DOOMED QUEENS(ISBN=) 英文原版

　　Marie 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 an author, illustrator, and designer whose
art has been exhibited in the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
She is the author of The Lover’s Path and The Book of
Goddesses, and creator of The Goddess Tarot. She lives
in Brooklyn, New York.

　　”A smart, sassy overview of the ‘dark side’ of the crown and
scepter. It makes a girl glad she was born a commoner.”
　　–Robin Maxwell, bestselling author of Mademoiselle
Boleyn
　　”A fascinating journey through thousands of years of the world’s
most dangerous job — being queen!”
　　–Eleanor Herman, author of Sex with the Queen