🧲 Books like this
Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge
Eleanor Herman · back to the book
What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorLove and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King
Antonia Fraser · 416 pages
The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and extravagant court in seventeenth-century Europe. Now, Antonia Fraser goes behind the well-known tales of Louis's accomplishments and follies, exploring in detail his intimate relationships with women. The king's mother, Anne of Austria, had been in a childless marriage for 22 years before she gave birth to Louis XIV. A devout
Katherine Swynford: The Story of John of Gaunt and His Scandalous Duchess
Alison Weir · 366 pages
In her remarkable new book, Alison Weir recounts one of the greatest love stories of medieval England. It is the extraordinary tale of an exceptional woman, Katherine Swynford, who became first the mistress and later the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Katherine Swynford’s charismatic lover was one of the most powerful princes of the 14th century, the effective ruler of England behind
Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp Through the Extramarital Adventures That Rocked the British Monarchy
Leslie Carroll · 447 pages
Spanning nearly one thousand years of British history, an entertaining and informative study chronicles the scandalous and adulterous behavior of Britain's royal family and its historical repercussions, from the reign of Henry II to the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France
Lisa Hilton · 353 pages
Athénaïs de Montespan reigned as official mistress to Louis XIV during the most glorious period of "the splendid century." As lovely and charming as she was witty and cunning, Athénaïs quickly rose to far greater prominence than the King's own spouse. It was Madame de Montespan who was known as "the real Queen of France," the symbol of the apotheosis of French culture in the seventeenth century. A
The Sisters Who Would Be Queen
Leanda de Lisle · 386 pages
Catherine de Medici
Leonie Frieda · 464 pages
"Orphaned in infancy, imprisoned in childhood, heiress to an ancient name and vast fortune, Catherine was brought up in the Florentine court and married off, by her uncle the Pope, to Henry, Duke of Orleans, son of King Francis I of France. Aged only fourteen, she suffered cruelly as Henry loved only his beautiful mistress, Diane de Poitiers." "In 1559, when Henry, by then King of France, died hor
Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe
Nancy Goldstone · 352 pages
Four accomplished sisters who rose from near obscurity to become the most powerful women in EuropeSet against the backdrop of the turbulent thirteenth century, a time of chivalry and crusades, poetry, knights, and monarchs comes the story of the four beautiful daughters of the count of Provence whose brilliant marriages made them the queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily.From a cultured c
Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII
David Starkey · 852 pages
"What makes a man marry six times? Was Henry VIII a voracious philanderer? On the contrary, says David Starkey, the King was seeking happiness - as well as hoping for a son." "The first of his wives was Catherine of Aragon, the pious Spanish Catholic who suffered years of miscarriages and failed to produce a male heir. The only one of his wives to be royal by birth, she was married to him the long
Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen
Joanna Denny · 384 pages
The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy
Mark Logue, Peter Conradi · 256 pages
The true story behind the award-winning movie of the same name, The King's Speech is written by London Sunday Times journalist Peter Conradi and Mark Logue -- grandson of Lionel Logue, whose recently discovered diaries and correspondence contain fascinating details about these events. It's the eve of World War II, and King Edward VIII has abdicated the throne of England to marry the woman he loves
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth
Helen Castor · 477 pages
When Edward VI died in 1553, the extraordinary fact was that there was no one left to claim the title of king of England. For the first time, England would have a reigning queen, but the question was which one: Katherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary; Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth; or one of their cousins, Lady Jane Grey or Mary, Queen of Scots. But female rule in England also had a past. Four h
Behind the Palace Doors: Five Centuries of Sex, Adventure, Vice, Treachery, and Folly from Royal Britain
Michael Farquhar · 320 pages
The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court
Anna Whitelock · 471 pages
An Elizabethan expert describes the court of Queen Elizabeth I, painting a vivid picture of the gossip, conspiracy, intrigue, and romantic dalliances that surrounded the monarch and the daily lives of the women that attended her. Queen Elizabeth I acceded to the throne in 1558, restoring the Protestant faith to England. At the heart of the new queen's court lay her bedchamber, closely guarded by
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals
Gillian Gill
It was the most influential marriage of the nineteenth century--and one of history's most enduring love stories. Traditional biographies tell us that Queen Victoria inherited the throne as a naive teenager, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and seemed doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a woman until she married her German cousin Albert and accepted him as her l
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
Robert K. Massie · 791 pages
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Peter the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself
The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia
Candace Fleming · 298 pages
From the acclaimed author of Amelia Lost and The Lincolns comes a heartrending narrative nonfiction page-turner--and a perfect resource for meeting Common Core standards. When Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, inherited the throne in 1894, he was unprepared to do so. With their four daughters (including Anastasia) and only son, a hemophiliac, Nicholas and his reclusive wife, Alexandra, buried their
The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg
Helen Rappaport · 285 pages
**Rappaport, an expert in the field of Russian history, brings you the riveting day-by-day account of the last fourteen days of the Russian Imperial family, in this first of two books about the Romanovs. Her second book *The Romanov Sisters*, offering a never-before-seen glimpse at the lives of the Tsar's beautiful daughters and a celebration of their unique stories, will be published in 2014.**
Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII
Giles Tremlett · 448 pages
Bloody Mary: The Life of Mary Tudor
Carolly Erickson · 533 pages
Mary I was the first queen to rule England (1553-58) in her own right. She was known as Bloody Mary for her persecution of Protestants in a vain attempt to restore Roman Catholicism in England. The daughter of King Henry VIII and the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, Mary as a child was a pawn in England's bitter rivalry with more powerful nations, and was later regularly offered for marri
Victoria's Daughters
Jerrold M. Packard · 370 pages
Packard closely examines a generation of royal women who were dominated by their mother, married off more for political advantage than for love, and finally passed over entirely with the accession of their brother to the throne.
The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty
G.J. Meyer · 612 pages
Meyer's fresh storytelling ability breathes new life into the history of the Tudor family and Tudor England's precarious place in world politics, the critical role religion played in government, and the blossoming of English theater and literature.