This revelatory book shows how the influential and controversial Empress Dowager Cixi used art and architecture to establish her authority Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908), who ruled China from 1861 until her death in 1908, is a subject of fascination and controversy, at turns vilified for her political maneuvering and admired for modernizing China. In addition to being an astute politician, she was an earnest art patron, and this beautifully illustrated book explores a wide range of objects, revealing how the empress dowager used art and architecture to solidify her rule. Cixi's art commissions were innovative in the way that they unified two distant conceptions of gender in China at the time, demonstrating her strength and wisdom as a monarch while highlighting her identity as a woman and mother. Artful Subversion examines commissioned works, including portrait paintings and photographs, ceramics, fashion, architecture, and garden design, as well as work Cixi created, such as painting and calligraphy. The book is a compelling study of how a powerful matriarch at once subverted and upheld the Qing imperial patriarchy.

'One of the great love stories of history, in a league with Napoleon and Josephine, and Antony and Cleopatra ... Excellent, with dazzling mastery of detail and literary flair' Economist It was history's most successful political partnership - as sensual and fiery as it was creative and visionary. Catherine the Great was a woman of notorious passion and imperial ambition. Prince Potemkin - wildly flamboyant and sublimely talented - was the love of her life and her co-ruler. Together they seized Ukraine and Crimea, defining the Russian empire to this day. Their affair was so tumultuous that they negotiated an arrangement to share power, leaving Potemkin free to love his beautiful nieces, and Catherine her young male favourites. But these 'twin souls' never stopped loving each other. Drawing on their intimate letters and vast research, Simon Sebag Montefiore's enthralling, widely acclaimed biography restores these imperial partners to their rightful place as titans of their age.

NOW THE TV SERIES 'THE SERPENT QUEEN', STARRING SAMANTHA MORTON The bestselling revisionist biography of one of the great women of the 16th century Orphaned in infancy, Catherine de Medici was the sole legitimate heiress to the Medici family fortune. Married at fourteen to the future Henri II of France, she was constantly humiliated by his influential mistress Diane de Poitiers. When her husband died as a result of a duelling accident in Paris, Catherine was made queen regent during the short reign of her eldest son (married to Mary Queen of Scots and like many of her children he died young). When her second son became king she was the power behind the throne. She nursed dynastic ambitions, but was continually drawn into political and religious intrigues between Catholics and Protestants that plagued France for much of the later part of her life. It had always been said that she was implicated in the notorious Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, together with the king and her third son who succeeded to the throne in 1574, but was murdered. Her political influence waned, but she survived long enough to ensure the succession of her son-in-law who had married her daughter Margaret.

`...excellent study of the prince's career. A first-class synthesis of the entire literature of this subject.' BRITISH BOOK NEWS Edward, prince of Wales and Aquitaine, known as the Black Prince, is one of the legendary figures of English history, victor of three great battles and a model of chivalry and courtesy. Behind this image, which many of his contemporaries accepted and eagerly believed in, it is difficult to get at the realities of his character and of the life that he led. Most of his biographers have based their work on the splendid vision of chivalry conjured up by Froissart, but the present book deliberately shuns this approach, to see what can be found in official records, particularly from the prince's household and those who campaigned with the prince. Special attention has been paid not onlyto the confusing and confused accounts of the great battles, but also to the prince's early years, his close companions who contributed so greatly to his successes, and to his government of Aquitaine, an obscure but very importantpart of his career. A number of minor but persistent errors in early histories, deriving from Froissart, are corrected. A concluding chapter examines how the legend of the Black Prince (and his curious nickname) came into being.By separating the image and the reality, a clearer picture of the prince emerges. Dr RICHARD BARBER is the author of The Arthurian Legends, King Arthur: Hero and Legend, Tournaments, a biography of Henry II, The Penguin Guide to Medieval Europe, and the recently revised seminal study of The Knight and Chivalry.

