Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty (Paperback)

~ (Author) "WHEN IDI AMIN became President of Uganda in 1971 after a military coup, the Western world was slow to react, believing him to be a..." (more)
Key Phrases: Queen Victoria, King George, Prince of Wales (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

From the madness of King George to the equine escapades of Catherine the Great, from the intramural squabbles of Elizabeth and Di to the staggeringly decadent exploits of Charles X: in this gossipy chronicle of regal shenanigans, British journalist Karl Shaw dishes plenty of dirt--and ably demonstrates why royal watching is such a satisfying hobby.

Was there ever a good monarch? To judge by Shaw's account, it's unlikely. Instead, he writes, "Every monarchy in Europe has at some time or another been ruled over by a madman," adding in passing that only Bavaria's King Ludwig had the good grace to turn his madness into a source of tourist revenue for his subjects' descendants. Of the mad and the downright curious there's no shortage in these pages, as Shaw delivers anecdote after anecdote concerning the demented, sometimes awful, sometimes entertaining behavior of the likes of Germany's Frederick the Great, who "drank up to forty cups of coffee a day for several weeks in an experiment to see if it was possible to exist without sleep"; Russia's Catherine I, "a raddled old alcoholic with bloodshot eyes, wild and matted hair and clothes soiled with urine stains ... [who] once survived an assassination attempt too drunk to realize that anything had happened"; and England's Queen Mary, "the only known royal kleptomaniac," whose aides would surreptitiously gather the knickknacks she'd lifted from her subjects' parlors and return them with muffled apologies.

Royal Babylon is a guilty pleasure of a book, and one that does a fine job of explaining, in Shaw's tongue-in-cheek words, "why most continentals can't get enough of royalty, provided it isn't their own." --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

Anyone who loves scandal, particularly the juicy dish on royalty, will inhale this gossipy account by British writer Shaw (The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists). In a style reminiscent of low-end tabloids, the author presents a litany of negative and sometimes disgusting details about the personal lives of the men and women who ruled Britain, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Austria. Leaving the late 20th century mostly behind (his only mention of Charles and Diana is in the introduction), the author concentrates instead on royal misbehavior back to the 1700s. Entertaining overall, many entries are indisputably not for the faint of heart, such as the truly gross story of Russia's Peter the Great ("`Great' was generally a recognition of power or brute strength, no matter how they lived, how many people they had killed or how repulsive they were"), described by Shaw as a "paranoid sadist." This tsar was an alcoholic who tortured people for fun and once forced an attendant to bite into the flesh of a corpse. This chronicle is replete with royal sexual activities, including those of the Bourbons of France, whom Shaw credits with possessing "extraordinary appetites." Irony is Shaw's strong suit, which lends a great deal of humor to often humorless anecdotes. For example, he notes that Spain's King Philip IV fathered 30 illegitimate children "but being a good Catholic always felt bad about it" and forced his wife to have sexual relations three times daily. Like Michael Farquhar's A Treasury of Royal Scandals..., this irreverent and amusing exposé of royal indiscretions will appeal especially to those who like their history "lite." Illus. not seen by PW.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (May 29, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767907558
• ISBN-13: 978-0767907552
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #226,839 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Things we weren't supposed to know, December 29, 2001

By	Andrew S. Rogers (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have to admit I wasn't expecting much from an author whose previous works, according to the bio on the back cover, include Gross: A Compendium of the Unspeakable, Unpalatable, Unjust and Appalling, Gross Too, and The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists. However, I was very pleasantly surprised. Compared to A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors by Michael Farquhar, which covers much of the same ground in a far more tendentious fashion, 'Royal Babylon' is a very good book.

The sell-copy on the book's cover makes 'Royal Babylon' sound like nothing more than recycled gossip and titillating stories about Those Nasty Royals. It's actually a somewhat more systematic history than that, with in-depth profiles of several monarchs and thumbnail sketches of many others. Shaw also charts thoroughly the recurring incidences of mental and physical illness in the massively inbred family trees of European royalty, and tells tales of drunkenness and debauchery that never made it into the official history books.

Unlike Farquhar, Shaw doesn't moralize about monarchy as an institution, or argue that his findings invalidate the very idea of having a hereditary head of state. In fact, he makes the important distinction (on pages 125-127) that in a constitutional monarchy like Britain, having a nut -- to use the clinical term -- on the throne, while still not a good thing, has far fewer negative repercussions than it does in absolute monarchies like Prussia or Imperial Russia.

