James II's drive towards Catholicism had alienated the nation and his two staunchly Protestant daughters by his first marriage, Mary and Anne, the "ungrateful daughters," who eventually usurped their father's crown and stole their half-brother's birthright.Seven prominent men sent an invitation to William of Orange--James's nephew and son-in-law--to intervene in English affairs. But Mary and Anne also played a key role. Jealous and resentful of her hated stepmother, Anne had written a series of malicious letters to Mary in Holland, implying that the Queen's pregnancy was a hoax: a Catholic plot to deny Mary her rightful inheritance.Distraught from being betrayed by his own children, James fled the kingdom. And even as the crown descended on her head, Mary knew she had incurred a father's curse. The sisters quarreled to the day of Mary's death at age 32. Anne did nothing to earn her father's forgiveness, and she declared her brother an outlaw with a price on his head.Acclaimed historian Maureen Waller re-creates the late Stuart era in a compelling narrative that highlights the influence of the royal women on one of the most momentous events in English history. Prompted by religious bigotry and the emotions that beset every family relationship, this palace coup changed the face of the monarchy, and signaled the end of a dynasty.

    The crown of England changed hands violently seven times as the great families of England fought to the death for power, majesty and the right to rule. Dan Jones completes his epic history of medieval England with a new book about the the Wars of the Roses - and describes how the Plantagenets, tore themselves apart and were finally replaced by the Tudors.With vivid descriptions of the battle of Towton, where 28,000 men died in a single morning, to Bosworth, where the last Plantagenet king was hacked down, this is the real story behind Shakespeare's famous history plays.

    Amidst all the jewels, and velvet and coronets, and the fine uniforms, she exuded an unworldly simplicity. Seated with the royal family, she was a part of them, yet somehow distanced from them. Inasmuch as she is remembered at all today, it is as this shadowy figure in gray nun's clothes..."Princess Alice, mother of Prince Phillip, was something of a mystery figure even within her own family. She was born deaf, at Windsor Castle, in the presence of her grandmother, Queen Victoria, and brought up in England, Darmstadt, and Malta.In 1903 she married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, and from then on her life was overshadowed by wars, revolutions, and enforced periods of exile. By the time she was thirty-five, virtually every point of stability was overthrown. Though the British royal family remained in the ascendant, her German family ceased to be ruling princes, her two aunts who had married Russian royalty had come to savage ends, and soon afterwards Alice's own husband was nearly executed as a political scapegoat.The middle years of her life, which should have followed a conventional and fulfilling path, did the opposite. She suffered from a serious religious crisis and at the age of forty-five was removed from her family and placed in a sanitarium in Switzerland, where she was pronounced a paranoid schizophrenic. As her stay in the clinic became prolonged, there was a time where it seemed she might never walk free again. How she achieved her recovery is just one of the remarkable aspects of her story.

    England had been ravaged for decades by conspiracy, violence, murders, coups and countercoups. Through luck, guile and ruthlessness, Henry VII, the first of the Tudor kings, had clambered to the top of the heap--a fugitive with a flimsy claim to England's throne. For many he remained a usurper, a false king.But Henry had a crucial asset: his queen and their children, the living embodiment of his hoped-for dynasty. Queen Elizabeth was a member of the House of York. Henry himself was from the House of Lancaster, so between them they united the warring parties that had fought the bloody century-long War of the Roses. Now their older son, Arthur, was about to marry a Spanish princess. On a cold November day sixteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon arrived in London for a wedding that would mark a triumphal moment in Henry's reign.In this remarkable book, Thomas Penn re-creates the story of the tragic, magnetic Henry VII--a controlling, paranoid, avaricious monarch who was entering the most perilous years of his long reign.Rich with drama and insight, Winter King is an astonishing story of pageantry, treachery, intrigue and incident--and the fraught, dangerous birth of Tudor England.

