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 | | Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty by Karl Shaw ISBN-10: 9780767907552 ISBN-10: 0-7679-0755-8 ISBN-13: 9780767907552 ISBN-13: 978-0-7679-0755-2 Paperback 2001-05-29 Broadway Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy. Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside? Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book. Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe. | ||
Amazon.com Review From the madness of King George to the equine escapades of Catherine the Great, from the intramural squabbles of Elizabeth and Di to the staggeringly decadent exploits of Charles X: in this gossipy chronicle of regal shenanigans, British journalist Karl Shaw dishes plenty of dirt--and ably demonstrates why royal watching is such a satisfying hobby. Was there ever a good monarch? To judge by Shaw's account, it's unlikely. Instead, he writes, "Every monarchy in Europe has at some time or another been ruled over by a madman," adding in passing that only Bavaria's King Ludwig had the good grace to turn his madness into a source of tourist revenue for his subjects' descendants. Of the mad and the downright curious there's no shortage in these pages, as Shaw delivers anecdote after anecdote concerning the demented, sometimes awful, sometimes entertaining behavior of the likes of Germany's Frederick the Great, who "drank up to forty cups of coffee a day for several weeks in an experiment to see if it was possible to exist without sleep"; Russia's Catherine I, "a raddled old alcoholic with bloodshot eyes, wild and matted hair and clothes soiled with urine stains ... [who] once survived an assassination attempt too drunk to realize that anything had happened"; and England's Queen Mary, "the only known royal kleptomaniac," whose aides would surreptitiously gather the knickknacks she'd lifted from her subjects' parlors and return them with muffled apologies. Royal Babylon is a guilty pleasure of a book, and one that does a fine job of explaining, in Shaw's tongue-in-cheek words, "why most continentals can't get enough of royalty, provided it isn't their own." --Gregory McNamee | ||
Reviews | ||
Lots of dish, but prejudiced and with a weak ending Be aware that Karl Shaw seems to have a very strong anti-royalist agenda, which he makes fairly clear from the first page to the last. Every time he says anything good about one of his subjects, he makes sure to overbalance it with several bad things. In fact, his relentlessly downbeat portrayals of several royals are very much at odds with those of other recent writers in the field (for example, compare and contrast Shaw's slashing attacks on Russian Czarinas Elizabeth and Catherine the Great with Eleanor Herman's much more sympathetic and nuanced portraits in her recent "Sex with the Queen"). Shaw seems bent on hammering home his theory that royals are actually _worse_ than just about everyone else, physically, mentally, medically, morally, socially. One might therefore expect him to close the book with an all-encompassing blast against the institution of monarchy, but instead, he basically wimps out with a limp few paragraphs about how the mystique of royalty still captivates people. Short version: entertaining nasty gossip, but you need to go elsewhere to get really fair portrayals of the people written about here. | ||
Not Worth the effort or expense! I don't know why I bought this book--hoping to be entertained and informed I guess. It was an absolute waste of time and money. The book content was boring and repetitive. The author kept saying the same thing over and over. I couldn't finish it because it was such a dull read. I have read other babylon books and have found them interesting. This one, however, was not. I read the reviews before I bought it, but I should have passed on this book. | ||
Kings, queens, nobles, lords, ladies and guffaws I read this excellent book, here in Brazil.This book is very fun.Kings, queens are the focus of this excellent book, but counts, barons, lords and even artists are also present. This very fun book tells about three centuries of madness, debautchery, drug adiction, sex, adultery, gays, lesbians,etc. among kings, queens, lords, ladies, nobles in Europe. If you want to read history and to laugh, this book is an excellent choice.As is book concludes and also shows that monarchy can be laughable, but as an institution it is far from dead worldwide. | ||
I am glad I didn't buy this book... ...I found it at my local library. It's like reading news from National Enquirer! The author sounded like a cheesy tour guide: * Louis XVI was mistakenly referred to as Louis XIV's great-grandson * Louis XIV's sister-in-law was an English princess, somehow the author decided to move her birth place to Austria * Perhaps the author felt sorry for Louis XV, an only child orphaned at age two, so he made Louise de la Valliere, the well-known mistress of Louis XIV who left Versailles to become a Carmelite nun, his sister ...there are just too many obvious and laughable errors, makes you wonder if the author has ever heard of the word 'Google'! | ||
A purchase that I regret This book was not at all what I had expected. What I thought I purchased was a book with amusing anecdotes about European royalty. What I ended up buying was a book filled with gossip, rumors, and just plain old trash. I could not even bring myself to finish it. Why taint the memory of anyone who is not alive to defend themselves? What ever happened to respect for the dead? This book is not worth the paper that it is printed on. Period. | ||