A Treasury of Royal Scandals

April 30, 2001
In another royal exposé, Farquhar, a writer at the Washington Post,
duplicates some of the ground covered in Karl Shaw's Royal Babylon
(reviewed above), such as Peter the Great's delight in administering torture (he had his son lashed to death) and the way Britain's Queen Mary cajoled her subjects into giving her their household treasures ("I am caressing it with my eyes," she would coyly coo). Written in a provocative tabloid style (with headings like "We Are Not Abused. We Are Abusive," "A Son Should Love His Mother, But..." and "All the Holiness Money Can Buy"), Farquhar publicly washes the dirty laundry of not only European royalty, but also of Roman emperors and popes. Murderers and torturers who slept with their siblings (and other relatives), the emperors of Rome excelled at corruption. The maniacal pedophile Tiberius Caesar (A.D. 14–37) left the corpses of his many victims to rot on the Gemonian Steps, which descended from the Capitol to the Forum, or alternatively enjoyed watching them being thrown from a cliff ("A contingent of soldiers was stationed below to whack them with oars and boat hooks just in case the fall failed to do the trick"). Many popes were no better. Not content with just rooting out Christian heretics by launching a bloody crusade against the Cathars in southern France, Innocent III (1160–1216) declared himself ruler of the world. He sacked Constantinople and massacred every Muslim he could find. Like Royal Babylon, this gossipy string of anecdotes is a popularized rather than an authoritative history and perfect for travel reading.

June 1, 2001
Shaw's (The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists) graphic account of European royalty reads like a catalog of depravity and debauchery. Included are stories of comic absurdity, such as Louis XIV's penchant for "granting audiences to people" while seated on the toilet, to Frederick William of Prussia's weird obsession with collecting giant men to form his Potsdam regiment. More unsettling, though, are the tales of Peter the Great, whose self-named city was built on the "corpses of Russians," and the infamous King Leopold of Belgium, who tortured and nearly decimated the population of the Congo. Surprisingly, there is little overlap between Shaw's work and Farquhar's equally astonishing popular look at the monarchy. Their tragic frailties are depicted in a series of vignettes including, among many others, the "whoring" sloth of George IV, the foolish passions of Henry VIII, and the warmongering emperors of Germany. Familial ties mean precious little as we see "Bloody" Mary imprison her half-sister Elizabeth I and learn of the "nasty feud" of "inbred intrigue" known as the Wars of the Roses. Farquhar casts his net wider still to include the grisly details of some Roman emperors, such as Tiberius, and Nero, and even throws in some cruel, blood-thirsty Popes for good measure. Either book is recommended for large public libraries, particularly those with a special collection in history of the monarchy/royalty. Isabel Coates, Boston Consulting Group, Toronto

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.