and I repeat that as long as the family is unified…it can win out over all events and face up to the dangers…You will not find me wanting in this regard, and Nicholas can count on me as well as upon my zealousness and devotion to serve him.” (119)
- After visiting Anna and her children in the Netherlands, Constantine wrote to her on his way home: “All my good wishes to with you, my loving affection to all your children and hundreds of the kindest regards to Miss Orange, and I beg her to deliver a message of profound respect to her dolls for me…” (183) This is cute overload – a gruff grand duke delivering a message of profound respect to his little niece’s dolls, whom he must have been introduced to on his visit.
- One time, after the Belgian Revolution and while affairs were still being settled between the new kingdom of Belgium and the Netherlands, Nicholas I mentioned he would have done some things differently from King Willem I (Anna’s father-in-law). She briskly defended her father-in-law and her adopted country to her beloved brother: “As I am attached by feelings and by duty to the cause of the country to which Heaven has joined my fate, I respect the King as my sovereign and in so doing only share the feelings of the nation which aligns itself with him…” (247)
- During the official ceremony (not actually a coronation) when Anna’s husband became Willem II in 1840, he made a toast to Anna’s health. Anna described what she felt in that moment to Nicholas: “God alone could grant me a moment like that! It was one of the sweetest of my life, for it was saying to the nation, ‘I love you’ and ‘I respect you.’” (306)

Subtitle: Cold War in the Days of the Tsars
Author: Virginia Cowles
Publisher: Sharpe Books (digital edition)
Year: 2018 (first published in 1969)
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
This book is an interesting mix of subjects. It’s not about the tsars or Russia, per se, but about Russian efforts to influence events in Europe and elsewhere in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Topics covered include:
- Alexander II as tsar
- The rise of nihilism in Russia
- The rise of terrorism in Russia
- The assassination of Alexander II
- Russia vs. Alexander Battenberg, the Prince of Bulgaria
- The assassination of King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia
- The assassination of Franz Ferdinand
For someone who reads a lot of biographies, this was definitely more focused on politics than people. I struggled, I admit it. The intricacies of Bulgarian politics, for example, made my head bob at times. And since it was written during the Cold War, to convince Western readers that Russia then and Russia now aren’t so different, it didn’t have the flow or continuity that you get from a more contained story. It felt a little meandering and a little aimless. You start out with a close-up view of the Romanov monarchy, in the last years of Nicholas I’s reign and the beginning of Alexander II’s. But then the focus shifts to Bulgaria and Serbia, and the last half of the book is more about the governments and politicians of these countries than Russia. It’s a weird mix, and you just have to go with it.
Should You Read It?
It’s well-written, as all Cowles books are, but this one felt disjointed. If you’re already deeply interested in Balkan politics, yes, read this. If you’re not, I’d suggest skipping it or cherry-picking chapters on people or events you care about.
Also, skip the digital edition and order the paperback if you really want this one; the eBook omits the bibliography and any footnotes or endnotes. Someone just used OCR to convert the paper book to an eBook and didn’t do a good job of checking and proofing. Really lazy formatting. There’s an acknowledgements page where she thanks publishers for permission to quote from a handful of books; this is the only indication of any source material you get in the digital version.

Subtitle: The Queens and Consorts Who Shaped the Nation
Author: Rosalind K. Marshall
Publisher: Birlinn (digital edition)
Year: 2019 (first published in 2003)
Available at: Amazon
I enjoyed reading about these little-known royal women, from Lady Macbeth to Saint Margaret to Anne of Denmark. Marshall covers 31 women who reigned as consort or queen regnant from 1034, when Duncan I came to throne, to Queen Anne’s death in 1714. During Anne’s reign, Scotland and England were joined, meaning there were no more queens of Scotland as a stand-alone country.
