検索キーワード： "Queen" エッセイ

While in London in 1897, Mark Twain was commissioned by William Randolph Hearst to report for the San Francisco Examiner on the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne. Evoking historical detail reminiscent of passages in The Prince and the Pauper and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Twain compares the jubilee to his own original and imaginative account of the 1415 celebration following the English victory at Agincourt, and he also reflects on the rapid changes in the British Empire during the Victorian age.

Queen Victoria had over 30 surviving grandchildren, and to maintain and increase power in Europe, she hoped to manoeuvre them into dynastic marriages. Yet they often had plans of their own, and her matchmaking was further complicated by tumultuous international upheavals. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking travels through the glittering, decadent palaces of Russia and Europe, weaving in scandals, political machinations and family tensions.

Dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, sheer greed and sometimes just a skewed moral compass. These are some of the triggers that drove the women captured in these pages to become lawbreakers. Queens of Crime demonstrates a haunting criminal power that most people do not associate women with. The...