*Includes famous art depicting Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and important people, places, and events in their lives. *Includes a discussion of their roles in the American and French Revolutions. *Includes a comprehensive discussion of their trials and executions. “I die perfectly innocent of the so-called crimes of which I am accused. I pardon those who are the cause of my misfortunes.” – Louis XVI “I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.” – Marie Antoinette Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are among France's most famous royalty, but for reasons they would have much rather avoided. Coming of age in the wake of the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV, and his father, Louis XV, Louis XVI initially intended to be one of France's most enlightened Kings. Instead, he was destined to be the only French King ever executed. Indeed, it is his death and his role in fomenting the French Revolution (along with his infamous Queen, Marie Antoinette) that continue to play the central role in Louis XVI's legacy. Throughout history, a countless number of historical figures have had their lives overshadowed by the myths and legends that surround them to the extent that their legacy comes to define them. In French history, this is truer of Marie Antoinette than just about everyone else. Nearly 220 years after she was put to the guillotine, Marie Antoinette is more famous than ever, fairly or unfairly coming to epitomize royalty and everything that was wrong with it. Since her death, Marie Antoinette has been the subject of sharp historical debate over whether she was actually a catalyst in the French Revolution or simply an insignificant scapegoat who was unfairly made a target. At the same time, the one thing everybody associates with Antoinette is the phrase “Let them eat cake”, a spoiled and ignorant comment supposedly made in response to being informed that the peasants had no bread. While that phrase has been used far and wide to depict someone as being out of touch, there's no indication Antoinette ever said anything like it. Nevertheless, she remains a pop culture fixture across the West, perceived just as negatively in death as she was in life. The Death of Royalty explains the couple's role in two of history's most famous revolutions, looks at the life of the famous, ill-fated Royal Family, attempts to separate fact from fiction and analyzes their legacies. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette like you never have before, in no time at all.

On June 1, 2001, the heir to the Nepalese throne, Crown Prince Dipendra, donned military fatigues, armed himself with automatic weapons, walked in on a quiet family gathering, and, without a word, mowed his family down before turning a gun on himself. But Dipendra did not die immediately, and while lying in a coma was declared king. He was now a living god. Award-winning journalists Amy Willesee and Mark Whittaker set out to understand what could have led to such a devastating tragedy, one that fascinated and appalled the world. Exploring Kathmandu and other parts of the kingdom, they conducted exhaustive interviews with everyone from Maoist guerillas to members and friends of the royal family, gaining insight into the people involved in and the events behind the massacre. At the heart of the story is the love affair between Dipendra and the beautiful aristocrat Devyani Rana, whom he was forbidden to marry. Culminating their portrait of Nepal is a chilling reconstruction of the events of that fatal day. As conspiracy theories circulate and rebels threaten to topple the monarchy, the future of this small Himalayan kingdom promises to be as tumultuous as its past. Revealing a country where the twenty-first century mingles uneasily with the fourteenth, Love and Death in Kathmandu is both an enlightening portrait of a place that is a world apart and a riveting investigation of an incredible crime.

A King's death was a critical and highly dramatic moment, often with major political consequences. This is an account of what is known about the deaths of all medieval English kings.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • For the first time in decades comes a fresh look at the fabled Tudor dynasty, comprising some of the most enigmatic figures ever to rule a country. “A thoroughly readable and often compelling narrative . . . Five centuries have not diminished the appetite for all things Tudor.”—Associated Press In 1485, young Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was so weak as to be almost laughable, crossed the English Channel from France at the head of a ragtag little army and took the crown from the family that had ruled England for almost four hundred years. Half a century later his son, Henry VIII, desperate to rid himself of his first wife in order to marry a second, launched a reign of terror aimed at taking powers no previous monarch had even dreamed of possessing. In the process he plunged his kingdom into generations of division and disorder, creating a legacy of blood and betrayal that would blight the lives of his children and the destiny of his country. The boy king Edward VI, a fervent believer in reforming the English church, died before bringing to fruition his dream of a second English Reformation. Mary I, the disgraced daughter of Catherine of Aragon, tried and failed to reestablish the Catholic Church and produce an heir. And finally came Elizabeth I, who devoted her life to creating an image of herself as Gloriana the Virgin Queen but, behind that mask, sacrificed all chance of personal happiness in order to survive. The Tudors weaves together all the sinners and saints, the tragedies and triumphs, the high dreams and dark crimes, that reveal the Tudor era to be, in its enthralling, notorious truth, as momentous and as fascinating as the fictions audiences have come to love. Praise for The Tudors “A rich and vibrant tapestry.”—The Star-Ledger “A thoroughly readable and often compelling narrative . . . Five centuries have not diminished the appetite for all things Tudor.”—Associated Press “Energetic and comprehensive . . . [a] sweeping history of the gloriously infamous Tudor era . . . Unlike the somewhat ponderous British biographies of the Henrys, Elizabeths, and Boleyns that seem to pop up perennially, The Tudors displays flashy, fresh irreverence [and cuts] to the quick of the action.”—Kirkus Reviews “[A] cheeky, nuanced, and authoritative perspective . . . brims with enriching background discussions.”—Publishers Weekly “[A] lively new history.”—Bloomberg

