Doomed Queens, page 14
d. Had really nice eyes.
4. Which factor led to the death of Elisabeth of Bavaria?
a. A wild and crazy family.
b. An anarchist with a sharpened file.
c. A whomping case of the pox.
d. Adolescent poetry.
5. What doomed Diana and Charles’s marriage?
a. The public preferred the princess to the prince.
b. Diana thought Laurens van der Post was a Dutch designer.
c. Charles liked the royal tradition of a wife at home, a mistress in the field.
d. Diana had read too many Regency romances and mistook Charles’s last name for Charming.
ANSWER KEY
1, c. 2, c: George hated Caroline more than he hated Napoléon. 3, a: Alexandra’ devotion to Alexei blinded her to Rasputin’s less-than-honorable ways. 4, b is most accurate though a, c, and d were factors. 5, a, c, and d: Trick question. Diana knew who Laurens van der Post was since Charles read his books on their honeymoon.
CHAPTER FINAL
Are You a Doomed Queen? A Quiz
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
The good, the bad, the hardship, the joy, the tragedy, love, and happiness are all interwoven into one single indescribable whole that is called life. You cannot separate the good from the bad. And, perhaps there is no need to do so either.
Jacqueline Onassis
To become a queen, do you have to rule a country or marry a king? Not necessarily—there are other ways to be considered royal today. For example, take Elizabeth Taylor or Jacqueline Onassis. Would you dare to call either of those grandes dames less than regal? Nowadays, heads of major corporations also bear the all-encompassing powers that rulers of ancient times gained through birthright.
If it’s possible to be a queen without royal blood, then it’s also possible you may be a doomed queen. Take this quiz to ascertain your royal risk factor. And let the head that wears the crown beware.
Choose the answer that most closely reflects your situation.
1. Your main childhood memory is:
a. Playing with your friends after school.
b. Bucolic summers at the beach house.
c. Visits to your rich childless aunt so she would remember you in her will.
d. Listening to your family fight, bicker, and haggle.
2. Your education was:
a. Public school all the way.
b. A good liberal arts education.
c. Private school. Then Ivy League with a soupçon of graduate school.
d. Why go to school when your family has money? Life is for living, not learning.
3. Your family raised you to:
a. Work hard and live honestly.
b. Have a sense of entitlement.
c. Expect relationships to be fraught with danger.
d. Compete for dominance. Not everyone can be number one.
4. You are attracted to romantic partners who are:
a. Solid and supportive.
b. Sensitive and soulful.
c. Rich and powerful.
d. Self-involved and selfish.
5. What’s the best way to meet a husband?
a. Through common interests and friends.
b. Let those close to me set it up. They know what’s best for me.
c. Seduce him away from his wife of many years.
d. What husband? I don’t want any competition for attention.
6. Your dream vacation is:
a. A family reunion at the old homestead.
b. A relaxing cruise where everything is taken care of.
c. A workshop where you can meet influential people.
d. A bender at the Chateau Marmont, followed by detox at Promises in Malibu.
7. Which of the following film titles best describes your life?
a. Sense and Sensibility.
b. Terms of Endearment.
c. Million Dollar Baby.
d. Dangerous Liaisons.
8. Which statement describes your involvement in religion?
a. I believe in the Golden Rule: Do unto others and all that.
b. I will fight with those who don’t agree with my beliefs. They’re wrong.
c. Cults are fun. All that intensity!
d. I prefer to be the object of worship.
9. At the end of the day, what is most important to you?
a. To have a stable but satisfying life. Who cares if it’s a little boring?
b. To know that I lived each day to its fullest.
c. Love, power, glamour, money—it’s intoxicating.
d. A sense of excitement, even if it means dangerous risks.
Answer yes or no.
1. I am married to a powerful man who has had several wives before me.
2. I am married to a powerful man whose previous wives have died under suspicious circumstances.
3. I am married to a powerful man whose previous wives now control major corporations or small countries that serve as tax shelters.