    Endowed with English royal blood on her mother's side, she was betrothed in infancy to Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII of England, an alliance that greatly benefited both sides. Yet Arthur died weeks after their marriage in 1501, and Catherine found herself remarried to his younger brother, soon to become Henry VIII. The history of England-and indeed of Europe-was forever altered by their union.Drawing on his deep knowledge of both Spain and England, Giles Tremlett has produced the first full biography in more than four decades of the tenacious woman whose marriage to Henry VIII lasted twice as long (twenty-four years) as his five other marriages combined. Her refusal to divorce him put her at the center of one of history's greatest power struggles, one that has resonated down through the centuries- Henry's break away from the Catholic Church as, bereft of a son, he attempted to annul his marriage to Catherine and wed Anne Boleyn. Catherine's daughter, Mary, would controversially inherit Henry's throne; briefly and bloodily, she returned England to the Catholicism of her mother's native Spain, foreshadowing the Spanish Armada some three decades later.From Catherine's peripatetic childhood at the glittering court of Ferdinand and Isabella to the battlefield at Flodden, where she, in Henry's absence abroad, led the English forces to victory against Scotland to her determination to remain queen and her last years in almost monastic isolation, Giles Tremlett vividly re-creates the life of a giant figure in the sixteenth century. Catherine of Aragon will take its place among the best of Tudor biography.

    Index; illustrations.

    Defined by the iconic figure of the virgin queen – Elizabeth I – it witnessed the end of the dynastic uncertainties of the Wars of the Roses, the creation and triumph of the Protestant Church; the successful repulsion of a foreign invader and the beginnings of the adventure of empire; the blossoming of a sublimely gifted generation of musical composers, including Thomas Tallis and William Byrd; and the flowering of English poetry and drama, culminating in the glories of Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. But it was also a period wracked by rebellion, invasion scares, sectarian strife, and – increasingly – by worries about dynastic succession.The Tudor Chronicles is a compelling, year-by-year chronology of this tumultuous and critical period in the development of the modern English nation. Each year is covered by a concise, informative and accessible narrative, amplified by extensive quotations from contemporary sources and accompanied by generously captioned and stunning images of the period – including portraits, maps, illuminations, royal seals, tapestries and other artifacts.Authoritative, informative and sumptuous, and compiled by a scholar who is steeped in knowledge of the period, The Tudor Chronicles brings a glorious era of English history dramatically and vividly to life. It is the perfect gift book for anyone with a love of, or fascination for, 16th-century English history.

    Pius and idealistic, the young Sophie shed her cloak of innocence to become Catherine The Great. At the urging of her ambitious mother, Johanna, Sophie married Peter III, the only grandson of Russian legend, Peter I. After scandalous love affairs and the mysterious sudden death of her husband, Peter III, Catherine ascended the Russian throne. The most intriguing aspect of the story is the fact that Catherine had no moral or legal right to the Russian throne. During that era, the laws of succession were rigidly enforced. In Russia, there were three living heirs, each with a legitimate right to the throne; one of those heirs was her husband, Peter III, the grandson of Peter I, a giant in Russian history, known affectionately as The Father of Russia. Catherine was cautioned repeatedly that she would not be able to sidestep her husband, Peter III and Ivan VI (who was living but in prison), while at the same time ignoring the rights of her own son, Paul I. Highly placed members of the Russian aristocracy warned Catherine that the Russian people would take up arms against her solely for the fact that she was German, not Russian. The fact that Catherine was able to overcome so many obstacles to ascend the throne of Russia is a monument to her brilliance, strength and determination. Not only was she crowned Empress, her rule would last thirty years. Catherine's extraordinary success as a ruler has made her a legend in her own right.

    He was a handsome baronet with a promising career in government. The marriage of Lady Seymour Dorothy Fleming and Sir Richard Worsley had the makings of a fairy tale—but ended as one of the most scandalous and highly publicized divorces in history.In February 1782, England opened its newspapers to read the details of a criminal conversation trial in which the handsome baronet Sir Richard Worsley attempted to sue his wife’s lover for an astronomical sum in damages. In the course of the proceedings, the Worsleys’ scandalous sexual arrangements, voyeuristic tendencies, and bed-hopping antics were laid bare. The trial and its verdict stunned society, but not as much as the unrepentant behavior of Lady Worsley.Sir Joshua Reynolds captured the brazen character of his subject when he created his celebrated portrait of Lady Worsley in a fashionable red riding habit, but it was her shocking affairs that made her divorce so infamous that even George Washington followed it in the press. Impeccably researched and written with great flair, this lively and moving true history presents a rarely seen picture of aristocratic life in the Georgian era.

