内容简介
Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Whatdid they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold,cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, theyspent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to thescaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. Andthey are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughouthistory, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting badends--dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiringin childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. Theyalways had to be on their toes and all too often even deviousplotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters wasnot enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religiousorders. From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline(suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there’s a gorydownside to being blue-blooded when you lack a Y chromosome. KrisWaldherr’s elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials andtribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterlymacabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over thecourse of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives,Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue.We meet well-known figures like Catherine of Aragon, whose happymarriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear thatshe was a starter wife--the first of six. And we meet forgottenqueens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogothprincess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath.While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die withoutpurpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales fortoday’s would-be power brokers--a legacy of worldly and womanlywisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.