Marshall begins with Lady Macbeth, the first Scottish queen whose name we know: Gruoch. (It’s unclear if King Duncan’s wife, Suthen, was alive when he succeeded to the throne in 1034.) When King Duncan was killed and her husband seized the throne, she became queen. There’s much we don’t know about her – did she love Macbeth? Was she ambitious, as Shakespeare depicted her? That’s the story about so many of the early queens of Scotland. We know they lived, we know if they had surviving children, but most other details have been lost to history. Whenever possible, Marshall provides their life stories and gives them the benefit of the doubt when there’s harmful gossip about them. Anne of Denmark was described as being stupid, for example, but Marshall makes it clear she had strong emotions, deep interests, and was a generous patron of the arts.
It’s pointless to summarize this cavalcade of women, who were all so different. So I’ll just give you a few facts from Marshall’s conclusion that help illuminate who we’re talking about:
- 27 were queens consort and 4 were queens in their own right
- 10 of 27 queens consort were the daughters of kings
- 9 were English
- 6 were French
- One was Anglo-Irish, 3 were Danish, one was Dutch, one was Portuguese, and one was Italian
- Only 4 of the 31 queens covered were Scottish
- The average age of the women when they married was 15.5
- The biggest age gap between husband and wife? Yolande, Countess of Montfort was 26 years younger than King Alexander III when they married in 1285
- 5 of the queens had already borne a son to their first husbands before remarrying a man who either was or became king: Gruoch, Ingebjorg, Matilda, Margaret Logie, and Mary of Guise
- None of the queens is known to have died in childbirth (one named Ingebjorg might have, but it’s unclear)
- 14 of the 31 queens died before their husbands, but 13 outlived them
- Two queens, Yolande and Catherine of Braganza, went back to their home countries after their husbands died
Caveats
Scottish history is turbulent, folks. The last flight I took that had this much turbulence ended with at least one attendant in tears and everyone else clutching a barf bag. The result? Total disorientation. In the first quarter of the book, kings and queens appear and vanish in paragraphs as they are chosen, anointed, dethroned, and/or buried in rapid succession.
We just don’t know much about these women or their lives, and recapping the bare bones of their lives and reigns often amounts to a few lines or a few pages. The dizzying succession of families and factions was hard to keep straight, so in the end, I just let my eyes drift over the words without being able to really absorb what was going on.
Will this happen to you? I can’t say – but until I got to the late medieval queens (Mary of Gueldres, Margaret of Denmark), I had zero ability to retain or follow the succession without more detail. But, in this case, that detail would have been extraneous to the book’s mission, so it was understandably omitted.
Beware OCR Errors
As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, big publishers routinely fail to proofread the results after scanning and converting print books to eBooks. This one is no exception. One of the most egregious errors? Referring to Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart) as “Mary Smart.” I shit you not. The first sentence of her chapter reads: “‘Queen of Scots’ was the title used by female monarchs and consorts of Scotland before 1603, but for most of us these words mean only one person, Mary Smart, the daughter of James V and Mary of Guise.” (126)
There are lots of errors like this throughout the book, although none as funny.
Don’t blame the author for these mistakes – this is entirely the publisher’s fault for failing to proofread the digital edition before taking your money. Because corporate greed and laziness aren’t already rampant enough in America.

Subtitle: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor
Editor: Andrew Lownie
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Year: 2022
Available at: Amazon
What’s It About?
The story of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson is well-covered elsewhere – so why another book? Andrew Lownie says his book is different because it’s the only one devoted specifically to what happened after Edward VIII gave up the throne and left Britain for good, transformed into the bumbling Duke of Windsor.
And as you can tell from the title, the book spends a lot of time on Windsor’s activities during World War II. How did he feel about Nazi Germany? What happened during his meeting with Hitler? Did he actively work against Britain’s war effort? The title gives you a clue as to the author’s conclusion. I won’t spoil his findings, but he made a persuasive argument.
