Queen Victoria's Matchmaking: The Royal Marriages that Shaped Europe - Hardcover

Cadbury, Deborah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408852829 ISBN 13: 9781408852828

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother

In the late nineteenth century, Queen Victoria had over thirty surviving grandchildren. To maintain and increase power in Europe, she hoped to manoeuvre them into dynastic marriages. In her sights was royalty from across the world. Yet for all their seeming obedience, her grandchildren often had plans of their own, plans fuelled by strong wills and romantic hearts. Her matchmaking plans were only further complicated by their coinciding with tumultuous international upheavals; revolution and war were in the air and after her death, her most carefully laid plans fell to ruin.

Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the most glittering, decadent palaces of Russia and Europe, weaving in scandals, political machinations and family tensions, to enthralling effect. It is at once an intimate portrait of the royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the power, love and duty that shaped the marriages that Queen Victoria arranged. At the heart of it all is Queen Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment, determined manipulator the next.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Cadbury is an award-winning documentary producer for the BBC. Her seven acclaimed books include Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, companion to the BAFTA-nominated BBC series; The Feminization of Nature; The Dinosaur Hunters; The Lost King of France; Space Race; and Chocolate Wars. Before turning to writing full time, she worked for thirty years as a BBC TV producer and executive producer and has won numerous international awards, including an Emmy Award. She lives in London.

Review

Wonderfully compelling and packed with new material - a gripping story beautifully told.―Jane Ridley

In this enjoyable story for fans of royal machinations, Cadbury ably shows not just the successes, but also the damage inflicted by Victoria's single-mindedness. An instructive European history that effectively shows 'the influence of [Victoria's] matchmaking on the remarkable rise of the royal dynasty'.―Kirkus Reviews

[An] absorbing book... The fall of the Romanovs occupies the superb last pages of Cadbury's book... Dynastic mergers, we may deduce from Deborah Cadbury's account, offer no defence against the whims of history. This catastrophe-laced slice of royal history offers a ripping read.―Miranda Seymour, The Observer

Engrossing...Cadbury engagingly presents [Queen Victoria] as a mesmerising Mrs Bennet, summoning her children and then her grandchildren to Balmoral. ..The stories of [Queen Victoria's] descendants are mesmerising and often stranger than fiction...From the pen of a writer of skill and style, this surprising narrative leaves you wanting more.―Paula Byrne, The Times

Cadbury's account of Victoria's attempts to bend her unruly grandchildren to her matrimonial will is the stuff of melodrama...covered with verve and insight by Deborah Cadbury in her new history.―Daisy Goodwin, The Sunday Times

Deborah Cadbury is an adroit story teller. Her lively colourfully written book...begins in the 1880s and ends in the toppling thrones of the First World War, a panoramic family saga, its players by turns pragmatic and romantic, wilful, dutiful, misguided and, occasionally tragic―Matthew Dennison, The Daily Telegraph

"A rich history of Queen Victoria's canny use of political power."―Bookpage

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408852829
• ISBN 13: 9781408852828
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400