The official biography of Queen Mary, grandmother of the current Queen, originally commissioned in 1959 - with a new foreword by Hugo Vickers. When Queen Mary died in 1953, James Pope-Hennessy was commissioned to write an official biography of her - unusual for a Queen Consort. Queen Mary's life, contrary to popular belief, was essentially dramatic, and she played a far more important and influential role in the affairs of the British monarchy than her public image might have otherwise suggested. Using material from the Royal Archives, private papers and Queen Mary's personal diaries and letters, Pope-Hennessy's biography was a remarkable portrait of a remarkable woman and received rave reviews across the press. Long out of print, this new edition of Queen Mary will be accompanied by a new foreword from royal biographer and writer Hugo Vickers.

With the ascension of a new emperor and the dawn of the Reiwa Era, Kenneth J. Ruoff has expanded upon and updated The People's Emperor, his study of the monarchy's role as a political, societal, and cultural institution in contemporary Japan. Many Japanese continue to define the nation's identity through the imperial house, making it a window into Japan's postwar history. Ruoff begins by examining the reform of the monarchy during the US occupation and then turns to its evolution since the Japanese regained the power to shape it. To understand the monarchy's function in contemporary Japan, the author analyzes issues such as the role of individual emperors in shaping the institution, the intersection of the monarchy with politics, the emperor's and the nation's responsibility for the war, nationalistic movements in support of the monarchy, and the remaking of the once-sacrosanct throne into a "people's imperial house" embedded in the postwar culture of democracy. Finally, Ruoff examines recent developments, including the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the heir crisis, which have brought to the forefront the fragility of the imperial line under the current legal system, leading to calls for reform.

By kind permission of Her Majesty The Queen, this book has been based on extensive research over many years in the Royal Archives and elsewhere. The author was the first official Curator of the Royal Photograph Collection. Queen Alexandra was a private person who destroyed or left instructions to destroy, much of her archive, but nevertheless enough remains in the form of original documents, such as engagement diaries and letters and informal information, to chart her life more completely than ever before and to attempt to rectify the negative or dismissive attitude towards her which has gained credence in some previous works. This method, rather than drawing mainly from over-salted and peppered memoirs written much later, aims to show her character, enables readers to get to know her and to appreciate what an enormous amount a senior member of the royal family has to accomplish, while still remaining the loving daughter, sister, wife and mother, and keen supporter of the arts, welfare and education, that Alexandra was. During her life she met many famous, notable and intriguing people, while her own journey - from the young, modest Danish Princess who married the Prince of Wales in 1863, to the popular Queen Consort of King Edward VII, and the beloved Queen Mother - saw her personal development and courageous struggle against disability, especially deafness. She was a generous, thoughtful and caring woman, who maintained her sense of humour and interest in all kinds of things and under sometimes challenging circumstances. She could be a lively correspondent and her letters will help readers to understand her far better than has hitherto been possible. This book is long and detailed and readers may like to dip in and out of it, finding stories in all parts, rather than reading it straight through, but it might claim a place among the variety of entertainments which are comforting us in these difficult times.

England's Tudor monarchs--Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I--are perhaps the most celebrated and fascinating of all royal families in history. Their love affairs, their political triumphs, and their overturning of the religious order are the subject of countless works of popular scholarship. But for all we know about Henry's quest for male heirs, or Elizabeth's purported virginity, the private lives of the Tudors remain largely beyond our grasp. In The Private Lives of the Tudors, Tracy Borman delves deep behind the public face of the monarchs, showing us what their lives were like beyond the stage of court. Drawing on the accounts of those closest to them, Borman examines Tudor life in fine detail. What did the monarchs eat? What clothes did they wear, and how were they designed, bought, and cared for? How did they practice their faith? And in earthlier moments, who did they love, and how did they give birth to the all-important heirs? Delving into their education, upbringing, sexual lives, and into the kitchens, bathrooms, schoolrooms, and bedrooms of court, Borman charts out the course of the entire Tudor dynasty, surfacing new and fascinating insights into these celebrated figures.

Beatrice Mary Victoria Feodore, later Princess Henry of Battenberg, was the last-born in 1866 of Victoria and Albert's children, and she would outlive all of her siblings to die as recently as 1944. Her childhood coincided with her mother's extended period of mourning for her prematurely deceased husband, a circumstance which may have contributed to Victoria's determination to keep her youngest daughter as close to her as possible.