An eye-opening and disturbing element of Shaw's history is the body-count of people whose lives were taken or destroyed at the whim of a monarch. Throughout the book, people are beaten, starved, frozen, marched to death, or handed back and forth like trading cards. Thousands died in the construction of St Petersburg. Tall men from across the continent were kidnapped to Prussia to form Frederick William I's Potsdam Giant Guards. Other monarchs laughed at, or even enabled, this 'eccentricity.' As another review on this page notes, however, the death toll from monarchs is still far less than that exacted, in the twentieth century alone, by leaders acting in the name of the People. It may be outside the scope of Shaw's history to point that out, but it's still important to keep in mind that monarchies have tended to be far less sanguinary than 'dictatorships of the proletariat' are.

I wish Shaw had included an index. But apart from that failing, this is a decent general survey of the seamy underside European royal history. Fans of the contemporary House of Windsor will want to read the evidence that suggests the domestic tableau of the post-Victorian British monarchy hides some secrets every bit as dark and troubling as those of the Wittlesbachs, Hohenzollerns, or Romanovs.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Royal Babylon ~ Wild Romp through European History, July 15, 2001

By	John Barbey (San Francisco, California USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This has to be the best non-fiction light reading this summer. Why slog through hundreds of dusty history books for the "juiciest bits" when Karl Shaw has lined most of them up in this rollicking little 325 page volume ? It does for the fabled royal houses of Europe what the 'Hollywood Babylon' books did for our American celebrities twenty years ago. This is not a book which is likely to please royal apologists - between the excerpts, Shaw lays on mercilessly outspoken criticism of the Royals described, in the best British tradition. Underlying the fun is a very serious message about the corruption of the aristocracies in Europe generally, and the monarchies in particular - the great pretension of good old feudalism & aristocracy was the simple idea that power should be for the best & mightiest. Yet Shaw has lined up a "rogues gallery" of people at the very top of the aristocratic pyramid that have had absolutely no moral, mental, or even physical might or superiority. One has to be rightly horrified that this system held together, no matter what, and that the whole world and everything in it, was laid at the feet of these monstrous characters. This is a delightfully shocking little book. What is more, 98 per cent of it is entirely true, no matter what the apologists try to argue. As one might expect, since this writer is based in England, Shaw's biggest salvos are directed at the reigning Hanovers - and it certainly does raise an eyebrow that if Diana had survived marriage to Charles and QE II, that she would have been the first Englishwoman sitting on the throne since Henry the Eighth's last wife, Katherine Parr. Or, that even though she was the daughter of an Earl, a decendant of the Stuart kings, and had a noble lineage older than the Oueen's, that she was considered a "commoner" by the customs of England's "Royal" house. Celebrate Bastille Day and the Fourth of July the right way, and buy this book. It may be the best advertisement for democracy you will ever read !!

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but hardly side-splitting, January 1, 2004

By	L O'connor (richmond, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This account of European royalty between the 17th-20th centuries has some interesting stories about the eccentric and often deplorable behaviour of the members of various royal families. There is an emphasis on sexual misbehaviour, and Mr. Shaw's own prejudices show up quite clearly. He obviously has a strong distaste for the idea of women having sex past a certain age, Catherine the Great comes in for particular censor for being still interested in sex while in her sixties (ugh!)He refers sneeringly to George I's mother as a "flabby, toothless crone"She was a very old lady at the time, but that's no excuse, evidently, for being flabby and toothless. I suppose Mr Shaw thinks she should have been working out at the gym, or something. Camilla Parker-Bowles is refered to dissaprovingly as 'Prince Charles's forty-five year old mistress' (one feels Mr Shaw would dissaprove of her less had she been in her twenties).Mr Shaw seems to feel that hereditary power, combined with in-breeding, is the cause of the bad behaviour of monarchs, though as a previous reviewer pointed out, that hardly explains the deplorable behaviour of such non-hereditary monarchs as Napoleon, Hiter, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao etc. An intersting book if you don't mind the constant dwelling on (sometimes wildly exaggerated) disgusting details. The blurb on the back of the book describes this volume as 'side-splitting' but it is hardly that. Midly amusing perhaps. If you want a side-splitting history book, try 'The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody' by Will Cuppy.