Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe
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The young couple’s very normal lifestyle couldn’t be more different from William’s father’s standard of living. Prince Charles has a staff of 149, including a butler just to squeeze the toothpaste onto the royal brush.
All too aware of the media circus that surrounded Diana’s lonely and painful transition into The Firm, William remains highly protective of Catherine, and always expressed his intention to ease her conversion from commoner to princess as gently as possible. In this exercise of good old-fashioned chivalry, he has behaved like a prince, his birthright notwithstanding. But more than that, William once said, “My mother was the People’s Princess. I want to be the People’s King.” As he and Catherine are determined to be a very modern royal couple, how he manages to strike the balance between centuries of tradition and his own vision of modernity remains to be seen. The future of England’s monarchy is in their hands.
Acknowledgments
Perennial thanks to my agent, Irene Goodman, and my editor, Claire Zion, for their unflagging support for this fourth title in my nonfiction series of books on royal scandals and scandalous royals. As ever, I am also indebted to the most understanding husband on earth for accepting without a word of complaint the long hours and late nights it took to complete this opus, and for his ultimate display of support: He not only accompanied me to London for the royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton, but eased the journey with the purchase of extra frequent-flyer miles so that we could travel business class and arrive rested, knowing that I would be giving a number of media interviews that week. And, most gallantly of all, he awakened with me in the predawn hours on April 29, 2011, so that we could secure a prime spot on the Mall—and then, despite an aching back, remained standing beside me amid a fantastic, joyous sea of die-hard royal wedding watchers for eight hours straight so that I could derive the maximum enjoyment from the atmosphere as the events of the day unfolded.
This, dear readers, is a true romance.
Selected Bibliography
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Bernier, Olivier. Louis the Beloved: The Life of Louis XV; A Reexamination of the Misjudged Monarch of the Civilized Century. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1984.
———.Louis XIV: A Royal Life. New York: Doubleday, 1987.
Bradford, Sarah. George VI. London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2011.
Brand, Emily. Royal Weddings. Great Britain: Shire Publications, 2011.
Buckley, Veronica. The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d’Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon. New York: Picador, 2008.
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Fraser, Antonia. Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. New York: Doubleday, 2006.
———. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. New York: Doubleday, 2001.
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———. Sex with the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics. New York: William Morrow, 2006.
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———. Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
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———.The Fatal Friendship: Marie Antoinette, Count Fersen, and the Flight to Varennes. New York: Avon Books, 1972.
Mangan, J. J. The King’s Favour: Three Eighteenth-century Monarchs and the Favourites Who Ruled Them. Phoenix Mill, Far Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, Ltd. 1993.
Massie, Robert K. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. New York: Random House, 2011.
Mitford, Nancy. Madame de Pompadour. New York: New York Review of Books, 2001 (title originally copyrighted 1953).
———. The Sun King. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner. New York: Vintage Books, 2005.
Morand, Paul. The Captive Princess: Sophia Dorothea of Celle. New York: American Heritage Press, 1972.
Morton, James. Lola Montez: Her Life and Conquests. London: PiatkusBooks Ltd., 2007.
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Palmer, Alan. Napoleon & Marie Louise: The Emperor’s Second Wife. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
Princess Michael of Kent. Cupid and the King: Five Royal Paramours. New York: Touchstone, 2005.
———. The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King. New York: Touchstone, 2004.
Rounding, Virginia. Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.
Seymour, Bruce. Lola Montez: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Shawcross, William. The Queen Mother: The Official Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.
Sutherland, Christine. Marie Walewska: Napoleon’s Great Love. London: Robin Clark Ltd., 1986.
Thomson, Oliver. The Impossible Bourbons: Europe’s Most Ambitious Dynasty. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing, 2009.
Thornton, Michael. Royal Feud: The Dark Side of the Love Story of the Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.
Tillyard, Stella. A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings. New York: Random House, 2006.
Webster, Nesta. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette During the Revolution. New York: Gordon Press, 1976.
Zweig, Stefan. Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. New York: Grove Press, 1933.
ARTICLES
Aldridge, D. D. “Caroline Matilda, Princess (1751–1775).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4721
Goldman, Lawrence. “Elizabeth (1900–2002).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, January 2006. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2011. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/76927
Matthew, H. C. G. “George VI (1895–1952).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, January 2011. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33370
Seymour, Bruce. “Montez, Lola (1821–1861).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited b
y H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, May 2008. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10697
WEB SITES
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. S.v. “romance.” Retrieved November 14, 2010, from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/romance
http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/tag/homepage/page/3
Photo by Ron Rinaldi
LESLIE CARROLL is the author of several works of women’s fiction and, under the pen names Juliet Grey and Amanda Elyot, is a multipublished author of historical fiction. Royal Romances is her fourth foray into the field of historical nonfiction for NAL. She is also the author of The Royals: The Lives and Loves of the British Monarchs, a Barnes & Noble publication featuring facsimiles of historical memorabilia. A frequent commentator on royal romances and relationships, Leslie has been interviewed by MSNBC.com, USA Today, the Australian Broadcasting Company, and NPR, and was a featured royalty expert on the CBS Evening News broadcast from London during the royal wedding coverage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. She also appears as an expert on the lives of Queen Victoria, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, and Napoleon on Canada’s Proper Television documentary series The Secret Life of…. Leslie and her husband, Scott, divide their time between New York City and southern Vermont.
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