Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr
Illicit love, madness, betrayal--it isn't always good to be the queenMarie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, and Mary, Queen of Scots. What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, they spent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to the scaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughout history, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting bad ends--dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiring in childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. They always had to be on their toes and all too often even devious plotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters was not enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religious orders. From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline (suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there's a gory downside to being blue-blooded when you lack a Y chromosome. Kris Waldherr's elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterly macabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over the course of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives, Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue. We meet well-known figures like Catherine of Aragon, whose happy marriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear that she was a starter wife--the first of six. And we meet forgotten queens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogoth princess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath. While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die without purpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales for today's would-be power brokers--a legacy of worldly and womanly wisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.
Kris Waldherr is a designer, illustrator, and novelist from New York. She is most known for co-creating and writing The Goddess Tarot, which has sold over 40,000 copies. Her goddess-themed illustrations have appeared on greeting cards, book covers, and the covers of books, periodicals, and calendars. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across the United States, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She graduated with a B.F.A. at the Wisual Arts School
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780767928991 |
| ISBN 10 | 0767928997 |
| Title | Doomed Queens |
| Author | Kris Waldherr |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Broadway Books (A Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc) |
| Year published | 2008-10-28 |
| Number of pages | 176 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |