An interesting read albeit slightly more depressing than inspriing.

I liked to concept of this books but it needs a bit better editing and research. While there was some things I died not know each princess got a paragraph about her with a brief bio about her life. Some of the headers where satirical and unneeded.

Princesses Behaving Badly is a compilations of biographies of real-life princesses. Linda McRobbie uses these biographies to criticize the Disney and fairy tale myth that all princess live happily ever after (though if you’ve read the actual Brothers Grimm fairy tales, a lot of them are dark and gruesome-far from the happily ever after). She also argues that Kate Middleton is not a very lucky woman when she married Prince William as the public easily assumed and believed. These selected princesses that McRobbie uses are not the conventional, dutiful, and by the book good princesses but rather princesses that have stepped out of their conventions and rules of society and caused a great scandal to the shock of the people of their time. Because of this, they made choices that prevented them having a happy life, and some even to be ridiculed among their peers.

McRobbie groups these princesses into seven categories: warriors, usurpers, schemers, survivors, partiers, floozies, and madwomen. Some of them were strong. Some of them are mythical. Some were imposters, and others were comical. Some of the ones that I liked were Pinyang, the Tang princess who led an army, Hatshepsut, and Khutulun, the Mongol Princess who were very good at wrestling. I also thought a few other princesses stories were very interesting like Wu Zetian, the only Female Emperor of China, Queen Isabella of England, known as the She-Wolf of England, and Malinche, the Aztec who betrayed her own people to Hernan Cortez. I also thought that she undermined great women like Njinga of Ndongo, the king who helped her people. There were other princesses like Clara Ward, Sophia Dorothea, and Sofka Dolgorouky that I really did not care at all about and were very bored of their stories.

Overall, these princesses were very human. Most made bad choices that they would regret for their lives and had many flaws. This is not a scholarly book. McRobbie uses basic sources, mostly newspaper articles from gossip magazines, internet articles, and a biography or two. