DOOMED QUEENS: Royal Women Who Met Bad Ends From Cleopatra to Princess Di

Broadway Books, 2008. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Soft cover. New/No Jacket Issued. B&W drawings & art repros throughout. Loaded.. CONDITION: NEW 2008 Broadway Books trade paperback, first edition, first printing. Beautiful book: B&W drawings & art reproductions throughout; decorated end pages; deckle edges; and chapter decorations. CONTENT: Illicit love, madness, betrayal--it isn't always good to be the queen Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, and Mary, Queen of Scots. What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, they spent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to the scaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughout history, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting bad ends--dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiring in childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. They always had to be on their toes and all too often even devious plotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters was not enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religious orders. From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline (suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there's a gory downside to being blue-blooded when you don't have a Y chromosome.