Harrowing Historicals: Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr

Today’s Harrowing Historical is: Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr

Synopsis from the publisher: Illicit love, madness, betrayal–it isn’t always good to be the queen. Marie Antoinette, Anne Boleyn, and Mary, Queen of Scots. What did they have in common? For a while they were crowned in gold, cosseted in silk, and flattered by courtiers. But in the end, they spent long nights in dark prison towers and were marched to the scaffold where they surrendered their heads to the executioner. And they are hardly alone in their undignified demises. Throughout history, royal women have had a distressing way of meeting bad ends–dying of starvation, being burned at the stake, or expiring in childbirth while trying desperately to produce an heir. They always had to be on their toes and all too often even devious plotting, miraculous pregnancies, and selling out their sisters was not enough to keep them from forcible consignment to religious orders.


From Cleopatra (suicide by asp), to Princess Caroline (suspiciously poisoned on her coronation day), there’s a gory downside to being blue-blooded when you lack a Y chromosome. Kris Waldherr’s elegant little book is a chronicle of the trials and tribulations of queens across the ages, a quirky, funny, utterly macabre tribute to the dark side of female empowerment. Over the course of fifty irresistibly illustrated and too-brief lives, Doomed Queens charts centuries of regal backstabbing and intrigue. We meet well-known figures like Catherine of Aragon, whose happy marriage to Henry VIII ended prematurely when it became clear that she was a starter wife–the first of six. And we meet forgotten queens like Amalasuntha, the notoriously literate Ostrogoth princess who overreached politically and was strangled in her bath. While their ends were bleak, these queens did not die without purpose. Their unfortunate lives are colorful cautionary tales for today’s would-be power brokers–a legacy of worldly and womanly wisdom gathered one spectacular regal ruin at a time.

My Thoughts: Kris Waldherr is a woman after my own heart. An artist with a knack for fun, interesting (and spooky!) history, she not only writes the entries for her books, but also does the brilliant illustrations. Each of her pieces is unique, as her style ranges from realism to surrealism, with a few historical caricatures thrown into the mix (which are such a hoot!). After visiting her art gallery in Brooklyn and seeing the depth of her talent in person, I am truly in awe of Kris’s ability to mesh art with words to create incredible reinterpretations of classic tales from history and mythology. I used to be a dancer and a fifth generation student of Isadora Duncan, whose dances are all based around mythology, so I’m a total nut for all things Mt. Olympus. Needless to say, one of her other books, The Book of Goddesses held me equally as captivated as Doomed Queens, although Doomed Queens proves to be a perfect read for Harrowing Historicals – I never knew there were so many queens who met such gruesome ends!

I tend to consider myself more of an amateur “expert” on women’s history from the Renaissance onward, but Kris’s book introduced me to some of the lesser-known queens from medieval and ancient times, while simultaneously re-familiarizing me with some old favorites. Her books and her gallery both just scream “GIRL POWER”, making Doomed Queens the perfect gift for a mom, sister, or friend. While the queens covered in this book likely weren’t smiling about their fates at the time, Kris tells their stories in such a way that the reader cannot resist chuckling at Kris’s way with words. I read this book while on vacation with two girlfriends who aren’t history buffs like me, and they both got a kick out of this book while learning a lot in the process. Be sure to also check out Kris’s Harrowing Historicals guest post on sightings of Marie Antoinette’s ghost!