    His reign was one of the most dramatic and important of the entire Middle Ages, leading to war and conquest on an unprecedented scale, and leaving a legacy of division between the peoples of Britain that has lasted from his day to our own.Edward I is familiar to millions as ‘Longshanks’, conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace (‘Braveheart’). Yet this story forms only the final chapter of the king’s astonishingly action-packed life. Earlier Edward had defeated and killed the famous Simon de Montfort in battle; travelled across Europe to the Holy Land on crusade; conquered Wales, extinguishing forever its native rulers, and constructing – at Conwy, Harlech, Beaumaris and Caernarfon – the most magnificent chain of castles ever created. He raised the greatest armies of the English Middle Ages, and summoned the largest parliaments; notoriously, he expelled all the Jews from his kingdom. The longest-lived of all England’s medieval kings, he fathered no fewer than fifteen children with his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, and after her death he erected the Eleanor Crosses – the grandest funeral monuments ever fashioned for an English monarch.In this book, Marc Morris examines afresh the forces that drove Edward throughout his relentless career: his character, his Christian faith, and his sense of England’s destiny – a sense shaped in particular by the tales of the legendary King Arthur. He also explores the competing reasons that led Edward’s opponents (including Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Robert Bruce) to resist him, and the very different societies that then existed in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The result is a sweeping story, immaculately researched yet compellingly told, and a vivid picture of medieval Britain at the moment when its future was decided.

    In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds -- from a troubled childhood in Florence to her marriage to Henry, son of King Francis I of France; from her transformation of French culture to her fight to protect her throne and her sons' birthright. Based on thousands of private letters, it is a remarkable account of one of the most influential women ever to wear a crown.

    A Latin scholar and outstanding musician, her love of fashion was matched only by her zeal for gambling. It is the tragedy of Queen Mary that today, 450 years after her death, she remains the most hated, least understood monarch in English history.Linda Porter’s pioneering new biography—based on contemporary documents and drawing from recent scholarship—cuts through the myths to reveal the truth about the first queen to rule England in her own right. Mary learned politics in a hard school, and was cruelly treated by her father and bullied by the strongmen of her brother, Edward VI. An audacious coup brought her to the throne, and she needed all her strong will and courage to keep it. Mary made a grand marriage to Philip of Spain, but her attempts to revitalize England at home and abroad were cut short by her premature death at the age of forty-two.  The first popular biography of Mary in thirty years, The First Queen of England offers a fascinating, controversial look at this much-maligned queen.

    Churchill, 1948: World War II was the defining event of our age—the climactic clash between liberty and tyranny. It led to revolutions, the demise of empires, a protracted Cold War, and religious strife still not ended. Yet Churchill maintained that it was all avoidable. Here is a transformative view of Churchill’s theories, prescriptions, actions, and the degree to which he pursued them in the decade before the war. It shows that he was both right and wrong: right that Hitler could have been stopped; wrong that he did all he could to stop him. It is based on what really happened—evidence that has been “hiding in public” for many years, thoroughly referenced in Churchill’s words and those of his contemporaries. Richard M. Langworth began his Churchill work in 1968 when he organized the Churchill Study Unit, which later became the Churchill Centre. He served as its president and board chairman and was editor of its journal Finest Hour from 1982 to 2014. In November 2014, he was appointed senior fellow for Hillsdale College’s Churchill Project. Mr. Langworth published the first American edition of Churchill’s India, is the author of A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, and is the editor of Churchill by Himself, The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill, The Patriot’s Churchill, All Will Be Well: Good Advice from Winston Churchill, and Churchill in His Own Words. His next book is Winston Churchill, Urban Myths and Reality. In 1998, Richard Langworth was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by HM The Queen “for services to Anglo-American understanding and the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.”

    A detailed history of Princess May of Teck who married Duke of Clarence (House Of Windsor) who died before their marriage.

     Full of fun facts and surprising stories to delight longtime enthusiasts and new fans alike, This Is a Book for People Who Love the Royalsdigs into all of the aspects of everyone's favorite monarchy. Uncover the history of British royalty and answers to common questions -- like how royal titles work, who is in the line of succession, and why the guards at Buckingham Palace never smile -- as well as deep dives into fashion, jewelry, and other palace perks. Profiles of popular family members, including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, Prince William and Kate Middleton, and more, add personality to this irresistible celebration of the crown.