She would eventually marry Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885, but only after overcoming her mother's opposition to their union. Beatrice remained Queen Victoria's favourite among her five daughters, and became her mother's constant companion and later her literary executor, spending the years that followed Victoria's death in 1901 editing her mother's journals and voluminous correspondence.

Matthew Dennison's elegantly written biography restores Beatrice to her rightful place as a key figure in the history of the Victorian age, and paints a touching and revealing portrait of the life and family of Britain's second-longest-reigning monarch.

For more than 200 years the younger members of the British royal family - including future monarchs - have lived at Kensington Palace, alongside royal aunts and uncles, distant cousins and assorted aristocratic eccentrics. Kensington Palace has been the scene of countless bizarre events - here, for example, the young Queen Victoria was held a virtual prisoner for eighteen years; and it was from Kensington Palace that Queen Caroline ran the country while her husband George II moved his pictures around. In more recent times, Kensington Palace was famously the scene of Charles and Diana's nightmare marriage and Charles's serial adulteries. But then Kensington Palace has a long history of royal philandering. George II installed his wife and mistress in the palace, for example, and made his mistress sleep in a room so damp there were said to be mushrooms growing on the walls. And then there were the eccentrics. George III's sixth son, Augustus, Duke of Sussex, became a virtual recluse at the palace. He collected hundreds of clocks and mechanical toys, thousands of early Bibles and dozens of songbirds that were allowed to fly freely through the royal apartments. Today, the palace is home to the future King William and his wife Catherine, and until recently home to the newly married Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan. The palace has been described as a royal menagerie, a hive of industrious freeloaders, an ant heap and even a lunatic asylum. Tom Quinn takes the reader behind the official version of palace history to discover intriguing, sometimes wild, often scandalous, but frequently heart-warming stories.

Conditioned by a childhood surrounded by the rivalries of the Stewart family, and by eighteen years of enforced exile in England, James I was to prove a king very different from his elderly and conservative forerunners. This major study draws on a wide range of sources, assessing James I's impact on his kingdom. Michael Brown examines James's creation of a new, prestigious monarchy based on a series of bloody victories over his rivals and symbolised by lavish spending at court. He concludes that, despite the apparent power and glamour, James I's 'golden age' had shallow roots; after a life of drastically swinging fortunes, James I was to meet his end in a violent coup, a victim of his own methods. But whether as lawgiver, tyrant or martyr, James I has cast a long shadow over the history of Scotland.

The first in-depth dual-biography of Elizabeth & Margaret, written by the bestselling royal biographer, Andrew Morton. They were the closest of sisters and the best of friends. But when, in a quixotic twist of fate, their uncle Edward VIII decided to abdicate the throne, the dynamic between Elizabeth and Margaret was dramatically altered. Forever more, Margaret would have to curtsey to the sister she called 'Lillibet'. And bow to her wishes. Elizabeth would always look upon her younger sister's antics with a kind of stoical amusement but Margaret's struggle to find a place and position inside the royal system - and her fraught relationship with its expectations - was often a source of tension. Famously, the Queen had to inform Margaret that the Church and government would not countenance her marrying a divorcee, Group Captain Peter Townsend, forcing Margaret to choose between keeping her title and royal allowances or her divorcee lover. From the idyll of their cloistered early life, through their hidden wartime lives, into the divergent paths they took following their father's death and Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, this book explores their relationship over the years. Andrew Morton, renowned bestselling author of Diana: Her True Story, offers unique insight into these two drastically different sisters - one resigned to duty and responsibility, the other resistant to it - and the lasting impact they have had on the Crown, the royal family and the way it has adapted to the changing mores of the twentieth century.

