Author : Evelyne Lever
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 49,41 MB
Release : 2001-09-24
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780312283339
A biography of the French queen explores the intrigue surrounding her life from her birth, through her unhappy marriage, her lavish life at Versailles, to the events leading up to her death by beheading during the French Revolution.
Author : Andre Castelot
Publisher : Ishi Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 43,14 MB
Release : 2009-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9784871878548
This is the biography of one of the most tragic women in History. It is the story of a frivolous young girl who threw wild parties and spent a lot of her husband's money and for that reason, and that reason alone, she had her head chopped off in public. The back cover photo here shows Marie Antoinette being given her last rights by a clergyman as she was waiting before the guillotine for the executioners to cut off her head, and while a crowd of thousands watched. Her last words were one of apology to one of her executioners, when she accidentally stepped on his foot. All of the events of the Life of Marie Antoinette are brilliantly explained in this biography by Andre Castelot. The most haunting and harrowing pages of the biography are Castelot's darkly etched picture of the Queen in the culminating moments of her life. Perhaps it is not in the least a paradox that one of the most arrantly self-indulgent women should, in her adversity, provide one of the most memorable images of mother love."
Author : Lisa Hilton
Publisher :
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 19,65 MB
Release : 2014-05-10
Category : BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY
ISBN : 9780316141642
As lovely and charming as she was shrewd and calculating, Athenais de Montespan became the most powerful noblewoman of her day by brilliantly manipulating her forbidden role as mistress of King Louis XIV. With a lively narrative style that reads like fiction, Hilton reveals the woman behind the most dazzling days of the Sun King's reign. photos.
Author : Mme Campan (Jeanne-Louise-Henriette)
Publisher :
Page : 446 pages
File Size : 42,41 MB
Release : 1884
Category : Anecdotes
ISBN :
Author : John Hardman
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 517 pages
File Size : 38,14 MB
Release : 2019-10-29
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0300249039
This “wonderfully gripping biography” digs beneath the famous legend to present a nuanced and revealing portrait of a serious-mined monarch (Allan Massie, Wall Street Journal). As the last Queen of France before the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, while today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understanding the events that engulfed her. But who was she really? In this new account, John Hardman redresses the balance and sheds fresh light on her story. Hardman shows how Marie-Antoinette played a significant but misunderstood role in the crisis of the monarchy. Drawing on new sources, he describes how she refused to prioritize the aggressive foreign policy of her mother, bravely took over the helm from her faltering husband, and, when revolution broke out, worked closely with repentant radicals to give the constitutional monarchy a fighting chance. For the first time, Hardman demonstrates exactly what influence Marie-Antoinette had and when and how she exerted it. Named a 2020 Book of the Year by The Spectator
Author : Leonie Frieda
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 32,95 MB
Release : 2022-01-11
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0063235919
The inspiration for the STARZ original series, The Serpent Queen, premiering September 11. “A beautifully written portrait of a ruthless, subtle and fearless woman fighting for survival and power in a world of gangsterish brutality, routine assassination and religious mania. . . . Frieda has brought a largely forgotten heroine-villainess and a whole sumptuously vicious era back to life. . . . This is The Godfather meets Elizabeth.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Poisoner, besotted mother, despot, necromancer, engineer of a massacre: the dark legend of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen of France to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds. Based on comprehensive research including thousands of Catherine’s own letters, Frieda unfurls Catherine’s story from her troubled childhood in Florence to her tumultuous marriage to Henry II of France; her transformation of French culture to her reign as a queen who would use brutality to ensure her children’s royal birthright. Brilliantly executed, this enthralling biography goes beyond myth to paint a very human portrait of this remarkable figure.
Author : Jean Plaidy
Publisher : Crown
Page : 378 pages
File Size : 47,12 MB
Release : 2003-10-28
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0609810219
Legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy brings to life the story of Princess Mary Tudor, a celebrated beauty and born rebel who would defy the most powerful king in Europe—her older brother. Princess Mary Rose is the youngest sister of Henry VIII, and one of the few people whom he adores unconditionally. Known throughout Europe for her charm and good looks, Mary is the golden child of the Tudor family and is granted her every wish. Except when it comes to marriage. Henry VIII, locked in a political showdown with France, decides to offer up his pampered baby sister to secure peace between the two mighty kingdoms. Innocent, teenage Mary must become the wife of the elderly King Louis, a toothless, ailing man in his sixties. Horrified and furious, Mary has no choice but to sail for France. There she hones her political skills, bides her time, and remains secretly in love with Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. When King Louis dies after only two years of marriage, Mary is determined not to be sold into another unhappy union. She must act quickly; if she wants to be with the man she truly loves, she must defy the laws of church and state by marrying without her brother’s permission. Together, Mary and Charles devise a scheme to outwit the most ruthless king in Europe and gain their hearts’ desire, not knowing if it will lead to marital bliss or certain death.
Author : Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan
Publisher : The Floating Press
Page : 722 pages
File Size : 27,14 MB
Release : 2009-01-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1775411583
Memoirs of the Court of Marie Antoinette is an inside look into the life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, written by her First Lady in Waiting Madame Campan. Born in 1755 and married to Louis XVI of France at the age of 14, Antoinette was renowned for her fabled excesses. She was condemned for treason in 1793 at the zenith of the French Revolution, forfeiting her life to the razor-edge of a guillotine.
Author : Ralph V. Turner
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 626 pages
File Size : 20,91 MB
Release : 2009-06-16
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0300159897
Eleanor of Aquitaine’s extraordinary life seems more likely to be found in the pages of fiction. Proud daughter of a distinguished French dynasty, she married the king of France, Louis VII, then the king of England, Henry II, and gave birth to two sons who rose to take the English throne—Richard the Lionheart and John. Renowned for her beauty, hungry for power, headstrong, and unconventional, Eleanor traveled on crusades, acted as regent for Henry II and later for Richard, incited rebellion, endured a fifteen-year imprisonment, and as an elderly widow still wielded political power with energy and enthusiasm. This gripping biography is the definitive account of the most important queen of the Middle Ages. Ralph Turner, a leading historian of the twelfth century, strips away the myths that have accumulated around Eleanor—the “black legend” of her sexual appetite, for example—and challenges the accounts that relegate her to the shadows of the kings she married and bore. Turner focuses on a wealth of primary sources, including a collection of Eleanor’s own documents not previously accessible to scholars, and portrays a woman who sought control of her own destiny in the face of forceful resistance. A queen of unparalleled appeal, Eleanor of Aquitaine retains her power to fascinate even 800 years after her death.
Author : Charles Duke Yonge
Publisher :
Page : 496 pages
File Size : 35,91 MB
Release : 1876
Category :
ISBN :
