Doomed Queens - Royal Women Who Mat Bad Ends, From Cleopatra to Princess Di

Kris Waldherr

Broadway Books

2008

176 páginas

5h 52m

ISBN-13: 9780767928991

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 lack a Y chromosome. Kris Waldherr’s elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterly macabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over the course 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 happy marriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear that she was a starter wife--the first of six. And we meet forgotten queens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogoth princess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath. While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die without purpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales for today’s would-be power brokers--a legacy of worldly and womanly wisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.

Resenhas (1)

3 (Bom)

Confesso que nunca tinha ouvido falar da grande maioria das rainhas mencionadas (com exceção, logicamente, das Tudors, Maria Antonieta, Mumtaz Mahal, Sissi e essa turma aí); e mesmo assim, algumas eu não fazia ideia do final que tiveram. Eu gosto de ficar por dentro das fofocas monárquicas, sabe – primos casando com primos, tios com sobrinhas, toda uma reestrutura genética desrregulada condenando descendentes a insanidade, no meio de tudo isso muitas intrigas familiares, parente degolando parente, mãe cegando o filho, marido aprisionando esposa. Esse pessoal sabia viver, ou melhor, sabia morrer. Parece que desejavam a todo custo um afogamento, um envenenamento, um pontapé pela janela.

É um livro curioso. É essa a palavra: curioso. Kris Waldherr foi uma linda ao organizar as rainhas em uma linha do tempo crescente, que é para ninguém ficar perdido com tanta traição e disputa territorial. Kris tem um humor irônico que, se você for um leitor atento, deve saber que muito me agrada. Em cada capítulo há um quiz para refrescar tudo o que aprendemos e contabilizar quantas cabeças rolaram e porquê, assim como no final do livro para sabermos qual nosso potencial em perder a cabeça (literalmente). Eu, que sou boba alegre, respondi.

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