Over the course of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives, Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue. 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. 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. 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. 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. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. 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.

What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, and Mary, Queen of Scots. Illicit love, madness, betrayal-it isn't always good to be the queen.

Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr