Royal Marriages

Those who enjoyed the TV series The Crown will enjoy this entertaining and well-researched book which fills in the background to centuries of arranged royal marriages and the arcane rules that governed them. For centuries marriages of princes could only take place to virginal Protestant princesses. Most were unhappy, royal wives were seen as baby factories (as Princess Diana observed). What mattered was the virginity of the bride so that she did not go to the altar bearing another man's child wh