The book then follows the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for the rest of their lives, shifting after their deaths to a discussion of some of the many rumors about them. When I got near the end (when he covered their deaths) and realized Lownie hadn’t covered some of these sensitive topics, I was disappointed – and then a little ashamed for wanting all the dirty details. But then he did cover them, in a separate section of the book after he finished summarizing their lives. The part of me that still can’t resist the occasional episode of TMZ was satisfied.
Should You Read It?
Yes. I enjoyed this book – it walked that fine line between detailed research and gossip. There are a few salacious details here, but they’re tucked away toward the end of the book, rewarding you for making it through. Not that making it through was difficult, but I appreciated the author’s tact in putting them toward the end, almost as a reward. The Duke of Windsor is hard to take at times and difficult to like.
Just a Couple Tidbits
- Sir Charles Mendl, a press attaché at the British Embassy in Paris, was knighted in 1924 “for reputedly retrieving letters from a gigolo blackmailing the Duke’s brother George [Duke of Kent], but more likely for his espionage activities.” (62)
- The Duke of Windsor had an incurable case of foot-in-mouth disease. In 1926, at a dinner party: “He said Czechoslovakia was a ridiculous country – just look at it – how could anyone go to war for that? It isn’t a country at all, just an idea of the Wilsons.” (62) Its people, who felt like second-class citizens within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, might disagree.
- This book made me want to find a book about Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe. Here’s one tidbit about her, in 1940: “In December, Adolf Berle noted in his diary that he had seen an FBI report that ‘Sir William Wiseman and Fritz Wiedemann, the German consul general, were cooking up some peace moves together. Wiseman expects to do it through his contacts with Lord Halifax bypassing Lothian.’ Also involved as an intermediary was Stephanie Hohenlohe, Wallis’s former neighbour in Bryanston Court, a close friend of Bedaux and Goering and described by Berle as ‘an old hand at international intrigue.’” (147)
- This book also made me want to know more about the trip of Sir Owen Morshead and Anthony Blunt to Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war to seize paperwork and correspondence that might have revealed how pro-Nazi the Duke of Windsor was. Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip was to recover the 4,000 letters between Queen Victoria and Vicky, her oldest daughter, held at Schloss Kronberg. But, as Lownie writes, there was something more going on: “It looks like the trip to Kronberg was a cover for a fishing expedition, which suggests there was something else the Royal Family was worried about. ‘George VI had every reason to believe that the Hesse archives might contain a “Windsor file”, because Prince Philipp of Hesse had been an intermediary, via the Duke of Kent, between Hitler and the Duke of Windsor,’ claimed Prince Wolfgang of Hesse to the Sunday Times.” (240)

Subtitle: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna
Author: David King
Publisher: Harmony Books
Year: 2008
Available at: Amazon
This book opens with Napoleon’s arrival on Elba on May 4, 1814. The action unfolds in a panorama, with lots of first-person accounts as Napoleon settles on Elba, diplomats and royalty arrive in Vienna, insanely expensive entertainment ensues, Napoleon escapes Elba, and the Allies defeat him and settle the final peace in Paris after Waterloo.
The starring roles go to the wily diplomats Talleyrand and Metternich; their respective love interests – the sisters Dorothée, soon-to-be Duchess of Dino and Wilhelmina, Duchess of Sagan; and the most important rulers at the conference, Emperor Franz I, Tsar Alexander I, and King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. Throw in the British delegates - Castlereagh and Wellington – and you have an ensemble cast that’s ready for their close-up in what should be an HBO limited series.
Seriously.
There is so much sex and money and ego here, it’s unbelievable. I can’t believe this hasn’t been done yet.
Anyhoo, the book takes you through the diplomacy and negotiations that encapsulated the hopes, fears, and dreams of delegates from 200+ states and princely houses. The tidbits below give you a feel for the shenanigans that went on: parties, dances, masquerade balls, concerts, bed hopping, cash flashing, and maybe – if there was time – negotiating for the future of your country.
So what did the conference actually achieve? A mixed bag of things: redrawn maps, Swiss neutrality guaranteed, freedom of seas and international rivers proclaimed, diplomatic procedures established, the slave trade condemned, and stolen works of art restored. (Or not, if the hint about copies leaving the Louvre is true.)
