Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery Of Brats, Brutes, And Bad Seeds (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Eleven stories of royals gone wild!!! Some I had read about before so nothing new there like Vlad thenImpaler (Dracula) and the Countess of Bathory who murdered young girls and bathed in their blood thinking it would maintain her youth. Truly some were psychopaths which probably came from inbreeding as cousins marrying cousins all over the place. Others just bad seeds full of ambition to gain the throne and some no ambition to do anything shaming the throne. The most interesting story was on the now deceased Princess Margaret of England. A wild child spoiled and pampered. Interesting comparison of her and her sister Queen Elizabeth who had the same upbringing almost and to see them go in completely different directions. This author has some older books which look like good reads if you like reading about royalty as I do. Notorious Royal Marriages and Royal Affairs which I will try to find. A new book 2014 Inglorious Royal Marriages looks to be interesting as well. Also written with some humor that I found enjoyable as well. The book is organized chronologically, and I wasn't impressed with the earlier stories. Although she works to come up with "pluses" to balance the scales of some of the notorious medieval rulers, the first chapters end up being mostly recitations of the horrors of the reigns of the likes of Ivan the Terrible and Vlad the Impaler. A few paragraphs on the influence of their upbringings and violent political milieus, which could have been interesting, were followed by pages of detailed descriptions of their innovative cruelty. I had gotten the point long before she felt able to stop providing examples. George Duke of Clarence, who is by rights an Olympic Champion Royal Pain--demanding and entitled while being politically and militarily useless--has to share his chapter with his brother Richard III (who, for all his ruthlessness was an able administrator and commander, content to dutifully support Edward IV while he lived).If you can make it through the torture porn, the later chapter have some good stuff--black sheep siblings and cousins who annoy and embarrass, only on a national scale instead of just at your grandmother's birthday dinner. (Royals! They're just like us!)
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