A RUTHLESS ROYAL DYNASTY AND ITS SCANDALS
This is a set of biographies of the direct descendants of Alfred the Great through to Queen Victoria, encompassing those who ruled and those who did not. It presents only factual material on their lives and their impact on the people around them and, for most, those they ruled. For much of the 1200-year period, the population experienced almost perpetual chaos and the threat of death and devastation of their property and livelihood. For their own families, their approaches to personal relationships were nothing short of chaotic.
Their strengths and weaknesses are all too evident, as are the accidents of birth and fortunes of war that determined their fates. Ruthless in pursuing their dynastic ambitions, often presented as being in the national interest or the protection of liberty, they seldom hesitated in allowing the murder of those who stood in their way, destroying their crops and homes, slaughtering their animals and raping their wives and daughters. For many, the apparent lack of moral scruples in their scrambles for power was matched by the depravity of their sexual antics and imaginative marital arrangements.
Contents
Biographies of thirty-seven members of the dynasty are grouped in eight sections, or books, corresponding to the following eras: The Anglo-Saxons, The Conquest, The Early Plantagenets, The Wars of the Roses, The Scottish Episode, The Continental Context, The Hanoverians and The Victorian Inheritance. Each of the first seven books includes an introductory chapter setting the scene for that era and ends with a short summary of its main features. What emerges is a history that has seen death, destruction and chaos inflicted on the people for whom the dynasty had a responsibility to provide safety and security.
The violent history of a RUTHLESS family
We learn that from the earliest days of the struggles for supremacy among the Anglo-Saxon rulers of southern England, countless hapless subjects have been thrown repeatedly into brutal wars in which they had no stake. Whether through frequent violent family clashes about succession or their determination to retain possessions in continental Europe, successive monarchs imposed taxes, coerced innocent men to take up arms against their own kind and seized the property of those who opposed them.
Despite their relatively humble origins and the unimpressive status of successive marriage partners, they managed to promote an illusion of majestic exclusivity. Ultimately, they came to claim a divine right to rule and a God-given position above and apart from their subjects. This is not to suggest that they were possessed of a correspondingly high set of personal behavioural standards.
In fact, for generations, successive monarchs openly paraded their mistresses for everyone to see. However, the extreme examples of debauchery and licentious courts presided over by the flotilla of minor German aristocrats who invaded Britain in the eighteenth century represented a new peak in the level of depravity to which the dynasty was prepared to rise.
Books within a book
Chaotic Inheritance is presented as a group of eight books relating to particular periods of history. Each contains a chapter outlining the context to which it relates, the biographies of a group of members of the dynasty and a section summarising the conclusons to be drawn from the lives it has described.
Book 1
The Anglo-Saxons
How the family that once ruled Wessex came to control most of Britain over a period of less than 200 years.
Book 2
The Conquest
For most of the 100 years after the conquest the dynasty did not rule Britain but were never far from the throne.
Book 3
Early plantagenets
Back in power in 1154 the dynasty occupied the throne continuously for the next 120 years.
Book 4
Wars of the Roses
A century of turmoil for the family and their people as they fought over the right to the crown.
Book 5
Scottish episode
The dynastic line moves north of the border while Henry VIII and his family rule England.
Book 6
Continental foray
The next move is off to Bohemia for a generation or two with Elizabeth, daughter of James VI/I.
Book 7
The Hanoverians
The succession of the Elector of Hanover to the British throne brought with it a new era of almost unparalelled licentuousness to English society.
BOOK 8
VICTORIA's family
For two centuries Victoria and her family have ruled Britain with little actual power but occupying a position that supports the continuation of the country's social hierarchy.
