 "Lots of dish, but prejudiced and with a weak ending" | 2007-11-22 |
| - Reviewed By jadmire |
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. |
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 "I am glad I didn't buy this book..." | 2007-09-24 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2MJ19SPSX949U |
...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'! |
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 "Titillating but many glaring errors in facts" | 2007-07-14 |
| - Reviewed By brobpatus |
I enjoyed reading this light treatment of the royals of Europe, but was seriously distracted by the numerous errors in facts regarding names and relationships. As a retired professor of history, I find this to be very poor editorial work on the part of both the author and his editorial "professional" at the publisher! Just a couple of examples of what I consider serious errors:
(1) p. 94 - "Louis [i.e., Louis XIV of France] was at one time enamored of his new sister-in-law, the buxom Austrian Princess Henrietta." This Louis had only one brother, Prince Philip of Bourbon, Duke of Orleans, who married twice: (1) Princess Henriette Anne of England, daughter of Charles I, King of England, and his wife, Princess Henrietta Maria of France; and (2) Elizabeth Charlotte, Countess Palatine of Simmern, daughter of Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, and his wife, Charlotte of Hesse-Cassel. There was NO SISTER-IN-LAW who was a 'buxom Austrian Princess Henrietta."
(2) Likewise, the entire treatment of Prince Philip of Bourbon, Duke of Orleans, the brother of Louis XIV, emphasizes the numerous heterosexual activities he supposedly had with multitudinous women....yet it is a confirmed fact that his primary sexual nature was homosexual and was known for his "mignons" and the way he and his followers dressed and cavorted at Versailles and other places.
(3) p. 113 - "Alphonso [i.e., Alfonso XII of Spain] plunged into an almost suicidal depression from which he never quite recovered. He regained his poise sufficiently to honor his dynastic obligations, and a year later was remarried to Maria, daughter of the star-crossed Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand."
The Iberian rulers named Alfonso (in English) rarely if ever had their names written as Alphonso...rather as Affonso. As for this second marriage, (and not technically a "remarriage" since the couple had never been married before to each other) the cited bride, Maria, was not called just Maria, since almost every daughter of the Austria and Spanish dynasties was named Maria + other names. She was actually named Maria Christina (Cristina)and was NOT the daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Countess Sophia, but the daughter of Archduke Charles Ferdinand of Austria-Teschen and his first cousin-wife, Archduchess Elizabeth Francesca of Austria-Hungary.
So if readers are seeking factual history, they need to read this book with the caution that the gossip is more important to the author and publisher than the historical facts. |
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 "Thats it!! I'm now a complete Republican" | 2007-06-22 |
| - Reviewed By lionessecareptyltd |
I'm an Australian, for those of you unaware of our nation's attitude to Great Britain vis a vis our colonial past, we are still a 'constitutional monarchy'. This means that even after a fairly recent referendum to change the constitution and declare ourselves a republic, the Australian people STILL voted to retain our ties with the queen and remain linked to our past within the 'Commonwealth'. My attitude personally was that the year 2001, marking 100 years of 'Federation', was probably a very good time to also declare ourselves a nation in its own right completely. A republic. This didn't happen.
That said, like the many Australians who voted to retain ties with the English monarchy, I still harboured this bizarre affection for the English Royal Family, in my case not enough to actually vote that we should still recognise the queen as some kind of fairy godmother figure head constitutional monarch, more a sense of shared identity and ethnicity. I KNOW this is completely bogus, we are a very multicultural country right in the middle of Asia and the pacific islands. Even bathed as we are now in American cultural imperialism, most Australians still chose to affirm their British heritage, mythical or not. That's the picture here and now I WILL talk about the effect of this book on me personally.
Royal Babylon has in one stroke completely cleansed me of any notions that it is kind of a cute idea to let the British Royal family linger in the background of our nation's future. It also woke me up completely to the fact that they really aren't even 'British'. I'm more British than the Royal family!! And I'm 4th or 5th generation Australian!! Beyond that, I will guarantee that this horrific documented history of inbreeding, madness, STDs, syphilis, inbreeding, mass philandering, inbreeding, Nazi sympathising and inbreeding again will cure ANY reader of proceeding beyond mere curiousity to affection for the idea of monarchy.
