The History Today review of Royal Renegades

Mistresses

Royal Renegades

From St. Martin's Press:

ROYAL RENEGADES
The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars
By Linda Porter

PRAISE
“Lively and engaging – Porter deftly weaves together the key political events from a 60 year period with the turbulent lives of some of its youngest royal players.” –History Today

“She tells the tale with admirable flair and clarity.” –Literary Review (UK)

The fact that the English Civil War led to the execution of King Charles I in January 1649 is well known, as is the restoration of his eldest son as Charles II eleven years later. But what happened to the king’s six surviving children is far less familiar.

In ROYAL RENEGADES: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars (St. Martin’s Press; on-sale February 20, 2018), Linda Porter examines the turbulent lives of the children of Charles I during the English Civil Wars.
Casting new light on the heirs of the doomed king as their family life was shattered by war, acclaimed historian Linda Porter brings to life their personalities, legacies, and rivalries for the first time:
 Elizabeth and Henry were used as pawns in the parliamentary campaign against their father.
 Mary, the Princess Royal, was whisked away to the Netherlands as the child bride of the Prince of Orange.
 Henriette Anne’s governess escaped with the king’s youngest child to France where she eventually married the cruel, flamboyant, and gay Philippe d’Orleans.
 Charles eventually succeeded his father to the English throne after fourteen years of wandering and promptly enacted a vengeful punishment on those who had spurned his family, with his brother James, who would later, like their father, be driven from the throne.
A tale of love and endurance, of battles and flight, of lives torn apart, the lonely death of a young princess and the devastating experience of exile, ROYAL RENEGADES charts the fascinating story of the children of loving parents who could not protect them from the consequences of their own failings as monarchs and the forces of upheaval sweeping England.

About the Author
Linda Porter has a Ph.D. in history from the University of York, England. She was the winner of the 2004 Biographers Club/Daily Mail prize in England and is the author of The Myth of "Bloody Mary," also available from St. Martin's Press. She is married with one daughter and lives near London.

Booklist Online Exclusive: January 31, 2018:

Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars.
Porter, Linda (Author)
Feb 2018. 448 p. St. Martin's, hardcover, $28.99. (9781250055422). e-book, (9781466858480). 941.
If your view of England’s Civil Wars consists of romantic royalists and straitlaced Roundheads, Porter’s (Tudors versus Stewarts, 2014) latest will ably complete the picture. It follows the conflicts that ravaged seventeenth-century England, Scotland, and Ireland, religion-fired power plays that plunged the population into chaos and sent a king to the execution block. After Queen Elizabeth I died without an heir, her cousin
James, Stuart king of Scotland, claimed the English throne. His son Charles succeeded him. Charles I, fervent believer in the divine right of kings, fell out with Parliament and went to war. A habitual promise breaker, he managed to enrage everyone who tried to negotiate with him, and after a decade of conflict and
hundreds of thousands of deaths, Charles was executed for high treason. His children died or went into exile, dependent on foreign monarchs as they plotted their return. Some reclaimed their fortunes, but crowns were no guarantee of a happy ending. A narrative with many strands and hundreds of players, for
the motivated reader, Royal Renegades revives a turbulent era of English history.
— Mary Ann Gwinn

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