There were lots of interesting little nuggets I didn’t know before. Check it out – random delegations went to the congress to pitch their ideas, including representatives of publishing firms who wanted to address the issue of “literary pirates” – they wanted to create an international copyright to protect intellectual property. How interesting is that?
Should You Read It?
Yes. This was just plain enjoyable to read. I’m thankful King didn’t go too deeply into the politics, which is a weird thing to say about a book that covers an inherently politically driven event. But I wasn’t interested in reading, say, thirty pages on the difficulties inherent in estimating the number of “souls” who lived on the left bank of the Rhine. I’d rather read a page on that and move on to the parties and spies and mistresses. And in this book, you get a little bit of everything: the people, the power, the folly, the money, and the lasting effects. Highly recommended.
Tidbits
- Emperor Franz I played the violin in the Habsburg family string quartet; sometimes Metternich would join them and play the cello. Franz’s other hobbies? Making candy and studying maps. (11)
- At the conference, 29-year-old Jacob Grimm represented Hesse-Cassel. Two years earlier, he and his brother Wilhelm had published what became known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales. (47)
- Some of the spies used by the Austrian chief of police, Baron Hager, have never been identified – including one known only by the infinity symbol, and the one who signed as ** (addressed by Baron von Hager as Your Highness). Who could this be? (69)
- During the first week of October, there was a concert conducted by Antonio Salieri, who had taught Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt. Remember Salieri? The narrator of the play and movie Amadeus? (82)
- Among the many lovely ladies at the conference, Princess Bagration and Wilhelmina, Duchess of Sagan competed to draw the most attention to their salons. And both women ended up broke because the conference went on so long. Wilhelmina had to sell a sapphire necklace to Emperor Franz, and Princess Bagration had to write home to her stepfather for cash after her cook refused to work on credit.
- While in Vienna, Eugène de Beauharnais (stepson of Napoleon) was spotted ducking into a jeweler’s shop and buying something for his latest mistress (whom the author doesn’t name, dang it). A police report submitted to Baron Hager said the bill was 32,000 ducats. Eugène paid in part with a cavalry saber Napoleon had given him. (126)
- The crown princes of Bavaria and Württemberg almost ended up in a duel. They had been playing blindman’s buff at the salon of Princess Thurn und Taxis when one accused the other of cheating. The king of Bavaria stopped the duel in time. (127)
- A banker from Geneva, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, confessed that at a party, he saw King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia standing alone against the wall and thought he was a waiter. He almost asked him for a glass of champagne. LOL. (158)
- On December 23, Tsar Alexander I’s birthday, Beethoven gave a concert. It was the last time he ever played the piano in public. (182)
- On December 30, there was a party at Count Razumovsky’s to celebrate Russia and the tsar. But his palace caught fire in the early morning hours of December 31. His servants tossed as many of his valuable possessions out the windows as they could, but so much was lost: his entire gallery of Canova sculpture, and many Dutch paintings. Even worse, two chimney sweeps went back into the fire to try and rescue some of the Russian embassy’s paperwork…and didn’t make it back out. In the morning, the tsar found Razumovsky sitting along under a tree, crying. (191-2)
- Napoleon’s second wife, Archduchess Marie Louise, had been assured she would get the Duchy of Parma, as promised to her in 1814. But when Napoleon escaped from Elba, she worried that his breaking the 1814 treaty would give people a good excuse for taking Parma away from her. In discussing her inconvenient husband, Archduke Johann of Austria told her, “For your sake and ours, I hope that he breaks his neck!” (243)
- Did you know Metternich had mad pranking skills? His secretary, Gentz, was hella stressed out from doing most of the paperwork during the conference. Napoleon’s escape did not soothe Gentz’s nerves. And then, one morning, he woke up and saw an article in the Wiener Zeitung offering 10,000 ducats as a reward for his murder – signed by Napoleon, in retaliation for a conference document that had referred to him as an outlaw. Gentz freaked the hell out – like, packing a suitcase, panicking, almost in tears. It was left to Dorothée de Talleyrand-Périgord to tell him to look at the paper’s date. The paper was a custom job, created especially by his boss, Metternich. The date? April 1. (250)
- A member of the Sicilian embassy, Duke of Serra Capriola, came to the cash-strapped Princess Bagration’s rescue, guaranteeing her extensive bills would be paid. Who does that? (314)

Subtitle: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe
Author: Andrew Roberts
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 2005
Available at: Amazon
This is a concise account of the battle, including the prequel battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, with a lot of attention given to the specific tactics of the generals involved. It was interesting to see where each combatant made mistakes – Napoleon made more than Wellington or Blücher. Roberts does a very good job of including a wide range of material for such a short book: quotes from soldiers’ memoirs, direct orders from the battlefield, and mentions of what oft-ignored groups like the Dutch & Belgian soldiers were up to.
