Notorious Royal Marriages

Notorious Royal Marriages PDF Author: Leslie Carroll
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0451229010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry comes a funny and delightful history of the royal weddings and marriages of Europe’s most famous—and infamous—monarchs. “An irresistible combination of People magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago Tribune Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love—and almost everything to do with diplomacy and dynasty. Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony to form such infamous couples as Russia’s Peter II and Catherine the Great, and France's Henri II and Catherine de Medici—all with the purpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high and silverware flying, kings like England’s Henry II have fled to the beds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine have plotted their revenge... Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs, this book chronicles the love-hate marriages of the crowned heads of Europe—from the Angevins to Charles and Di—and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.

Notorious Royal Marriages

Notorious Royal Marriages PDF Author: Leslie Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101159774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
From the author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry comes a funny and delightful history of the royal weddings and marriages of Europe’s most famous—and infamous—monarchs. This edition includes bonus chapters! “An irresistible combination of People magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago Tribune Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love—and almost everything to do with diplomacy and dynasty. Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony to form such infamous couples as Russia’s Peter II and Catherine the Great, and France's Henri II and Catherine de Medici—all with the purpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high and silverware flying, kings like England’s Henry II have fled to the beds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine have plotted their revenge... Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs, this book chronicles the love-hate marriages of the crowned heads of Europe—from the Angevins to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry—and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.

Notorious Royal Marriages

Notorious Royal Marriages PDF Author: Leslie Carroll
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0451229010
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the author of American Princess: The Love Story of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry comes a funny and delightful history of the royal weddings and marriages of Europe’s most famous—and infamous—monarchs. “An irresistible combination of People magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago Tribune Since time immemorial, royal marriages have had little to do with love—and almost everything to do with diplomacy and dynasty. Clashing personalities have joined in unholy matrimony to form such infamous couples as Russia’s Peter II and Catherine the Great, and France's Henri II and Catherine de Medici—all with the purpose of begetting a male heir. But with tensions high and silverware flying, kings like England’s Henry II have fled to the beds of their nubile mistresses, while queens such as Eleanor of Aquitaine have plotted their revenge... Full of the juicy gossip and bad behavior that characterized Royal Affairs, this book chronicles the love-hate marriages of the crowned heads of Europe—from the Angevins to Charles and Di—and ponders how dynasties ever survived at all.

Royal Pains

Royal Pains PDF Author: Leslie Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451232216
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The author of Notorious Royal Marriages presents some of history's boldest, baddest, and bawdiest royals. The bad seeds on the family trees of the most powerful royal houses of Europe often became the most rotten of apples: über-violent autocrats Vlad the Impaler and Ivan the Terrible literally reigned in blood. Lettice Knollys strove to mimic the appearance of her cousin Elizabeth I and even stole her man. And Pauline Bonaparte scandalized her brother Napoleon by having a golden goblet fashioned in the shape of her breast. Chock-full of shocking scenes, titillating tales, and wildly wicked nobles, Royal Pains is a rollicking compendium of the most infamous, capricious, and insatiable bluebloods of Europe.

Inglorious Royal Marriages

Inglorious Royal Marriages PDF Author: Leslie Carroll
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101598360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
It’s no secret that the marriages of monarchs are often made in hell. Here are some of the most spectacular mismatches in five hundred years of royal history.... In a world where many kings, queens, and princes lacked nothing but true love, marital mismatches could bring out the baddest, boldest behavior in the bluest of bloodlines. Margaret Tudor, her niece Mary I, and Catherine of Braganza were desperately in love with chronically unfaithful husbands, but at least they weren’t murdered by them, as were two of the Medici princesses were. King Charles II’s beautiful, high-spirited sister “Minette” wed Louis XIV’s younger brother, who wore more makeup and perfume than she did. Forced to wed her boring, jug-eared cousin Ferdinand, Marie of Roumania—a granddaughter of Queen Victoria—proved herself one of the heroines of World War I by using her prodigious personal charm to regain massive amounts of land during the peace talks at Versailles. Brimming with outrageous real-life stories of royal marriages gone wrong, this is an entertaining, unforgettable book of dubious matches doomed from the start.

Royal's Bride

Royal's Bride PDF Author: Kat Martin
Publisher: MIRA
ISBN: 1488095965
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
“Set in 1854 England, this steamy trilogy opener” from a New York Times–bestselling author “is an enjoyable mixture of tension and romance” (Publishers Weekly). After years abroad, Royal has returned to Bransford Castle to find his father dying and the family treasury nearly empty. Then the old duke wrests a final promise from his guilt-ridden son: that Royal will marry heiress Jocelyn Caulfield and restore the estate to its former glory. However, it is not his fiancée who quickens Royal’s pulse, but rather her beautiful cousin Lily Moran. Penniless Lily knows that nothing can come of their undeniable attraction but there is a way she can help Royal. Enlisting some questionable characters from her past, Lily concocts an elaborate ruse to recover some of the Bransford fortune from a notorious confidence artist. As the dangerous scheme unfolds, Lily and Royal are thrown together in pursuit of the very thing—money—that keeps them apart.

Tudor

Tudor PDF Author: Leanda de Lisle
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610393643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
The Tudors are England's most dramatic royal family-Henry VIII notoriously divorced his queen and broke with the church of Rome, and Elizabeth I became the greatest English queen in history. But they are a dynasty still more extraordinary than the one we thought we knew. In an epic narrative sweeping from 1437 to the first decade of the seventeenth century, Tudor traces the rise and rule of the dynasty. Brutal political instability dominated England, and Leanda de Lisle reveals the personalities, passions, and obsessions of the men and women at its epicenter. This groundbreaking story opens at the unlikely beginning of the Tudor dynasty-with Owen Tudor, a handsome Welsh commoner who, with a pirouette and a trip, landed squarely in the lap of the English Monarchy. The struggle of Owen's grandson Henry VII and his heirs to secure the line of succession-and the hopes, loves, and losses of the claimants-are the focus of this book. The universal appeal of the Tudors also lies in the family stories: of a mother's love for her son, of the husband who kills his wives, of siblings who betray one another, of reckless love affairs, of rival cousins, of an old spinster whose heirs hope to hurry her to her end. Thrilling to read and bristling with religious and political intrigue, Tudor tells the true story behind the myths, throwing a fresh, new light on this perennially fascinating era.

