This book is full of surprises, from the “undying love” that the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, felt for his Tsarina, to the unlikely love that flourished between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Amongst them, too, are less happy loves – of Crown Prince Rudolph for his 17-year-old lover, Countess Mary Vetsera, or, in the 1940s, of the Prince of Sweden, refused consent to marry the girl he loved – she only became his princess over 30 years later. Bringing the reader right up to modern times, and touching, absorbing, and tragic by turns, these stories bring the glamour and the contradictions of royalty vividly to life.

With the letters, personal accounts, and memorabilia that tell the real tales behind the contemporary headlines.