World Royal Families [Hardcover]

Edward Riley (Author), Sandra Forty (Author), Judith Millidge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 2009

Presented in exhaustive detail, this book presents the history of various monarchies around the world since 1900. Through extensive research and hundreds of famous and rare photographs, the reader can see an astonishing timeline of the lives of these families and their impact on their countries and the world at large.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Chartwell Books, Inc. (September 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785825304
• ISBN-13: 978-0785825302
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 10.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too Many Errors, January 12, 2010

By 

Neville (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: World Royal Families (Hardcover)

World Royal Families is an attractive volume, but unfortunately does not impress quite as much as I had hoped it would. The authors state that there are 28 monarchies in the world today. As so often happens, 15 Commonwealth monarchies are excluded from the count, yet it is pleasing to see Andorra and the Vatican included, as they are indeed monarchies of a fashion. There is the usual bias towards Great Britain found in many English language books on royal families. Great Britain gets twelve pages, Belgium only six; and many of the photographs show the relevant royal personage with a visiting member of the British Royal Family.

Within a couple of minutes I discovered some mistakes: the main picture of the "current" King of Tonga is actually the late King Tâufa'âhau Tupou IV, not Siaosi Tupou V. The Imperial House of Japan does not have a dynastic name (just because it probably originated from the Yamato region does not make it the Yamato Dynasty); the name of the Royal House of Belgium is Belgium (not Saxe-Coburg-Gotha); "Emperor of France" should read "Emperor of the French"; Crown Prince as a title does not exist in the Netherlands; Louis Alphonse (the French legitimists' Louis XX) is, quelle horreur, called "Duc d'Orleans" in a photo caption; etc. etc. Little things, but they do add up.

Although the book is advertised as covering royal families that have reigned since 1900, this is not mentioned in the introduction. Therefore it is not clear what, if any, criteria was used to decide who was in and who was out. Most former African, Asian and Middle Eastern monarchies of the 20th century are excluded (Ethiopia, Egypt, Rwanda, Burundi, Libya, Tunisia, China, Korea, Sikkim, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.) Europe, however, is well covered, but with some oddities. Germany includes only Prussia and Hanover (a kingdom that ceased to exist in 1863). France, never a monarchy in the 20th century, somehow, like Hanover, sneaks in.

Overall the book is a nice, pretty, yet ultimately clumsy, introduction to the world of royal families beyond the shores of Great Britain. Those not familiar with the subjects should find it a delightful entré into a vast new cast of royal characters. For those somewhat familiar with the topic, however, the litany of errors, and there are an awful lot of them, make frustrating reading, but the pictures go someway to making up for this avoidable drawback.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars World Royal Families, January 10, 2010

By 

D. Schneider - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: World Royal Families (Hardcover)

Some good photos but lots of editing errors (in the genealogical tables and text). Not a very in depth look and while it includes some former monarchies (Burma, Nepal, Russia, Iran) it completely ignores others (Egypt, Brazil, Ethiopia, the Ottomans).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Off with their heads, February 12, 2011

By 

Ashtar Command "Seeker" (Stockholm, Sweden) - See all my reviews

This review is from: World Royal Families (Hardcover)

"World Royal Families" is excellent as a coffee table book, since it has a lot of large colour photos of kings, queens and other royalty from all around the world. Some royal palaces are showed as well.

However, the text is very brief and definitely not "detailed research", as claimed by the promotion material. You can probably learn more about these monarchs from Wikipedia! According to another reviewer, Neville, the book also contains factual errors.

Curiously, various pretenders to thrones long abolished have been included, while others are not mentioned at all. Both the Vatican and Andorra are featured, although their status as "monarchies" is somewhat flimsy. Who is monarch of Andorra? The bishop of Urgel?

Overall, the European royalty look more laid back than the Asian and African kings with their stiff and formal poses. Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and other members of the British royal family show up in many of the photos from far-away nations, presumably because the book was produced in Britain. The most entertaining photo shows Charles Napoleon and his children. They look like a regular middle-class family, complete with the impossible teens! Apparently, Charles is a republican, and the title Prince Napoleon has therefore been transferred to his teenage son, who looks like a nerd... Obviously, the Napoleons have little chance ever getting back to power in their native France.

I give the book four stars because of the photos. This is an excellent coffee table book, I admit that much. But otherwise, you should probably take the information in this volume with a certain grain of salt, and do your own research on the monarchs included.

Personally, I'm a republican. Like Charles Napoleon, apparently.