Book Review(s): Women of the British Monarchy

Lately, I've been reading some very good books that all seem to have a theme in common, and I've been pleasantly surprised by some of them, so I thought I would share my impressions in case any of you were interested in doing some reading of your own.

We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill is a fantastic exploration of the royal marriage, and a good overview of the backgrounds of both partners.  I've read many books about Victoria, but almost none about Albert, and I was really fascinated by what the author has to say about his childhood.  I also enjoyed the story of how Albert "transformed" Victoria, for lack of a better word, into a more compliant spouse, and tried to take for himself the powers of the monarch, despite Parliament having refused to grant them to him officially.  Albert's influence on Victoria and on England was really astounding, and this book does an excellent job of exploring those relationships. This is an excellent introduction to them as people, and as rulers, and I think many readers would find this enjoyable, even if you are already well versed in the history of Queen Victoria.


Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria by Julia P. Gelardi tells the story of how Victoria and Albert's descendants took the lessons learned from their formidable grandmother and spread them across Europe.  I would classify this as an intermediate level read, because there is a lot of jumping back and forth between the five women's stories, and the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas were a very fertile group, so there are a lot of supporting characters, and you have to really be paying attention to keep them all straight.  But Gelardi does an excellent job tying them together, and it is a fascinating read.  I'm working on a blog post about how Queen Victoria and Christian IX of Denmark managed to populate almost all the thrones of Europe, and this book feeds directly into that.  The five Granddaughters led lives that encompassed the great events of late 19th century and early to mid 20th century Europe, so the scope of Born to Rule is broad but fascinating and manages to convey an impressive amount of detail.  I would heartily recommend this to anyone interested in Modern European history, or the legacy of Queen Victoria.



Sovereign Ladies: Sex, Sacrifice and Power - The Six Reigning Queens of England by Maureen Waller analyzes the reigns of Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II through the lens of their gender.  It deals only with the Queens regnant, that is women who actually ruled, not the wives and consorts of Kings.  It covers how each one came to the throne, and how each Queen dealt with the fact of her gender.  All of them, with the exception, to a degree, of Elizabeth II, ruled during a time when women were seen to be inferior by nature of their gender, when womanhood was equated with subservience, obedience, weakness, and submission to a man, either father or husband.  The result of this varies widely, from Elizabeth I who built up the cult of the Virgin Queen to Mary II who claimed the throne, but essentially turned it over to her domineering husband, William of Orange, as her co-monarch.  Each section deals with one Queen, and gives enough biographical data to build a solid line of reasoning without overwhelming the reader, or needlessly covering ground well tended by other biographers.  I found the parallels and divergences in their stories fascinating.  This is a fairly easy read, and is handily broken up into sections by Queen, so it's easy to read in chunks, or even put down and come back much later without losing the thread.




Royal Feud: The Dark Side of the Love Story of the Century by Michael Thornton is the most gossipy of the group.  The premise is basically that Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, HATED Wallis Simpson almost from the moment of meeting her, and describes how that tension played out over the course of their lives.  Now, this book was published in 1985, so some of it reads as being slightly dated (most notably because both protagonists were living at the time of publication, although Wallis died in 1986 and the Queen Mother in 2002), but since most of the events it covers happened decades before that even, it's not a handicap.  According to Thornton, Wallis Simpson referred to the Queen Mother as "The Dowdy Duchess" (she was Elizabeth, Duchess of York at the time they met) and the Queen Mother basically called her "that woman" or tried to refer to her not at all if it was possible.  The two women did not meet from the time Edward VIII abdicated the throne until close to twenty years later.  Thornton blames the royal family's poor treatment of Wallis on both Queen Mary and the Queen Mother, but mostly the Queen Mother.  Thornton seems to think that George VI's unwillingness to receive Wallis at Court, and his refusal to allow her to be styled Her Royal Highness was the result of his wife's opinion.  He does a fairly good job at relating the story without censure for either party, and I came away feeling sorry for both women. This is another book where there is a large cast of supporting characters, and some of them can be difficult to keep straight.  But it is a fascinating insider account of one of the great scandals of the 20th century, and well worth a read.


Well, that's it for now.  I've got a couple more stacked up on my nightstand, one covering Queen Victoria's daughters, two other books about Wallis Simpson, one dealing with her later life, after Edward's death, and one about the two of them, plus another Julia Gelardi book dealing with royal mothers and their daughters tragedies (Queen Victoria, Catherine of Aragon, and Marie Antoinette feature heavily), so there will undoubtedly be another round of book reviews down the road.  In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for things I should read, leave them in the comments section, I'm always looking for ideas.  And let me know if you read any of these, I'd love to know what you think.

A.H.

It's Not So Much a Book as a Way of Life

(Caution!!  There is at least one link in this post that is NSFW!  or small children, or the faint of heart.)

