Five centuries of royal marriage
The True Stories of Royal Wives and the Other Woman, from Catherine of Aragon to Diana
The whole true story of the royal wives your heart sides with, and how each one came through the mistress, the gossip and the crown. Nothing invented: where the record is silent, the book says so.
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Why this book
Every January, strangers lay pomegranates, her badge, on Catherine of Aragon’s grave. She lost her husband, her crown and her daughter’s place in the line to the throne, and still most people, asked whose side they are on, say hers. The same pull runs through five centuries: the wife pushed aside for another woman, and a public that, sooner or later, makes up its mind.
The books that sell on this subject mostly tell it from the mistress’s side. The Wife’s Side tells it from hers: six royal wives who faced the other woman, five in their own marriage and Queen Mary in her son’s, from Catherine of Aragon to Diana. Each story is told whole, from the letters, diaries, speeches and official records, with the dates and the exact words.
Where the record is silent, the book says so. Where a famous tale is legend, it says that too.
What’s inside
Three kinds of royal marriage, what a royal mistress was and was not, why the wife so often won the long game, and how the book marks what is record and what is legend.
Catherine of Aragon: the Spanish princess who knelt before Henry VIII at the Blackfriars in 1529 and spoke for herself, would not give up the name of wife, and died at Kimbolton in January 1536.
Catherine of Braganza: a bride from Lisbon told to take her husband’s mistress, Barbara Villiers, among her own ladies, a king who would not divorce her, and a widow who went home to rule Portugal as regent.
Caroline of Brunswick: Maria Fitzherbert, the secret wife; the “Delicate Investigation”; the 1820 bill against her in the House of Lords; the coronation door shut in her face; and a crowd that chose her, then let her go. Told fairly.
Alexandra of Denmark: the adored bride of 1863, her husband in the witness box in the 1870 Mordaunt case, illness and deafness, Lillie Langtry and Daisy Warwick, and the quiet dignity that won the public.
Alice Keppel, the most discreet of favourites, and what the record says about six days in May 1910, when Alexandra herself let her in to the dying King; then the widow’s years, to 1925.
Queen Mary: engaged to one prince, married to his brother, the steel she brought to the family, and how she faced Wallis Simpson when her son gave up the throne.
Only the public record: the 1981 wedding, Charles’s 1994 words, the Morton book, Panorama, the 1996 divorce, the Paget inquiry, the 2008 inquest and the 2021 Dyson report, each worded exactly.
Patience, the long view, silence used well: the patterns across five centuries, and how the public decides who was wronged, including the time it turned against a wife.
One tree over two pages, from the Tudors to King Charles III, linking every wife and every favourite in the book.
Every dated event in the book in one run, chapter by chapter, from Catherine of Aragon’s landing at Plymouth to the 2023 coronation.
The 36 letters, speeches, diaries and official papers quoted in the book, each dated, with where the original is kept or published, and what it shows.
Every person in the six stories in two lines, from A to Z. Then the sources, chapter by chapter.
Sample pages
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What you get
Questions before buying
A designed PDF of 164 pages, 6 × 9 inches: an introduction, seven chapters and an afterword, then the reference pages (family tree, timeline, the 36 documents, who’s who) and the sources. Period portraits and photographs throughout, each credited.
About 38,000 words, 164 pages. Most readers will take a few evenings over it, and then keep it for the family tree, the timeline and the documents.
The whole of each story, in order, with the dates, the places and the exact words. And what no video can give you: a family tree linking every wife and every favourite, a timeline from 1501 to 2023, the letters and documents themselves with where they are kept, a who’s who, and the sources for every chapter.
You pay through Gumroad, and the PDF is yours the moment the payment goes through: on the page, and in an email from Gumroad with your download link. You can download it again from that email at any time.
Yes. The PDF opens on any phone, tablet or computer. To read it in the Kindle app, send the PDF to your Kindle library with Amazon’s free Send to Kindle.
Yes. Nothing in it is made up: no invented scenes, no imagined thoughts, no made-up dialogue. It is built from letters, diaries, state papers, parliamentary records, court and inquiry reports and the standard biographies, and every source is listed at the back, chapter by chapter. Where the record is silent, the book says so. Where a famous tale is legend, a “Legend says / The record says” box says that too.
No. Living people appear only as the public record shows them: what they said in public, what was announced, what courts and inquiries found. Queen Camilla and King Charles are treated fairly, and Diana’s own admissions are in the book too.
No, it is a digital book (PDF). You can print it at home if you like.
Crown Bequests, an independent YouTube channel about royal history. It has no connection with the Royal Household.
The true stories of royal wives and the other woman, from Catherine of Aragon to Diana
$24Get the book now
The Wife’s Side