This book was such a disappointment. I loved Loupas' book, The Red Lily Crown. I loved how she told tales of the de Medici family and brought Renaissance Italy with all its intrigue to life. Someone who did what she did with the de Medici's should have easily handled Mary, Queen of Scots, and all the drama of her Scottish entourage. One would think.

 

This book was a disaster from the start. Rinette's wedding is forcibly disrupted by a group of Scottish brutes who want to force her marriage to someone else. This starts a theme that will carry throughout the entire novel. ALL Scottish men are brutes. They are savage, bodice-ripping, dagger-carrying, brawling-in-the-streets brutes. The French aren't any nicer but they dress better so the author is a little more forgiving of their actions.

 

And then there is the one and only Mary, Queen of Scots. She was worse than the brutes. For starters, Loupas' MQoS made Charles VI of France look sane. I recognize that there were actual, legit issues with MQoS. Most biographers suggest she suffered from the same disease attributed to King George III's bouts of madness. Sorry but if Mary is really as awful as Loupas makes her out to be, her bastard half brother actually makes her disappear and puts the crown on his own head. He doesn't waste years fighting with her before fleeing the country. So maybe it's all a little more complicated than that. But is it really? Loupas would have you believe that it's really not. After all, Scotland is overrun with violent, wild men who can't stand being told what to do by any woman no matter what her title is.

 

Somewhere in all of this, there's a casket (foreshadow alert) containing letters and a mysterious prophecy written by the one and only Nostradamus. These items were property of Mary's mother, Marie of Guise. Rinette is entrusted with this casket and told to deliver it into Mary's hands upon Marie's death. Instead of just handing the casket to Mary as soon has she is off her French boat, Rinette decides she's going to hold on to it. She thinks she's going to bargain with someone she hasn't talked to or seen since they were eight years old. Before she had been Queen of France and Queen of Scotland. Spoiler alert- It doesn't work out very well for Rinette. 

 

Last issue with this book -

I'm so over authors who spend all kinds of time telling me about their heroines who are strong, brave, and independent women who don't need a man only to have the story ending with a woman who needs a man because she spent the whole book making bad choices. That was a terrible run on sentence. It's exactly how the thought came out of my brain. I'm not apologizing. Just acknowledging. Anyway, if she's (Rinette or Mary. Take your pick.) so smart, why does she continue to make so many bad choices? Both things can't be true. Beyonce has told us as much several time. 

 

Loupas has one other published work I have on my TBR. It takes the reader back to Italy. I'll probably pick it up only because I loved her last venture into Italy. Maybe it's just Scotland with all of its brutes that's the problem. 

 

If I were able to get to the library right now, this book would have gone back unfinished. As it is, I cannot get to the library so I might as well read all of the books I have. 

 

 

Dates read 4/5/2020 - 4/13/2020

Book 25/75 

You’d never know it from the way things turned out, but decades before his granddaughter Victoria was born George III had hoped to break the Hanover cycle of rampant family dysfunction to live a private life filled with affection, harmony, and virtue that would be a model for his people and prove British royalty worthy of the great tasks assigned to it by Providence. George III’s dream of a loving and prudent family fell apart long before madness claimed his mind, and ending up with a profligate heir like Regency Prince turned King George IV is just part of the story.  

 

While the focus is on George III, A Royal Experiment begins with the first Hanover king, George I, who was imported from Germany to keep the British royalty Protestant and who was unimaginably cruel to both his wife and his son George II, and the book ends with Queen Victoria, who in some ways was able to bring her grandfather’s moral vision to life. In addition to covering the personal lives of several generations of the royal family, the book is filled with thought-provoking information about and reflections on the culture and attitudes of the time, including the differentiated roles of the sexes (not a good time to be an intelligent independent woman) and the changing views of marriage (love or practical alliance? equal partnership or male ruled household?), family life, childhood (coddled or challenged?), madness, religion, childbirth practices (female midwives or medically trained male doctors?), and the duties and/or rights of royalty.

As an American it was fascinating to read about the various ways the American Revolution looked to and affected George III, British politicians, the general population of Britain, and the French. Without being overly sensational, A Royal Experiment fully engaged my emotions as well as my mind--it was horrifying to witness George III’s descent into madness and heartbreaking to read about the early death of George IV’s daughter Princess Charlotte, a high-spirited young woman who self-identified with Marianne of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Thoroughly researched, well organized, accessibly written, and unrelentingly interesting.

I tried. I really did. I made it to page 150 before I started to skim and to page 244 (out of 364) before I decided that this was not for me. Ms. Hubbard was too sympathetic towards Albert and had a decidedly anti-Victoria stance that I found rather disturbing. Her phrasing choices were odd, too enthusiastic in all the wrong ways. Also, she ended up inserting her own opinions, pretending to know exactly what Victoria was thinking or feeling at any given point in time. Between the weird descriptive phrases, her almost misogynistic approach towards Victoria, and her omniscient knowledge of Queen Victoria’s mindset, it was just too much for me. Oh, and the book spent a LOT of time talk about how boring life as a lady in waiting or maid of honor was. In all, the subject matter was interesting, but there were too many idiosyncrasies that irritated me and put me to sleep.

Monaco is a tiny principality at the Riviera, a modern city state attracting the rich and the glamorous as well as social climbers and tourists who just want to taste high life. Well-to-do people always loved the place and had the habit of spending money lavishly there – not least in the casinos of Monte Carlo. Since 1856 the country has been a gamblers’ paradise which easily turns into a hell for those who become addicted and lose more than they can afford. Such doomed characters have also found their way into literature. One of them is a young Polish-Austrian aristocrat whose presence at the roulette table accounts for special Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman which Stefan Zweig tells in his novella.

 

The protagonist of Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman is a distinguished Englishwoman of sixty-seven who one night in 1904 tells the young narrator an embarrassing episode from her life hoping that this confession of a sort will ease her conscience. He listens to her story which took place in Monte Carlo sometime around 1880. In the casino she passed her time observing the hands of the gamblers at the roulette table as her late husband had taught her. One night the eloquent hands of a young man scarcely older than her own two sons attracted her attention and she couldn’t let go of them anymore. She didn’t know then that the gambler they belonged to was a Polish-Austrian aristocrat, nor could she imagine that the encounter would put her life upside-down for twenty-four hours and make her jeopardize her good reputation in order to save him from himself. She couldn't help plunging into the adventure, but as it turned out it isn't as easy to reform a gambler as she had thought.

 

A great book about Queen Victoria and the people who served as her maids-of-honour, ladies-in-waiting not to mention her private secretaries, footmen and the like. Including the notorious John Brown. Plenty of entertaining stories, a few sad ones, and in the center of it all, the United Kingdom's longest reigning monarch -- up to now, it is -- Queen Victoria. Plenty of photographs, a fine bibliography, and a good read. Four stars overall and a happy recommend for royal watchers.

For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.epinions.com/review/Kate_Hubbard_Serving_Victoria_Life_in_the_Royal_Household_epi/content_625651715716?sb=1