The one thing I wish this book had was a map. Or, to be more precise, several of them, interspersed throughout the book. If there are maps in the hardcover or paperback editions, they were omitted in the digital version I bought. And because the terrain played such a large role (and it has been greatly altered in the years since), parts of the battle were hard to visualize without a map. For example, the battle contained several knock-down drag-out fights for farmhouses scattered throughout the general area – maps would have helped me visualize how far these were from the main battlefield. Were they *on* the main battlefield? Off to the side? A few hundred feet away? Half a mile away? I just couldn’t picture it.
Also, if possible, it would really have helped to provide dimensions of said farmhouses. When I hear the word “farmhouse,” I’m picturing something about 2,000 square feet. But then I read a mention of 800 or 900 soldiers being inside one of them, and I was like, whoa, this is not the farmhouse I was picturing. Was it more like a barn? How big was this house? Was this a wealthy farmer’s house? Did normal farmers build houses that large? Or were these soldiers crammed in like sardines? A teensy bit more clarity in the description would have helped noobs like me have a clearer sense of the scene.
Should You Read It?
If you’re a fan of military history, yes (although you might not learn much new here).
If you don’t need to know anything about Waterloo, the discussion of tactics might be too much for you. But it’s short, which means you’re not wading through 300 pages of description about whose grenadiers or dragoons moved where.
Beware a Few OCR Errors
I am sick as shit of publishers failing to proofread the eBook versions of their hardcover or paperback books. It’s painfully obvious that most of them scan the hard copy and use optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert it into a digital copy...and then fail to pay anyone to proofread the damn thing.
For example, in the introduction: “Yet what we can say for certain about the battle of Waterloo — that it ended forever the greatest personal world-historical epic since that of Julius $$ — is easily enough to drive us on to want to discover more.”
Not sure why the software couldn’t read “Caesar,” but there you have it.
And since it appears as the first sentence of the third paragraph in the introduction, clearly no one even took a stab at proofing this thing.
Good job, Harper Collins. Your attitude towards eBooks (and readers like me, who enjoy them) is duly noted. I mean, JFC, if you asked for volunteers among employees, librarians, reviewers, or – I don’t know – bloggers who routinely read eBooks about history, chances are someone would have been interested enough to proof this for free.
There are additional errors scattered throughout: a missing dash here, another weird $ there, things like that.
What royal history books have you read this year? Send me a message to recommend your favorites!
Here’s to another great year of royal reading & research in 2023!
Affiliate Disclaimer
I’m a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This content may contain affiliate links, particularly in the Sources section. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you choose to buy using my affiliate link, the seller will pay me a small additional amount at absolutely no cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Girl in the Tiara!
What’s Next?
Check out the blog for fascinating stories about royal women and their tiaras. And don’t forget to join my mailing list to get Grand Duchess Louise of Baden’s meatloaf recipe! It’s finger-lickin’ good.