What a sick, sick history!! Almost a milennium of mass suffering, war, national upheaval and slaughter for the majority of people while a very very priveleged minority wallowed in massive excess and madness for no better reason than a documented history of inbreeding (the royal lineage) and a fairly savvy sense of self-preservation (and the funds to ensure it).
This book doesn't cover just the British Royal family, it is a history of all the royal families in Europe. It is an easy read, it's not a heavy historical tome, but it succeeds where these fail: by unrolling almost endlessly the history of insanity and excess in an easily digested format. I've read a lot of history and was familiar with the more obvious figures of royal lunacy like Ludwig of Bavaria, Henry viii, George the Regent, the Romanovs (enough said), Catherine the Great (earlier), but I've never seen it compressed and presented like this and as it stands, Royal Babylon is a damning indictment of the divine right of anyone to rule anybody and the modern day equivalent of retaining these people at vast expense to the average person for no good reason.
The author is circumspect about the current royal families, referring once to Prince Charles as a 'frankenstein' and making the point that of the 10 royal families that remain in Europe, 7 are heavily related to the British royal family. But honestly, at the end of this book it's a case of 'nuff said!'. It certainly did it for me, I am now completely an avowed Republican! |
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| "Fun In Bedlum Or Who Is Crazy Now!" | 2007-05-30 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2RKGMI90EZO4 |
I was pleasantly surprised as I had expected most of what I had already read would be confirmed.
Thats where the surprise came in---most events and subjects were mentioned, but there was more details. There were modern explanations for what was occurring; very insightful.
The chapters stand alone--it was easy to read and do a few chapters and put down. It was a really fun book of serious subject matter treated lightly with what ever humor was available.
It is over all a jolly romp thru bedlum.
Enjoy!!!
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| "Not bad, could be better" | 2007-05-18 |
| - Reviewed By jjoplinfn79 |
| This isn't a bad book, it does have its interesting points and is a great read for anyone interested in a behind the scenes look at royalty for the last several hundred years. Unfortunately, it tends to drag on in some parts. It also jumps around a lot, instead of a chapter for each family, it goes by subject (sex lives, cruelty, etc.), considering how many common names there are among royalty (i.e., everyone is named Henry, Louis, etc.) it makes it kind of hard to keep up with who did what to whom, with whom, for whom and so forth. It is worth the read, but if you are like me, the jumping around may turn you off. |
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| "Amusing tosh" | 2007-05-10 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1MBQC4P1KY3BO |
| It is healthy to relax with rubbish reding. No hypocrisy about this book & reasonable value for money |
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 "Who was "The Blackest Sheep of All"?" | 2006-06-05 |
| - Reviewed By threecrosses |
Many years ago, on December 11, 1936, my mother took me Christmas shopping in Robinson's Los Angeles store. I was six years old. Christmas carols were being wafted from radio speakers when suddenly the music stopped and there was total silence. People all over the store stopped whatever they were doing as though they were playing "statues." Then a man's melodious voice issued forth to a rapt audience. It was Edward VIII renouncing the throne for the woman he loved. My six year old heart was thrilled. Half a century later the coach for me turned into a pumpkin. Shaw's "blackest sheep of all" is the Duke of Windsor.
Karl Shaw's "Royal Babylon" is a fascinating read, but I was less interested in the constant sexual excesses endemic in the royal houses all over Europe than in the author's iconoclastic remarks about broadly admired royal figures who had feet of clay. Make no mistake: I gasped at the unbelievable sexual excesses, and you will, too, but Shaw's discussions of the Duke of Windsor, Queen Mary, and Tsar Nicholas II among others, I found particularly revealing.
THE DUKE OF WINDSOR
Edward never seemed to get it through his head that he owed the British government something in return for his immensely priviledged position. You wonder what on earth he was taught growing up, but to serve was not one of them. It is amazing that he found such a soul mate in Wallis Simpson, who believed, just as he did, in taking with no giving. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent the next thirty years in migrating from one party to the next. They were both Nazi sympathizers, and the Duke, in meeting Hitler, clicked his heels and gave the Nazi salute in such a frenzied preformance that even the Nazi aides who were present were embarrassed.
This is the former king of England grovelling before Hitler. It boggles the mind. This is the former king of England who showered the Duchess with cartloads of jewels, all paid for by the British taxpayers. This is the former king of England who felt he had no obligations to England and who led a life of unremitting vacuity.
