“Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty”, Karl Shaw

 

336 pages, Broadway Books, ISBN-13: 978-0767907552

My first year at Eastern Michigan University I ate at McDonald’s every day for a week BECAUSE I COULD! – but by the time Saturday rolled around I was pining for Mom’s spaghetti. I bring this up because reading Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty by Karl Shaw was more or less like eating junk food – it tasted great at first, but became tiresome after a while. In more than 300 pages, Shaw chronicles the excesses (sexual and otherwise) that the various members of the royal families of Europe. There can be no doubting that Shaw has covered all the bases, as every major ruling family is represented here, such as: the Bourbons of France, the Habsburgs of Austria, the Hanoverians of Hannover (and Great Britain), the Hohenzollerns of Prussia and Germany, the Romanovs of Russia, the Saxe-Coburg and Gothas of...everywhere, and the Wittelsbachs of Bavaria.

It’s as if National Enquirer decided to write a history of European royals, with every salacious piece of gossip brought to light, whether or not the documentation to support such claims is very credible or no (except for the medical backgrounds of these inbred quacks; they appear to be spot on. Yeesh). I thought it interesting that while Royal Babylon sports a bibliography, it lacks an index, perhaps as a subconscious admission that what they have published is more for entertainment than knowledge. As for that bibliography, it would appear that the majority of the books listed are secondary sources rather than primary, as is best for a proper history. Anyway, for all that, it was enjoyable reading about all of these high-and-mighty blue-bloods living lives of scandal and malice as they lord it over the populations they despise for being “common”; if having normal families and steady nerves is the price one must pay for commonality, I’ll take it over royalty any day.