The author's ongoing chronicle of royalty (The Serpent and the
Moon, 2004, etc.) continues with the tales of poor little
princesses married off abroad. Some of them-can you imagine?-lived
among people who didn't speak French! Or hadn't seen operas!
Princess Michael begins by noting that she's terribly interested in
political history, but that she prefers what she calls "the lighter
side." There aren't too many juicy tidbits among the profiles (even
in the section about Marie Antoinette). We learn lots about what
these royal expatriates wore on important occasions. Queen
Victoria's daughter Vicky, for example, looked great in "white
moire, trimmed with Honiton lace" at her 1858 wedding to Prussian
King Frederick III. We learn a little about what they ate (pretty
much whatever they wanted) and sometimes what they thought. She
tells us that Danish princess Alexandra, married to Vickie's
scapegrace brother Bertie, Prince of Wales, inherited her interest
in politics from her father; ten pages later, the author credits
Alexandra's mother. Princess Michael cannot shed or even conceal
her belief that royalty are just better than the rest of us. When
Austrian archduchess Leopoldina arrived in Brazil to marry its
Portuguese ruler in 1817, she found no culture there. Former French
Empress Eugenie was heartbroken when her exiled son died in 1879 on
a noble mission "to conquer the troublesome African tribes." It was
a "tragedy" that cultured Vicky had to live among louts in Germany,
especially since her son, Kaiser Wilhelm II, grew up to be one of
them.Superficial history related in tone-deaf, elitist prose.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Who better to write about history's most distinguished and powerful
European women than a real princess? Princess Michael of Kent,
well-loved after the publication of two popular history books,
brings her unique, insider's perspective as a member of the British
Royal Family to the fascinating portraits of eight European royal
brides. Though of eminent birth and status in their own right, the
women of Crowned in a Far Country all left their home countries to
marry into the most coveted royal seats in the world. This
absorbing book introduces us to the Prussian Princess Catherine,
who later became Catherine the Great; to the Archduchess of
Austria, later the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette; to Maria
Caroline, also an Austrian archduchess, and later the Queen of
Naples; to the Austrian Leopoldina, who relocated to a new
continent to become the Empress of Brazil; to Eugenie, known as the
wife of Louis-Napoleon and Empress of France; to Vicky, daughter of
England's Queen Victoria and later Empress of Prussia; and to the
Danish sisters who ruled as Queen of England and the Empress of
Russia. Not just a window into the politics and power brokering of
royal marriage, this work charts the transformations of privileged
princesses into women of power and historical importance.
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