Crown of Clowns

By Victoria M. Mensch

In the blizzard-swept night of January 1911, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria-a vain, predatory monarch obsessed with resurrecting a Third Empire-strands his hunting party in the peasant village of Pravetz. Seeking "comfort," he summons local women, his gaze fixing on Marutsa, a married beauty from the Danube north. What begins as royal entitlement spirals into a violation that echoes through decades, birthing a son whose ambiguous bloodline will reshape Bulgaria's fate.

From Sofia's gilded balls to the trenches of the Balkan Wars, Ferdinand grooms Crown Prince Boris-sheltered, melancholic, not yet seventeen-in the brutal arts of power, pleasure, and secrecy. Eleonora endures her unloved marriage with stoic grace, while General Nikolaev whispers of crumbling empires and wolves at the door. But the real shadow falls over Marutsa's boy, Todor: rising from village obscurity through partisan ranks to Communist iron grip, does he carry the Saxe-Coburg stain?

Spanning from 1911 to 1956, Crown of Clowns unveils the grotesque ironies of Balkan history-monarchy's clowns seeding red tyranny, rewritten birthdays masking bastard crowns. Blending exhaustive historical detail with unflinching intimacy, Victoria M. Mensch (pen name not to be affiliated with any other person by this or similar name) delivers the epic capstone to the Bulgarian Shadows trilogy: a savage meditation on power's illegitimacy, where tsars and communist party secretaries wear the same fool's cap.

Perfect for fans of The Nightingale, The Historian, and Wolf Hall-where royal appetites devour nations.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GJWK2B43
• ISBN13: 9798295579165
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Mpm Publishing
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 1.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"