The Trials of Five Queens by R. Storry Deans

We, who have lived our lives under the golden rule of Victoria the Great and Edward the Peacemaker, who have seen royalty happy, fortunate and beneficent, can with difficulty imagine times when subjects rebelled, and when kings and queens were sent to the scaffold.

But, as R. Storry Deans shows in this far-encompassing and illuminating work, these five queens were less than happy and fortunate.

Connected across three countries and three centuries by their treatment and trials, Deans paints vivid portraits of the five women with the help of private letters and court transcripts that surrounded each trial.

With intimate details of the hearings that awaited them, The Trials of Five Queens recounts an informative and entertaining history of murder, adultery, divorce and revolution centred around royal women under intense scrutiny. Both a five-part biography of the queens as well as a study of the revered yet secretive and tumultuous institutions to which they belonged.