Spirited biography and quest to unearth the secrets of Princess Louise -- a royal desperate to escape her inheritance.
The secrets of Queen Victoria's sixth child, Princess Louise, may be destined to remain hidden forever. What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumour and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view.
Louise was a sculptor and painter, friend to the Pre-Raphaelites and a keen member of the Aesthetic movement. The most feisty of the Victorian princesses, she kicked against her mother's controlling nature and remained fiercely loyal to her brothers -- especially the sickly Leopold and the much-maligned Bertie. She sought out other unconventional women, including Josephine Butler and George Eliot, and campaigned for education and health reform and for the rights of women. She battled with her indomitable mother for permission to practice the 'masculine' art of sculpture and go to art college -- and in doing so became the first British princess to attend a public school.
The rumours of Louise's colourful love life persist even today, with hints of love affairs dating as far back as her teenage years, and notable scandals included entanglements with her sculpting tutor Joseph Edgar Boehm and possibly even her sister Princess Beatrice's handsome husband, Liko. True to rebellious form, she refused all royal suitors and became the first member of the royal family to marry a commoner since the sixteenth century.
Spirited and lively, "The Mystery of Princess Louise" is richly packed with arguments, intrigues, scandals and secrets, and is a vivid portrait of a princess desperate to escape her inheritance.

The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller 'This second volume of memoirs is as fascinating as the first....full of wit, joy, vivid vignettes and useful insights...she has another bestseller on her hands' India Knight, Sunday Times 'It's great to have another memoir from Lady Glenconner . . . as open-minded and entertaining as she clearly is' Lynn Barber, Sunday Telegraph 'A jolly anecdote for every day of the year and excellent advice' Hilary Rose, The Times 'As glorious and highly readable as its predecessor - as well as being packed full of new stories' ipaper 'Full of eye-popping detail' Sophia Money-Coutts, Daily Telegraph 'Charm itself' Spectator 'Anne Glenconner returns to charts her fascinating life and the hard-won lessons learnt in diplomacy, marriage and motherhood' Tatler.com Bracing honesty, rare insight and hilarious revelations from internationally bestselling author of LADY IN WAITING as she shares everything she's learned from her extraordinary and unexpected life. Anne Glenconner's glittering life hasn't always been golden. As she revealed in her astonishing bestselling memoir Lady in Waiting, it has been one of stark contrasts - from growing up in the splendour of Holkham Hall to living in a tent in the jungle of Mustique, from travelling the world with Princess Margaret to coping with her wildly unpredictable husband Lord Glenconner. Tragically, she has also survived the loss of two of her sons and nursed a third son back from a coma. Now in her ninetieth year, and at her happiest, Anne brings her bracing honesty, characteristic wit and courage to reflect on and reveal more about her long and unexpected life, her extremely volatile marriage, and what it's taught her. As a wife, she became a master in the art of keeping the peace, knowing when to pick her battles, when she needed help - and when to take a lover. As a hostess, she acquired great practical skills in throwing marvellous parties and looking after magnificent homes, and, as a lady in waiting, became well versed in diplomacy and etiquette. It was as a mother she learnt the toughest lessons of all, and through them the value of friendship, family, and laughter to get her through the worst moments in life, as well as celebrate the best of them. Anne Glenconner's Whatever Next? is the richly entertaining proof that staying open to every new adventure and being ready for whatever happens sets an inspiring example for us all.

'A riveting take on an extraordinary relationship' - Richard Eden, Daily Mail 'A fresh and original approach' - Hugo Vickers, Royal Biographer She was 'sugar pink' innocence; he was a handsome war hero. Both had royal blood coursing through their veins. The marriage of Britain's Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in November 1947 is remembered as the beginning of an extraordinary, lifelong union but success was not guaranteed. Elizabeth and Philip: A Story of Young Love, Marriage and Monarchy plunges us back into the 1940s when a teenage princess fell in love with a foreign prince. Cue fears of a flirtatious 'Greek' fortune hunter stealing off with Britain's crown jewel and Philip's supporters scrambling to reframe him as a good fit for the Royal Family. Drawing on original newspaper archives and the opinions of Elizabeth and Philip's contemporaries, historian Dr Tessa Dunlop discovers a post-war world on the cusp of major change. Unprecedented polling on Philip's suitability was a harbinger of pressures to come for a couple whose marriage was branded the ultimate global fairytale. Theirs was a partnership like no other. Six years after Elizabeth promised to be an obedient wife Philip got down on bended knee at the coronation and committed himself as the Queen's 'liege man of life and limb.' Published 75 years after their marriage, this deeply touching history explores the ups and downs, the public appeal and the private tensions that defined an extraordinary relationship. The high stakes involved might have devoured a less committed pair - but Elizabeth and Philip shared a common purpose, one higher even than marriage, with roots much deeper than young love. Happy and Glorious, for better or for worse, how did their union succeed? Monarchy was the magic word.

