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)

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)

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.

What’s It About?

Long story short: During the late 19^th 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.

Back to top

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 18^th 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.

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.

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)

Back to top

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)

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.