4. I am the single parent of a child.
5. I am the single parent of a child who will inherit money upon reaching legal age.
6. I am the single parent of a child who will inherit a country upon reaching legal age.
7. I am the leader of a country where there is religious unrest.
8. I am the leader of a country where there is political turmoil.
9. I own a large corporation whose shareholders are very unhappy.
Is this statement true for you?
I am related to royalty.
* * *
Answer Key
SECTION ONE: Give yourself 0 points for every a answer you chose; 1 point for every b; 2 points for every c; 3 points for every d. SECTION TWO: Give yourself 2 points for every yes answer, 0 for every no. BONUS QUESTION: Add 4 points if you have royal blood. Total all your points to learn what your risk factor is for becoming a doomed queen.
0 to 9 points: While you may not be royally inclined, your humility will gain you many years of life.
10 to 19 points: Blue blood or no, you are more regal than most. Use your powers for good.
20 to 34 points: Mildly in danger of becoming a doomed queen. But the frisson of anxiety makes you attractive to the masses.
35 to 50 points: There’s still time to avoid the chopping block. You may live on through infamy, but you’re flirting with doom.
* * *
AFTERWORD AND SOURCE NOTES
Whatever your score on the preceding quiz, I hope that you found the cautionary tales presented in Doomed Queens useful for avoiding an unfortunate end. David McCullough wrote that “history is a guide to navigation in perilous times.” If this is true, then too many of the female rulers profiled in this book spent their lives adrift without a compass.
Doomed Queens has been my most research-intensive publication to date. Tragic queens such as Marie Antoinette or Anne Boleyn fill the terrain of many a PBS pledge drive—but what about lesser-known monarchs such as Cleopatra’s not so loyal sister Berenice or the teenaged and trapped Blanche of Bourbon? Even with the plump resources of research libraries at my disposal, locating the truth about their reigns often proved to be a tricky proposition. I often felt like Nancy Drew (but minus the blue roadster) as I sought the clues that would reveal the fullness of these queens’ sad, but sometimes well-deserved, fates.
Ultimately but not surprisingly, many of these women’s lives were buried as footnotes within the histories of kings and wars and dynasties. The writings of ancient historians such as Appian, Dio Cassius, Herodotus, Jordanes, Plutarch, and Tacitus provided me with intriguing and occasionally contradictory insights into the lives of Cleopatra, Olympias, Boudicca, and their contemporaries. Other queens’ stories hinged on single sources; nevertheless, I decided to include them, since they were too colorful to ignore. The Bible recounted the saga of bad-to-the-bone Athaliah and her mother, Jezebel. The reign of Anula is recorded in the Mahavamsa. The Han Shu (or Book of Han) offered information about the unnaturally truncated reigns of the Chinese empresses of the Han dynasty.
What follows is a severely edited list of works that I consulted as I worked on Doomed Queens; a complete bibliography is posted at www.doomedqueens.com. And remember, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Bell, Rudolph M. How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Bradford, Ernle. Cleopatra. London, New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
Brown, Tina. The Diana Chronicles. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
Caillois, Roger. “The Sociology of the Executioner.” The College of Sociology, 1937–39, edited by Denis Hollier. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Collingridge, Vanessa. Boudica: The Life and Legends of Britain’s Warrior Queen. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2006.
Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, with Mona Behan. Warrior Women: An Archaeologist’s Search for History’s Hidden Heroines. New York: Warner Books, 2002.
DeLorme, Eleanor P. Joséphine: Napoléon’s Incomparable Empress. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002.
Denny, Joanna. Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen. New York: Da Capo Press, 2006.
Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette: The Journey. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.
———. The Warrior Queens. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Frieda, Leonie. Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France. New York: Fourth Estate, 2003.
Garland, Lynda. Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527–1204. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Green, Peter. Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 BC: A Historical Biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Herrin, Judith. Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Lindsey, Karen. Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra. New York: Ballantine Books, 2000.