Fresh perspectives on many facets - political, social, legal, military, and diplomatic - of the reign of one of the most important late medieval kings. With a sharp focus on high politics, this is a cohesive and exemplary collection of rewarding scholarship. HISTORY The studies in this book add colour and depth to the reign of one of the most important and fascinating of late medieval kings. New research addresses received ideas about Edward III's kingship, including the way he came to power and how he kept it; his use of nobility and sergeants-at-arms [his political and military elite]; hispreoccupation with justice; military campaigns in the Hundred Years War; and the propaganda and packaging of his rule, both in terms of his English throne and his claims to France. The collection is drawn together in a critical introduction written by Chris Given-Wilson and Michael Prestwich. Contributors: CAROLINE SHENTON, JAMES BOTHWELL, DAVID GREEN, ANTHONY MUSSON, RICHARD PARTINGTON, ANDREW AYTON, W.M. ORMROD, CRAIG TAYLOR, A.K. McHARDY, CLIFFORD J. ROGERS, MICHAEL BENNETT.

Robert the Bruce had himself crowned King of Scots at Scone on a frozen March morning in 1306. After years of struggle, Scotland had been reduced to a vassal state by Edward I of England and its people lived in poverty. On the day he seized the crown Bruce renewed the fight for Scotland's freedom, and let forth a battle cry that would echo through the centuries. Using contemporary accounts, Ronald McNair Scott tells the story of Scotland's legendary leader, and one of Europe's most remarkable medieval kings. It is a story with episodes as romantic as those of King Arthur, but also one which belongs in the annals of Scottish History, and has shaped a nation.

Famously depicted as 'Crookback Dick', and as Shakespeare's 'bunch-back'd toad', the alleged murderer of the Princes in the Tower and the warrior vanquished at the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richard III is one of England's most enigmatic monarchs. Now, with the discovery of Richard's bones under a car park in Leicester in 2012 and their reburial in early 2015, the obsession with this mysterious king has been further ignited. Historian David Horspool tells the story of Richard, Duke of Gloucester's birth and upbringing and his part as a young man in the closing years of the Wars of the Roses; describes what really happened to the Princes in the Tower, and explains why this character has become one of the most compelling and divisive rulers in the history of the British Isles. In his final chapter, with a ringside seat to the pomp and circumstance of Richard's reburial in Leicester in 2015, Horspool explains why the public fascination with this flawed king has been so enduring. Richard III: A Ruler and his Reputation is concerned to examine the legend as well as the man. Have we bought in to the myth of Richard III as the personification of evil, a view maintained by his Tudor successors and publicised by Raphael Holinshed and William Shakespeare? Or should we believe the Ricardian narrative of a much maligned monarch, warrior and statesman made popular by the Richard III Society and conceded in part by some historians and archaeologists? These questions and more are discussed in this fascinating insight into one of England's most elusive kings.

This latest book from John Van der Kiste, the eminent historian of European royalty, is an account of Queen Victoria's personal and political relationships with the empires, or to be more exact, the Kings and Queens, Emperors, Empresses and their families of France, Germany, Austria and Russia. Victoria had close connections with the royal houses of Germany long before the King of Prussia became the German Emperor in 1871, and with the exiled former Emperor and Empress of the French and their son, the Prince Imperial, after the fall of the French Empire in 1870. Van der Kiste deftly weaves together the various strands of the relationships-including the close family marriage ties-to provide a fascinating picture of European royalty in the last two thirds of the nineteenth century.