The notable characteristic of the royal families of Europe is that they have so very little of anything remotely resembling true power. Increasingly, they tend towards the condition of pipsqueak principalities like Liechtenstein and Monaco -- fancy-dress fodder for magazines that survive by telling us things we did not need to know about people we have hardly heard of. How then have kings and queens come to exercise the mesmeric hold they have upon our imaginations? In On Royalty renowned BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman examines the role of the British monarchy in an age when divine right no longer prevails and governing powers fall to the country's elected leaders. With intelligence and humor, he scrutinizes every aspect of the monarchy and how it has related to politics, religion, the military and the law. He takes us inside Buckingham Palace and illuminates the lives of the monarchs, at once mundane, absurd and magical. What Desmond Morris did for apes, Paxman has done for these primus inter primates: the royal families. Gilded history, weird anthropology and surreal reportage of the royals up close combine in On Royalty, a brilliant investigation into how an ancient institution struggles for meaning in a modern country.

"The king is dead. Long live the king!" In early modern Europe, the king's body was literally sovereign—and the right to rule was immediately transferrable to the next monarch in line upon the king's death. In The Royal Remains, Eric L. Santner argues that the "carnal" dimension of the structures and dynamics of sovereignty hasn't disappeared from politics. Instead, it migrated to a new location—the life of the people—where something royal continues to linger in the way we obsessively track and measure the vicissitudes of our flesh. Santner demonstrates the ways in which democratic societies have continued many of the rituals and practices associated with kingship in displaced, distorted, and usually, unrecognizable forms. He proposes that those strange mental activities Freud first lumped under the category of the unconscious—which often manifest themselves in peculiar physical ways—are really the uncanny second life of these "royal remains," now animated in the body politic of modern neurotic subjects. Pairing Freud with Kafka, Carl Schmitt with Hugo von Hofmannsthal,and Ernst Kantorowicz with Rainer Maria Rilke, Santner generates brilliant readings of multiple texts and traditions of thought en route to reconsidering the sovereign imaginary. Ultimately, The Royal Remains locates much of modernity—from biopolitical controversies to modernist literary experiments—in this transition from subjecthood to secular citizenship. This major new work will make a bold and original contribution to discussions of politics, psychoanalysis, and modern art and literature.

'A superb biography, which paints a vivid picture of the times and of her subject' Daily Telegraph 'Fascinating, compelling, outrageous and ultimately tragic' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'It is the best royal biography I have read in years' A.N. Wilson From the Duff Cooper Prize-winning author of The Restless Republic, a remarkable biography of one of the most intriguing figures of the Restoration era. James, Duke of Monmouth, the favoured illegitimate son of Charles II, was born in exile the year his grandfather Charles I was executed and the English monarchy abolished. Abducted from his mother on his father's orders, he emerged from a childhood in the backstreets of Rotterdam to command the ballrooms of Paris, the brothels of Covent Garden and the battlefields of Flanders. Such was his appeal that when the monarchy itself came under threat, the cry was for Monmouth to succeed Charles II as king. He inspired both delight and disgust, adulation and abhorrence and, in time, love and loyalty. Louis XIV was his mentor, Nell Gwyn his protector, D'Artagnan his lieutenant, William of Orange his confidant, John Dryden his censor and John Locke his comrade. In The Last Royal Rebel, Anna Keay matches rigorous scholarship with a storyteller's gift to enrapturing effect. She paints a vivid portrait of the warm, courageous and handsome Duke of Monmouth, a man who by his own admission 'lived a very dissolute and irregular life', but who was ultimately prepared to risk everything for honour and justice. His story, culminating in his fateful invasion, provides a sweeping chronicle of the turbulent decades in which England as we know it was forged.