Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. Very light dust marking on top. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The Grimaldis of Monaco tells in full for the first time the remarkable history of the world’s oldest reigning dynasty. For nearly eight hundred years from the ele- gant Genoese Rainier I to the current Rainier III the Grimaldis-“an ambi- tious hot-blooded unscrupulous race swift to revenge and furious in battle” – have ruled Monaco. Against all odds they have proved themselves masterful survi- vors still in possession of their lands and titles despite the upheavals of the French Revolution and the First and Second World Wars when royal heads rolled and most small countries met their demise. With insufficient weaponry and military forces far too small to go into combat against their more powerful neighbors France and Italy the Grimaldis endured by their cunning and their shrewd choice of brides-rich women with high connec- tions in the most influential courts of Europe and often strong sexual appe- tites. The French nobleman’s daughter who married Louis I later became the mistress of France’s Louis XIV. Her son Antoine I was wed to an aristocratic wife who outdid her mother-in-law by having so many lovers her husband took to hang- ing them in effigy. The seafaring adventurer Prince Albert I was unfortunate enough to have two wives one British one American who ran off with their lovers. His second wife the American Alice Heine a fabulously rich heiress from New Orleans and the widowed Duchesse de Richelieu was the model for Proust’s Princesse de Luxembourg. And the last section of the book is de- voted to the current generation of the (SP)