Doomed Queens. by Kris Waldherr

Waldherr, Kris. Doomed Queens.
Broadway Books (Random), 2008, 176p, $14.95, 978-0-7679-2899-1.

Discusses the unfortunate deaths of fifty different queens throughout history and examines what they had in common that led to their untimely demise.
Technically, Princess Di was not a queen, but she was royal by marriage and by all accounts, the marriage was doomed from the start. And of course, her life ended tragically. Diana is not alone; other royal women as far back 835 BC shared her fate. In a light, entertaining narrative, readers learn about royal women who met an untimely end through poisoning, starvation, beheading and assassination, to name a few. The queenly profiles are divided chronologically by chapter, from the Biblical to the semi-modern, with a quirky end of chapter multiple choice quiz at the end of each chapter. Each profile is short but succinct, ranging from one to three pages, and highlights the well-known doomed queens (the wives of Henry VII and Marie Antoinette) to the lesser known (Caroline of Brunswick and Urraca of Castille) to the multicultural (Oghul Ghaimish and Empress Xu Pingjun). A cautionary moral is associated with each queen. For example: “Don’t marry a man in love with another man.” Had Roxanne, the wife of Alexander the Great, realized this, she may have saved herself much heartache as well as death by poisoning. Pencil sketches and sidebar information accompanies most profiles. Includes a timeline, Table of Contents and an Index.
Recommended as brain candy - a fun read. RZ