Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty

By Karl Shaw

Book Overview

An uproarious, eye-opening history of Europe's notorious royal houses that leaves no throne unturned and will make you glad you live in a democracy. Do you want to know which queen has the unique distinction of being the only known royal kleptomaniac? Or which empress kept her dirty underwear under lock and key? Or which czar, upon discovering his wife's infidelity, had her lover decapitated and the head, pickled in a jar, placed at her bedside? Royally dishing on hundreds of years of dubious behavior, Royal Babylon chronicles the manifold appalling antics of Europe's famous families, behavior that rivals the characters in an Aaron Spelling television series. Here, then, are the insane kings of Spain, one of whom liked to wear sixteen pairs of gloves at one time; the psychopathic Prussian soverigns who included Frederick William and his 102-inch waist; sex-fixated French rulers such as Philip Duke D'Oreleans cavorting with more than a hundred mistresses; and, of course, the delightfully drunken and debauched Russian czars - Czar Paul, for example, who to make his soldiers goose-step without bending their legs had steel plates strapped to their knees. But whether Romanov or Windsor, Habsburg or Hanover, these extravagant lifestyles, financed as they were by the royals' badgered subjects, bred the most wonderfully offbeat and disturbingly unbelievable tales - and Karl Shaw has collected them all in this hysterically funny and compulsively readable book. Royal Babylon is history, but not as they teach it in school, and it underlines in side-splitting fashion Queen Victoria's famous warning that it is unwise to look too deeply into the royal houses of Europe.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767907558
• ISBN13: 9780767907552
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

good read

This book was full of compelling stories. Slightly worn when arrived, but in good condition.

Who was "The Blackest Sheep of All"?

Many years ago, on December 11, 1936, my mother took me Christmas shopping in Robinson's Los Angeles store. I was six years old. Christmas carols were being wafted from radio speakers when suddenly the music stopped and there was total silence. People all over the store stopped whatever they were doing as though they were playing "statues." Then a man's melodious voice issued forth to a rapt audience. It was Edward VIII renouncing the throne for the woman he loved. My six year old heart was thrilled. Half a century later the coach for me turned into a pumpkin. Shaw's "blackest sheep of all" is the Duke of Windsor. Karl Shaw's "Royal Babylon" is a fascinating read, but I was less interested in the constant sexual excesses endemic in the royal houses all over Europe than in the author's iconoclastic remarks about broadly admired royal figures who had feet of clay. Make no mistake: I gasped at the unbelievable sexual excesses, and you will, too, but Shaw's discussions of the Duke of Windsor, Queen Mary, and Tsar Nicholas II among others, I found particularly revealing. THE DUKE OF WINDSOR Edward never seemed to get it through his head that he owed the British government something in return for his immensely priviledged position. You wonder what on earth he was taught growing up, but to serve was not one of them. It is amazing that he found such a soul mate in Wallis Simpson, who believed, just as he did, in taking with no giving. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent the next thirty years in migrating from one party to the next. They were both Nazi sympathizers, and the Duke, in meeting Hitler, clicked his heels and gave the Nazi salute in such a frenzied preformance that even the Nazi aides who were present were embarrassed. This is the former king of England grovelling before Hitler. It boggles the mind. This is the former king of England who showered the Duchess with cartloads of jewels, all paid for by the British taxpayers. This is the former king of England who felt he had no obligations to England and who led a life of unremitting vacuity. NICHOLAS II- THE LAST TSAR Nicholas as tsar was a disaster from day one. Indecisive, weak, vascillating, and rather stupid, be was under the thumb of his German wife, Alexandra. It is hard to even envision his world, in which peasants prostrated themselves when his train passed. One can imagine the toadying around his person as well. He did have a beautiful family: four lovely girls and the hemophiliac tsarivich Alexei. But the boy's illness was kept a state secret so that the insinuation of the debauchee Rasputin in to the family was totally miunderstood. Rasputin could calm the boy and relieve his suffering but in no way was this treatment a direct channel from God. Rasputin was nothing if not an opportunist. Alexandra's infatuation with the smelly peasant was a major reason for the rise of the Bolshevics. But Nicholas was doing his part to bring down the House of Romanov. He ruthlessly slaughtered

