Title: A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories of History’s Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes and Emperors
Author: Michael Farquhar
Pages: 352
ISBN: 9780140280241
Year: 2001
Item Code: PEN282
Link to website
In this royal expose, Farquhar, covers such topics as Peter the Great’s delight in administering torture (he had his son lashed to death) and the way Britain’s Queen Mary cajoled her subjects into giving her their household treasures (“I am caressing it with my eyes,” she would coyly coo).
Gleeful, naughty, sometimes perverted – like so many of the crowned heads themselves – ‘A Treasury of Royal Scandals’ presents the best (and worst?) of royal misbehaviour 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, pathalogical lust and meeting death with the utmost indignity – or just very bad luck.
Also included are eleven family trees (with terribly tangled branches), a timeline of monarchs and concurrent world events, handy appendixes listing the English, French, and Russian monarchs, and a chapter of unholy Popes.
Contents:
Introduction
Family Trees
– The Normans
– The Angevins
– House of Lancaster and York
– House of Tudor
– House of Stuart
– House of Hanover
– House of Saxe-Coburg-Goths to Windsor
– House of Valois
– House of Bourbon
– House of Romanov
– The Spanish Habsburgs
Part 1. The Lust Emperors
Part 2. Six Royals Sinnings
Part 3. Unholy Matrimony
Part 4. Mom Was a Monster, Dad Was a Weasel
Part 5. Royal Family Feud
Part 6. Strange Reigns
Part 7. When in Rome
Part 8. Papal Vice
Part 9. Death be Not Dignified
Appendix 1. British Monarchs (1066-present)
Appendix 2. French Monarchs (1515-1814)
Appendix 3. Russian Monarchs (1692-1917)
Appendix 4. Timeline featuring a Chronological Index of Monarchs in the Treasury and Concorrent Events in the Western World
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
