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Publishers Weekly
Waller (Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown) highlights the triumphs and travails of England's six female monarchs: Anne, the two Marys, the two Elizabeths and Victoria. In Waller's view, Mary II and Victoria colluded in their own diminishment by domineering husbands. Elizabeth II, portrayed as passive and unimaginative, indulged her mother while wounding her husband by keeping the Windsor name, and surrendered her prerogative to choose a midterm prime minister. Often wrongly dismissed as a fat, sickly dullard, says Waller, Anne was politically shrewd and ambitions to be queen, instigating malicious rumors that her Catholic half-brother was a changeling. Waller says that the burning of Protestant Archbishop Cranmer for heresy was a "propaganda disaster" for Mary I, while image-conscious Elizabeth I promoted her own association with the Virgin Mary. Separate chapters for each sovereign make for repetitious reading on the Stuart sisters; other stories-like Mary I's phantom pregnancy and Elizabeth II's blunders after Princess Diana's death-are familiar. Yet revelations about the less frequently dissected Mary and Anne Stuart are welcome, and Waller's vigorous, substantive prose takes no prisoners, whether calling Edward VI a "cold, imperious little prig" or Prince Charles and siblings "arrogant, spoilt and selfish." 16 pages of color illus. (Aug.)
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Overview
In the bestselling tradition of authors Antonia Fraser and David Starkey, Maureen Waller has written a fascinating narrative history—-a brilliant combination of drama and biographical insight—-of the six women who have ruled England in their own names.
In the last millennium there have been only six English female sovereigns: Mary I and Elizabeth I, Mary II and Anne, Victoria and Elizabeth II, who celebrated her eightieth birthday in 2006. With the exception of Mary I, they are ...