Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny,and Desire [Paperback]

Leslie Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2010

A funny, raucous, and delightfully dirty 900-year history of the royal marriages of Europe's most famous-and infamous-monarchs.

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Leslie Carroll has written contemporary fiction under her own name, and historical fiction under the pen name Amanda Elyot. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: NAL Trade; Original edition (January 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451229010
• ISBN-13: 978-0451229014
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #444,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I used to tell people that I was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx; but the truth is that apart from the stellar education I received at the Fieldston School in Riverdale, much of who I am was shaped by my two grandmothers, who encouraged me to follow my bliss long before it became the sort of catchphrase you find on tee-shirts and new-age tchotchkes. My East Side grandmother took me to FAO Schwarz, the New York City Ballet, and afternoon tea at the Plaza Hotel, where I dreamed of becoming another Eloise. My West Side grandmother took me to the Central Park carousel and the zoo and treated me to colorful paper parasols and gummy, lukewarm pretzels from the vendors whose wares my East Side grandmother deemed too "dirty" for human consumption.

There are writers on both sides of my family, and although I always loved to write, I never anticipated that it would become my profession. I had wanted to be a ballerina; and though my club feet were corrected at birth (from the stilettos I adore now, you'd never know) and my short Achilles tendons made my toes turn in (corrected at the age of 9), I was never going to end up en pointe.

About a year later, I decided to become an actress when (if?) I grew up, and I never looked back. I majored in Theatre at Cornell University, worked in summer stock, and took classes with a couple of acknowledged masters. I performed a lot of Shakespeare and other classics in New York parks, basements, church choir lofts, and the occasional Off-Broadway theatre; then founded and ran my own nonprofit theatre company for several years. And when things got slow, and I found myself working three survival jobs simultaneously (one of them as a journalist and editor), I decided it was time to pursue an additional creative avenue.

Fast forward a decade. I'm now a multi-published author in three genres, as well as a freelance journalist. And I've also adapted a number of classic texts (IVANHOE; THE PRISONER OF ZENDA; THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL; Mark Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve") for the stage. I began writing women's fiction and historical fiction simultaneously, but my first published novel was the urban romantic comedy MISS MATCH in 2002. In 2005, as I continued to write about feisty female New Yorkers, my first historical novel was published under the pen name Amanda Elyot. While keeping those literary plates spinning I made my historical nonfiction debut in the spring of 2008.

In what I laughingly refer to as my spare time, I'm still a professional actress, working when the scripts and the roles excite me.

I'm such a native New Yorker that I still don't have a driver's license, "Big Sky Country" means Central Park, and the farthest I've ever been from the Upper West Side for any great length of time was my four-year stint upstate in Ithaca, at Cornell, known for its rigorous academics and its equally harsh permafrost.

My birthday falls on the same day as two of my heroes--F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jim Henson. So I reread THE GREAT GATSBY every year and number Miss Piggy among the great actresses of her generation. My favorite color is deep hydrangea blue, and it just kills me that it doesn't look good with red hair.

I live in Manhattan with my husband Scott--who is my hero and everything I ever dreamed of. For the past couple of years we've been considering an addition to the family in the form of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Notorious Royal Marriages mixes history, sex, scandal and salacious details of the royal couples who romp through these pages, January 27, 2010

By 

C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny,and Desire (Paperback)

Leslie Carroll has followed her bestseller "Royal Scandals" with another delightful page turner of the marital joys and sorrows of famous royal couples throughout history. The book takes us on a journey through marital (and sometimes martial!)land from the ninth century to the marriages of Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly and the doomed marriage of Diana and Charles.

Carroll earned her authorial spurs writing female fiction and her abilities as a storyteller are superb.. The author has done her homework and produced a readable page turner. The book would have been enriched by adding illustrations and pictures of some of the most prominent couples profiled. It is a hefty tome of 500 pages including many quotations and contemporary assessments by observers on the marriages under review. This is not the history you read it school but the incidents related were important to the marriage partners and their nations.

Aong the many royal marriages these couples stood out:

Henry VIII and his six wives get the most chapters. Catherine of Aragon from Spain who was abandoned for Anne Boleyn (who Henry beheaded); Jane Seymour who gave the lusty and cruel monarch his only son Edward VI. (she died as a result of childbirth); Anne of Cleves whom Henry cast aside; Katharine Howard executed for adultery and treason and the kind and reformed minded Katherine Parr who nursed Henry in his years of declining health.

Tragic stories abound in this book. Nicholas and Alexandra whose love was strong but who were executed by the Communists in 1918 along with their family; Queen Victoria and her beloved Albert who had nine children and remained faithful unto death and Franz Jospeh and Susi his anorexic wife. Mary Queen of Scots died on the block and had three marriages while Catherine the Great had countless lovers and may have poisoned her idiotic tsar husband. Eleanor of Aquitane was imprisoned by her husband Henry II and was a tough medieval cookie who knew the ways of diplomacy, war and the bedchamber. Napoleon was a cad to Josephine who, nevertheless, loved him.

Anyone expecting this book to read like a Harlequin Romance is condemned to disappointment. It is a well written history of the marriages that mattered among the elite of various European nations. Carroll has done a good job!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love is in the air... and some affairs too, March 22, 2010

By 

cellochick (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny,and Desire (Paperback)

I cannot stop reading and re-reading this book! Well written, well researched, and one of the greatest books I have read in quite some time. One of my favorite features about this is that although it is organized chronologically, you can still read this book in sections and skip around to your favorite stories. The author presents her opinions in an appropriate manner, which I believe causes the reader to engage further with the text. You will not be able to put this book down. I especially appreciated the juicy bits on Grace Kelly and Wallace Simpson.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful Romp!, February 23, 2011

By 

elena maria vidal (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey Through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny,and Desire (Paperback)

Notorious Royal Marriage by Leslie Carroll is a delightful romp through European history by way of examining several of the most infamous couples of all time. Eleanor of Aquitaine and her consecutive kings, Isabella and Ferdinand, Juana and Philip, Henry VIII and all six Queens, Mary Stuart and Henry Lord Darnley, Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, Alexandra and her Nicholas and many more. It is a book which I found not only highly entertaining but in each chapter, even those about royals whom I have studied, I always learned things I had never known before. In most instances, when addressing certain controversies, Leslie carefully presents the evidence, gives her opinion, but lets the reader draw their own conclusions. I have to say that I am impressed with the vast amount of information that was compiled for each royal marriage, yet summarized into compact narratives.

Royal Marriages has a distinct common touch that makes it an easy read but contains enough dates and details for any lover of history. While the chapter on Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had a few items that Leslie and I could probably sit and debate about over cocktails, I was moved by the chapters on Franz Josef and Sissi, who suffered everything throughout their long and rocky marriage, as well as by the retelling of the saga of George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert. I was very glad that Leslie pointed out the Nazi connection in recounting the bizarre relationship of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII. Most of all, I loved the chapters on Mary Queen of Scots.

I had trouble putting this book down and must have been an incredible bore to my family over the holidays as I kept slipping away to read it. It was intriguing to see how even the best of marriages had ups and downs, with the complications of royalty adding to the challenges of compatibility.