Ebook Matriarch Queen Mary and the House of Windsor Anne Edwards 9781442236554 Books

Product details Paperback 560 pages Publisher Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Reprint Edition of the Classic edition (December 5, 2014) Language English ISBN-10 1442236558

Matriarch Queen Mary and the House of Windsor Anne Edwards 9781442236554 Books Reviews

• This was a decent book on Queen Mary, but there was a LOT left out, and could have been a really terrific book. But I'll give you my secret to making this a real page-turner read Matriarch in-tandem with James Pope-Hennessey's official royal biography, Queen Mary. By reading both of these biographies in tandem, you'll walk away with a much richer and much more thorough portrait of a woman who was so much more important to history than she is given credit.
  
  Matriarch glosses over Princess May's entire childhood, an essential "detail" that is most important to Queen Mary's adulthood and her reign. Her childhood experiences and relationships with her parents and cousins, aunts and uncles, and with the British Monarch itself, it paramount to understanding the woman that she became and to the children she bore (I hesitate to say "raised because, well, read the books). On one level, the Queen was a very complex individual; on another, she is not difficult to understand at all.
  
  By reading Matriarch alone, you may learn a few things you didn't know before, but you'll also walk away with a lot of questions. If you read the two biographies in tandem (I read up to a point in history in one book, then read up to the same point in history in the other, then switched) you'll really understand the woman herself so much more. And like I said in my review of Pope-Hennessey's biography, when you get to QM's experiences during WWII (which are extremely limited in Edwards' book) you'll wish you had Julian Fellowes' phone number on speed dial!
• This is a good biography on Queen Mary, although a bit dated as some things listed have proven to be wrong by recently released documents. Here I’m referring to the Duke of Windsor and his Nazi ties. Truly, the British should revere Wallis Simpson, she saved them from what would have been a disaster of a king.
  
  Queen Mary held the royal family and the country together through two world wars, an abdication, and various crises throughout her long life. A virtual tower of strength she always put country and duty first. Described as ‘cold and hard’, basically because she kept rigid control of her emotions, publicly and privately, she was ‘taught’ how to be Queen by the great Victoria herself. Her husband, George V, freely admitted he would not have been the man or the king he was without his ‘darling May’. The royal family owes this woman a huge debt because, in my opinion, the House of Windsor could have gone the route of so many other royal dynasties after WWI, deposed and/or murdered.
  My hat’s off to the grand dame, Queen Mary.
• After reading 17 Carnations I was eager to read more about Queen Mary and her relationship with her children. In that respect Matriarch was just the ticket. The book explores Queen Mary, but also provides considerable insight into the entire Windsor family. And Edwards’ prose as others have said is compulsively readable. Matriarch is well researched and full of tidbits and stories I had not read in other royal biographies.
  
  Why then am I giving the book only four stars? Because midway through the book I began to feel myself actively questioning Edward’s central premise-namely that Queen Mary was an outstanding if not the most outstanding Queen Britain ever had. Edwards is clearly enamored of her subject. Fair enough given the research and the time she spent writing Matriarch she’s certainly entitled to that view. However, I don’t think she’s made a strong argument for Mary holding such a lofty role.
  
  Herein lies the problem. Edwards seems to suggest that because Mary dressed well, wore jewelry well, followed court procedures, and always maintained a stiff upper lip she was an ideal queen . However, the further I got in the text the more I felt Mary was almost a slave to her position, and seemingly limited if not wholly incapable of giving her family any kind of emotional response. Mary may have believed it was noble to worry endlessly about the King while leaving the Princes and princesses to their own devices, but does that really make her outstanding. As others said the book provides you some excellent insight into Mary, but it never convinced me Mary was superior in anything but adhering to court etiquette at all costs. And to my mind that alone does not elevate her among the top Queens.
  
  Troublingly Edwards in advancing her theories seems to be utterly willing to slight every other female to elevate Mary. Queen Alexandra is blamed for every possible thing including her husband having affairs. Princess Mary is judged far beneath her mother. Even Queen Victoria is in Edward’s mind not quite as Queenly as Mary.
  
  Meanwhile, Edwards skirts over any flaw in Mary’s character. For example the silver jubilee which likely accelerated King George’s demise was invented by Mary for little reason other than to honor her own vanity. Yet, Edwards coolly justifies the ceremony and excluded Mary from the criticism she should rightly face. Likewise, Prince John occupies maybe three paragraphs in a book that spends far more than that detailing dinner his parents attended.
  
  I am not discouraging anyone from reading the book. Matriarch is an excellent book. But one does need to approach it with an awareness of Edward’s authorial quirks. And one must decide for one’s self if a live of adhering to court protocol excuses an almost paralyzed emotional response.
• Engaged to two crown princes and related to most of the royal houses in Europe, Queen Mary lived during a turbulent and transformational time in European history and monarchy. Cousin to both Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas as was her husband King George V, their situation was complicated and tenuous during World War I. More German in ancestry than English, they took on the very British name of Windsor to try to divert increasing anti-German sentiment in England during the Great War. Among other things, this book deals with the unsuccessful attempts of the Windsor's to bring Nicholas and Alexandra and their children to England before they were murdered by the Bolsheviks; the British handover of India; Edward VIII's abdication of the British throne; and World War II. In her 85 years Queen Mary outlived four British monarchs, including Queen Victoria and her own son King George the VI and died just weeks before her granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II, to whom she left her fabulous jewel collection, was crowned.