She Wolves

She Wolves PDF Author: Elizabeth Norton
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752469215
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Some of the queens featured in She Wolves are well known and have been the subject of biography – Eleanor of Aquitaine, Emma of Normandy, Isabella of France and Anne Boleyn, for example – others have not been written about outside academic journals. The appeal of these notorious queens, apart from their shared taste for witchcraft, murder, adultery and incest, is that because they were notorious they attracted a great deal of attention during their lifetimes. She-Wolves reveals much about the role of the medieval queen and the evolution of the role that led, ultimately, to the reign of Elizabeth I and a new concept of queenship.

The Divorce of Lothar II

The Divorce of Lothar II PDF Author: Karl Heidecker
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801439292
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"She declares, so the bishops will write in their report on the council, that she is unworthy to continue as a married woman. 'Before God and his angels' she bares her heart and confesses to them 'every secret relating to the rumor that had arisen.' The 'rumor'--as will become apparent--concerns her sexual relations with her brother. True, the 'inner wound' which she 'confesses' to God and the bishops was not dealt her of her own volition but under duress, but it is in any event so terrible that she no longer feels herself worthy to share a royal or a marital bed or to marry anyone at all. The bishops and abbots allow her, as she had supposedly requested, to enter a convent."--from The Divorce of Lothar II The Divorce of Lothar II illuminates the origin and development of Western notions of marriage and divorce and the separation of church and state in the context of a notorious royal divorce in late Carolingian Europe. In 857, Lothar II, king of Lotharingia, decided to divorce Theutberga--either because she had allegedly engaged in an incestuous liaison with her brother or simply because Lothar had wished to marry his concubine Waldrada. Karl Heidecker's dramatic and engaging narrative untangles the chaos that resulted: two popes, a host of often quarreling bishops, and Lothar's conniving uncles soon became involved in an epic struggle that did not end even with the death of Lothar.The extraordinary series of events sheds light on the fact that the laws on marriage and divorce were still uncertain. The Church itself was hardly unified in its approach, and its efforts to formulate and impose rules repeatedly foundered against the political machinations characteristic of the Carolingian world. In The Divorce of Lothar II, Heidecker not only discusses the legal aspects of the case but also pays much attention to the often heavy-handed ways in which the players of the story achieved their goals.This ninth-century scandal becomes a study of family dynamics, changing values, and the tenuous relationships between kings, nobles, and bishops around the topic of royal marriage. Though the drama ended with no clear resolution of the Church's position, Lothar's quest is revealed as an early chapter in the emergence of the belief that marriage rests on the personal will of the partners, is monogamous, and should not be dissolved.

American Princess

American Princess PDF Author: Leslie Carroll
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062859447
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A behind-the-scenes look into the life of Meghan Markle and her romance with Prince Harry—a dishy, delightful must-read filled with exclusive insights for anyone obsessed with the Royal Family. Leslie Carroll’s books on royalty are “an irresistible combination of People Magazine and the History Channel.”—Chicago Tribune When Prince Harry of Wales took his American girlfriend, Meghan Markle, to have tea with his grandmother the queen, avid royal watchers had a hunch that a royal wedding was not far off. That prediction came true on November 27, 2017, when the gorgeous, glamorous twosome announced their engagement to the world. As they prepare to tie the knot in a stunning ceremony on May 19, 2018, that will be unprecedented in royal history, people are clamoring to know more about the beautiful American who captured Prince Harry’s heart. Born and raised in Los Angeles to a white father of German, English, and Irish descent and an African American mother whose ancestors had been enslaved on a Georgia plantation, Meghan has proudly embraced her biracial heritage. In addition to being a star of the popular television series Suits, she is devoted to her humanitarian work—a passion she shares with Harry. Though Meghan was married once before, Prince Harry is a modern royal, and the Windsors have welcomed her into the tight-knit clan they call “The Firm.” Even a generation ago, it would have been unthinkable, as well as impermissible, for any member of Great Britain’s royal family to consider marrying someone like Meghan. Professional actresses were considered scandalous and barely respectable. And the last time an American divorcee married into the Royal Family, it provoked a constitutional crisis! In American Princess, Leslie Carroll provides context to Harry and Meghan’s romance by leading readers through centuries of Britain’s rule-breaking royal marriages, as well as the love matches that were never permitted to make it to the altar; followed by a never-before-seen glimpse into the little-known life of the woman bringing the Royal Family into the 21st century; and her dazzling, thoroughly modern romance with Prince Harry.

A Treasury of Royal Scandals

A Treasury of Royal Scandals PDF Author: Michael Farquhar
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140280241
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
From Nero's nagging mother (whom he found especially annoying after taking her as his lover) to Catherine's stable of studs (not of the equine variety), here is a wickedly delightful look at the most scandalous royal doings you never learned about in history class. Gleeful, naughty, sometimes perverted-like so many of the crowned heads themselves-A Treasury of Royal Scandals presents the best (the worst?) of royal misbehavior through the ages. From ancient Rome to Edwardian England, from the lavish rooms of Versailles to the dankest corners of the Bastille, the great royals of Europe have excelled at savage parenting, deadly rivalry, pathological lust, and meeting death with the utmost indignity-or just very bad luck.