So, here we are, 18 or 19 posts and three months into this blogging experiment.  And it seems to be going pretty well.  Only, we've over looked one teeny tiny little thing.  Well, maybe not that little.  More like big.  That big thing is a novel called Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon.  Outlander is a historical, science fiction, romance, action adventure novel that weighs in at a hefty 688 pages, and 2 1/2 pounds in the hardback version.  Oh, did I mention it has (so far) six sequels?  And they're all longer than the original?  And there are three (soon to be four) shorter auxiliary novels that focus on one of the supporting characters?  And two complementary short stories?  And two novellas? And one (soon to be two) guides to help you keep straight all the who's, what's, where's, and when's?  And a graphic novel?  So, it's not so much a novel as a way of life. 

Okay, so we haven't really told you anything that makes you want to actually read this epic?  Allow me to give you a VERY brief synopsis of the story line.  Essentially what we have is a WWII British battlefield nurse who gets transported back to the 18th century thanks to a circle of standing stones in Scotland.  There is some confusion about where she is and how she got there, but basically she ends up married to a 22 year old Scottish virgin who cuts quite the handsome figure in his kilt.  This all takes place in the run up to the Battle of Culloden, which destroyed the Scottish Highland way of life, and the clan system that sustained it.  There is a little bit of back and forth to the twentieth century, but the focus of the last several sequels is basically the ever expanding circle of family that Jamie (the Scottish virgin) and Claire (the nurse) gather around themselves as their lives progress over the next thirty years.  There is quite a bit of swashbuckling, a pleasing amount of history (including cameos by actual historical figures), lots of really well done character development, some laugh out loud twists and turns, and just enough steamy. . . . mmphmm to keep you turning page after page.

(There may or may not also exist a small homemade movie in which we spent many hours casting just the right celebrity to play each character of this beloved masterpiece, but you won't be seeing that here.)

One of us was introduced to the masterpiece by her mother, who was an avid consumer of audio books, and liked really loooonnnnnnggg audio books.  This one of us regrets that it took us a couple of years to recommend it to the other half of the brain, but believe me when I tell you that it was a meeting of the minds (well, mind in our case).

This might qualify as the best book I've ever read (apologies to Pride and Prejudice), and I heartily recommend it to anyone I think might love it as much as I do, but I have to confess, I don't recommend it to everyone I know.  I think I might actually be a little heartbroken if someone I recommended it to didn't like it.  This is not a "beach read", it's not chick lit, or fluff.  It's hard core.  It's a commitment, and like most good commitments, it will repay you a thousand fold if you have the tenacity to see it through.

In case you have several weeks alone in a small igloo booked for this winter, or are planning a round the world plane trip and don't yet own an iPod, or if you're okay with basically ignoring your husband while you make your way through everything, here are the books, in order that they should be read.  But please don't blame us if you open Outlander in November, and close An Echo in the Bone in March, and don't remember how you got there.

Original Canon:

• Outlander
• Dragonfly in Amber
• Voyager
• Drums of Autumn
• The Fiery Cross
• A Breath of Snow and Ashes
• An Echo in the Bone
• also the tentatively titled Written with my Own Heart's Blood, slated for publication sometime in late 2012 (toooo long, toooo long!)

• The Exile, which is the graphic novel, and is basically a retelling of the events at the beginning of Outlander, from a different point of view.  A point of view that includes several buff, naked Scottish behinds.

Auxillary Canon:

These books are ancillary to the main body of work, but as the later sequels progress, they really do add some fascinating insight and backstory to several of the more important minor characters.

• Lord John and the Private Matter
• Lord John and the Hand of Devils
• Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
• Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner, to be released November 29th, that's roughly 80 days from now, but who's counting.  Oh, wait, I am.

• "Lord John and the Custom of the Army", published as part of an anthology called Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois
• "Lord John and the Plague of Zombies", part of different Martin/Dozois compilation called Down These Strange Streets

• "A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows", also part of a Martin/Dozois collection, Songs of Love and Death, this one does not deal with Lord John, but rather with the parents of one of the four main characters in Outlander, and helps solves some mysteries, although it leaves new ones wide open.

• "The Space Between", to be published (at an as yet unknown date) in an anthology called The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination edited by John Joseph Adams.  This one involves the offspring of the primary family group in Outlander. 

• The Outlandish Companion - a helpful guide to characters, the impenetrable Gaelic language, DG's writing process, and fascinating trivia about the books
• The Outlandish Companion, Vol. II - same as above but covering the more recent publications.  This one does not have a publication date yet.

• And a Prequel, which doesn't have a title, or any other information other than that it exists in the authors mind, and is apparently part of her current book contract, so eventually (!!) we will get some insight into where our favorite characters came from.  

That's 20 books, and I would guess we're verging on 15,000 pages of writing (okay, I know, because I looked it up on Amazon, and that doesn't include unpublished works for which there is not yet a page count.).  And every one of them worth it.  This might take you a year, it might take you five years, you might race through it in 6 months, but you won't regret it.  And believe me, and the millions of other readers who have made this series such a success, you will reread these again and again.

A.H. and A.V.