Great read

I loved this book, I couldn't put it down. Whether it is factual or not...well that can be debated by more worthy scholars that this reviewer, but as pure entertainment on this subject it is without peer. At university, I assure you I didn't learn this in ancient regime...unfortunitely; I might have stayed awake. This book did make me want to check some of the stories and some of them are only conjecture, but still they are amazing non the less. I would highly recommend to anyone who likes royal gossip. Reading this book, is like eating a sinful dessert, you know you shouldn't be eating it, but do you really care?

It had me from the crown on Victoria's head

That is the one covering her eyes, so she couldn't see what her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren were doing.This has to be one of the funniest books I've ever read, but I have to agree with the other posters-you have to keep careful track of who is who and how are they related to the other nuts, I mean monarchs.Some are easy to remember-George III, easy to remember from the Madness of King George, but some of the others, I had to remind myself of who they were.The stories in the book made me laugh outloud. Besides the constant stream of lovers, whiskey and food, Shaw revealing to the world that Edward VII used to weigh everyone who came to Balmoral put my mind at ease.What also really strikes me, is the fact that Queen Elizabeth II is beloved as a Queen, and generally regarded as a fair and equal ruler, but yet is descended from the Hanover-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha nut farm. It was also funny to hear Shaw's explanation that Diana Spenser, who everyone said was "a commoner," came from a background just as royal as Charles's, but she was not a Windsor. Therefore a commoner. A "commoner" with a title and a rather large estate, not a washer woman. Shaw writes-"there are three types of people in the world-blacks, whites and royals." This certainly explains Diana's commoner status.But I do have one disagreement with Shaw. On the back of the book, it says "Thank god you live in a democracy." The Bush family is distantly related to Diana, and probably some of those Stuart fruit loops, so I wouldn't be too sure about that.Overall, if you want to laugh like never before and amuse your friends with all kinds of really obscure facts, buy this book.

Royal Babylon ~ Wild Romp through European History

This has to be the best non-fiction light reading this summer. Why slog through hundreds of dusty history books for the "juiciest bits" when Karl Shaw has lined most of them up in this rollicking little 325 page volume ? It does for the fabled royal houses of Europe what the 'Hollywood Babylon' books did for our American celebrities twenty years ago. This is not a book which is likely to please royal apologists - between the excerpts, Shaw lays on mercilessly outspoken criticism of the Royals described, in the best British tradition. Underlying the fun is a very serious message about the corruption of the aristocracies in Europe generally, and the monarchies in particular - the great pretension of good old feudalism & aristocracy was the simple idea that power should be for the best & mightiest. Yet Shaw has lined up a "rogues gallery" of people at the very top of the aristocratic pyramid that have had absolutely no moral, mental, or even physical might or superiority. One has to be rightly horrified that this system held together, no matter what, and that the whole world and everything in it, was laid at the feet of these monstrous characters. This is a delightfully shocking little book. What is more, 98 per cent of it is entirely true, no matter what the apologists try to argue. As one might expect, since this writer is based in England, Shaw's biggest salvos are directed at the reigning Hanovers - and it certainly does raise an eyebrow that if Diana had survived marriage to Charles and QE II, that she would have been the first Englishwoman sitting on the throne since Henry the Eighth's last wife, Katherine Parr. Or, that even though she was the daughter of an Earl, a decendant of the Stuart kings, and had a noble lineage older than the Oueen's, that she was considered a "commoner" by the customs of England's "Royal" house. Celebrate Bastille Day and the Fourth of July the right way, and buy this book. It may be the best advertisement for democracy you will ever read !!