NICHOLAS II- THE LAST TSAR
Nicholas as tsar was a disaster from day one. Indecisive, weak, vascillating, and rather stupid, be was under the thumb of his German wife, Alexandra. It is hard to even envision his world, in which peasants prostrated themselves when his train passed. One can imagine the toadying around his person as well. He did have a beautiful family: four lovely girls and the hemophiliac tsarivich Alexei. But the boy's illness was kept a state secret so that the insinuation of the debauchee Rasputin in to the family was totally miunderstood. Rasputin could calm the boy and relieve his suffering but in no way was this treatment a direct channel from God. Rasputin was nothing if not an opportunist. Alexandra's infatuation with the smelly peasant was a major reason for the rise of the Bolshevics. But Nicholas was doing his part to bring down the House of Romanov. He ruthlessly slaughtered people whom his army declared subversives leaving the survivors starving and without shelter.
And he hit the bottle. And drugs. Cocaine and heroine were easily obtained and used for all kinds of illnesses, the fact of addiction seemed to be unknown. Alexandra doused herself with these drugs as well for her myriad ailments. In two years, Nicholas's face changed so much he was barely recognizable. You can see for yourself in the pictures of him: sunken eyes, black circles under them. He was so spaced out much of the time that courtiers couldn't reach him: he was often in a drugged stupor.
Nobody condones the murder of the tsar and his family. But the tsar and the tsarina laid the groundwork. Ineptitude, Rasputin, and a total isolation from their subjects whom they hardly knew, brought them down. A tragedy among many tragedies.
QUEEN MARY
Queen Mary seemed to be a pillar of rectitude. She looked like a pillar, statuesque, a Juno, if you will. Her antagonism towards Wallis Simpson, both before and after the death of George V, seemed just right. She didn't want that common, vulgar woman anywhere near her son let alone a futue queen. She echoed absolutely the sentiments of her subjects. Rectitude. That was Queen Mary, everybody thought.
In examining Mary closely, as Shaw does in "Royal Babylon" her feet of clay become very apparent. This was a woman who had five sons and one daughter. She apparently lived on Mount Olympus as far as they were concerned. She simply could not emote. It is a wonder she could even keep them straight. Her youngest son, Prince John, was an epileptic and had learning disabilities. What his parents did was sweep him under the rug by isolating him from the rest of the family in a separate house. It's unlikely they ever visited him. The press knew nothing about him, and when he died at fourteen from an epileptic fit, his poor little bubble of an existence was submerged and quickly forgotten.
Queen Mary was a kleptomaniac, and if she couldn't socially blackmail a hostess into giving her some treasure in their home she coveted, she would simply steal choice items from department stores. Her debts were paid under the table All hush-hush.
But Mary's non-communication with her children was perhaps her biggest failing. How could a prince grow up- the prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII- without being taught that he was a servant to the country not vice versa? That he had to give something back. That his immensely priviledged existence demanded a re-payment.His academic education was also extremeely poor.
There are many other delicious biographical tidbits in "Royal Babylon." The book is an eye-opener, full of meaty facts you'll no doubt enjoy, as I did! Like the real lowdown about "Dickie" Mountbatten. And it's scary that three of the most inept monarchs ever occupied important thrones at the same time: Nicholas II in Russia; the loutish Kaiser Wilhelm II in Germany and the even less than mediocre George V in England. It's all in "Babylon" and it's a great read.
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| "Great read" | 2005-03-16 |
| - Reviewed By schylar777 |
| I loved this book, I couldn't put it down. Whether it is factual or not...well that can be debated by more worthy scholars that this reviewer, but as pure entertainment on this subject it is without peer. At university, I assure you I didn't learn this in ancient regime...unfortunitely; I might have stayed awake. This book did make me want to check some of the stories and some of them are only conjecture, but still they are amazing non the less. I would highly recommend to anyone who likes royal gossip. Reading this book, is like eating a sinful dessert, you know you shouldn't be eating it, but do you really care? |
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| "The Enquirer Meets Royal History" | 2003-11-09 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| A tabloid treatment of history. Don't expect any in-depth explanations of a socio-politico-historic nature, but this book is well-written for the most part, if not terribly hip on scholarship (although the medical histories of some of Europe's rulers were fascinating and frankly somewhat scary). That being said, I enjoyed reading through it in one sitting. Nice light reading, if you take it for what it is. |
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