An Uncommon Woman : The Empress Frederick - Softcover

Pakula, Hannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1842126237 ISBN 13: 9781842126233

Publisher: Phoenix, 2006

Synopsis

The life of Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm.AN UNCOMMON WOMAN is an enthralling biography of Princess Vicky - the Empress Frederick of Germany, the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, the wife of Prussia's Crown Prince, and the mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II. It is also an epic story of wars and revolutions, the rise and fall of royal families, and the creation of modern Germany.Drawing on a vast amount of original family documents, Pakula offers an absorbing portrait of a brilliant and determined woman.

About this title

About the Author

Hannah Pakula attended Wellesley College, the Sorbonne and Southern Methodist University. She is a book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times.

From Booklist

Pakula, author of the brilliant biography of Queen Marie of Romania, The Last Romantic (1985), proffers a definitive biography of a historical figure well deserving of such a monumental treatment. Her new subject possessed impeccable credentials in the scheme of nineteenth-century European royalty: Princess Royal of Britain, then crown princess of Prussia, and finally German empress. Vicky, as she was called in the family, was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and was also easily the cleverest of their vast brood. Her idealistic father arranged her marriage to the heir of the Prussian throne to spread liberal ideas to that reactionary country. The marriage went off as planned, and Vicky loved her handsome prince, Fritz, and he vice versa; they quickly grew to be partners in liberalism. But Vicky was never able to truly shake the foundations of the conservative Prussian monarchy, mainly because of Reich chancellor Prince Bismarck, her nemesis, but also because her husband was too ill and reigned too briefly (88 days) to make real changes. Adding injury to insult, her son, the Kaiser Bill we fought in World War I, reversed the little good Vicky had done in bringing notions of constitutionalism to an autocratic regime by trying to pretend his mother had never existed! Pakula plunges the reader deeply into European politics, but the water is not only fine, it is exhilarating. Brad Hooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Phoenix
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1842126237
• ISBN 13: 9781842126233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 816