———. Peter the Great: His Life and World. New York: Ballantine Books, 1986.
Parsons, John Carmi, ed. Medieval Queenship. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. London: Routledge, 1989.
Perón, Eva. In My Own Words: Evita. Translated by Laura Dail. New York: New Press, 1996.
Robins, Jane. The Trial of Queen Caroline: The Scandalous Affair That Nearly Ended a Monarchy. New York: Free Press, 2006.
Seagrave, Sterling. Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.
Sinclair, Andrew. Death by Fame: A Life of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.
Starkey, David. Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
Tillyard, Stella. A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings. New York: Random House, 2006.
Tyldesley, Joyce A. Chronicle of the Queens of Egypt: From Early Dynastic Times to the Death of Cleopatra. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2006.
Voltaire. The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version. Volume 4. Translated by William F. Fleming. Paris: E. R. DuMont, 1901.
———. The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version [Ancient and Modern History, V. III France, 1384–Europe, 1599]. Volume 26. Translated by William F. Fleming. Paris: E. R. DuMont, 1901.
Warner, Marina. The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz’u-hsi, Empress Dowager of China, 1835–1908. New York: Atheneum, 1986.
Weir, Alison. The Children of Henry VIII. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As solitary an undertaking as a book may be, it was impossible to create Doomed Queens without help from many sources. It is with grateful mind and heart that I acknowledge all those who so generously helped me as I wrote, designed, and illustrated this book.
I send a big bouquet of thanks to the good people of Broadway Books, most especially my gifted editor, Kristine Puopolo. Kris’s incisive wit and wisdom made her a joy to work with. Kris’s serenely helpful assistant, Stephanie Bowen, added much to the editorial process. Art director Jean Traina conceptualized and designed Doomed Queens’ wonderfully Dadaesque cover.
At the Park Literary Group, Theresa Park has been there for me and my books for more than a decade. When I first described what I thought was a very dark and strange book concept, it was Theresa’s immediate and warm enthusiasm that convinced me to develop it into what became Doomed Queens. For this reason and many others, this book is dedicated to her. Much gratitude also goes out to Shannon O’Keefe, Amanda Cardinale, and Abigail Koons.
The models who gamely posed for the drawings in this book were incredibly patient as I dressed them up in period costume, cheerfully wielding whatever weapon or motivation I threw their way. In alphabetical order, they were: Alice Barrett-Mitchell, Stephanie Bowen, Abraham Danz, Jill Dowling, Monica Hernandez, Lisa Hunt, Annmaria Mazzini, Jo Anna Mitchell, Cassandra O’Neill, Theresa Park, Glen Parker, Jacqueline Parker, Kristine Puopolo, and Diane Saarinen. Also on the art end, the digital resources of the Library of Congress provided many of the historical images peppered throughout this book.
My family and friends were very supportive as I worked on Doomed Queens. I am especially grateful to my husband, Thomas Ross Miller, whose scholarship provides me with much inspiration and who always believes in my work. My daughter, Thea, was very tolerant of the long hours I spent working on this book; during this period, Cassandra O’Neill provided us with superb childcare and household support. I am also appreciative of the thoughtful conversation, e-mails, and tireless cheerleading of Ed and Joyce Miller, Jennifer Johnson, Karen Zuegner, Lisa Hunt, my NC posse, Alan Davis, Benjamin Salazar, and Stephanie St. Pierre—thank you all!
PUBLISHED BY BROADWAY BOOKS
Copyright © 2008 by Kris Waldherr
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.broadwaybooks.com
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Waldherr, Kris.
Doomed queens / Kris Waldherr. —1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Queens—Biography. 2. Empresses—Biography. I. Title.
D107.3.W35 2008
920.72—dc22
2008021959
eISBN: 978-0-7679-3103-8
v3.0
Kris Waldherr, Doomed Queens
