Books I read in April 2022

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In case you haven't picked up on it from my previous posts about books, I am a bit of a history fan. Most of the books I read tend to be history non-fiction, with the occasional foray into fiction when I need a bit of a break.

This month it's all European history! And it's covering pretty broad periods of time too.

Creation of the French Royal Mistress

I spent aaaages waiting for this book to arrive. I saw a deal on Twitter if you bought it through the publisher which saved something like 20%, and since it's more of an academic work and they tend to be a bit pricey I decided to go down that route.

However, thanks to the pandemic and other problems it took a long time for the book to show up. And then I received an email several months later saying my payment had been declined (it wasn't a scam, I checked my bank statement and realised it was true).

BUT - all problems with publishing aside, this turned out to be a really interesting book. It tracks the progress of the position of "royal mistress" at the French court. The French were the only monarchy to have an official royal mistress, while other kings and princes had extramarital affairs the mistress wasn't an actual role that could be assigned.

This book starts with the first official mistress, Agnes Sorel, and finishes with Marie Antoinette, who although not a mistress did try to take on some of the aspects of influence that the position held. It was really interesting to not only track the development of the position, but also to find out more about the women who held it.

Like I said, it's more of an academic work so it's not a book that you can breeze through. But it is really fascinating and I would recommend that anyone interested in royal mistresses check it out.

The Habsburgs: Rise and Fall of a World Power

I was really happy to get my grubby mitts on this book. I've read a lot about English kings and queens but after a while it all gets a bit repetitive. There aren't that many accessible books about other royals or royal families in English (at least, not that many that I've found) so it's hard to find a nice change.

Like the Romanovs book that I read back in January, this book focuses on a different European royal dynasty. The Habsburgs rose from Austrian obscurity to become one of the most powerful royal families in European history. Their epogee was Emperor Charles V, who was Holy Roman Emperor, Duke of Burgundy, and King of Spain (and Hungary and Bohemia). After his abdication his lands were split, with his brother's descendants getting the imperial throne.

This started out as a really interesting book, and I sailed through the first couple of chapters. I really struggled to put it down as it was focused on the individual emperors, so I felt like I was learning a bit more about them as rulers.

As it progressed it began to deviate a bit from the individuals and looked at broader concepts and political movements. It was still very interesting, but I found it a bit easier to put down and take a break from it. The build-up to the First World War captured my interest once again, but at the end I felt like I wanted to go and find some more biographies to fill in personal gaps. I was also disappointed at the lack of mention of the women who married into the family, despite them often bringing their own lands or talents as an advisor to add to the mix.

It's definitely one to read, but I did get a bit disconnected about halfway through. 

Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

And lastly, to go along with my French Royal Mistresses I picked up another book that's more academic, but still a very good read.

"Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe" is a collection of research papers on various European queens and aspects of their life or court. I quite like books like these as it's quite easy to pick up, read a paper, and then put it down and read something else. It doesn't matter if you go back a few days later as the next paper will be completely different and you don't need to worry about forgetting anything.

In this case I found the premise of "Forgotten Queens" to be quite interesting. I really like reading about women in history (as if you couldn't guess!) but a lot of them do tend to be forgotten about in favour of their husbands and sons. Add in the difficulty in finding any accessible history books on non-English royal families, and you have a book that's perfect for me!

And yes, I really enjoyed it. I came away feeling like I had learned bits about lots of different women. My particular favourite was on the images of the French queen Marie Leszczinska, as I feel like she is often ignored in favour of her husband's mistresses. I hadn't considered the impact that images of her had had on art at the time, so this proved to be a really fascinating piece of work (from my perspective at least).

Like this post? Find out which books I read in March 2022.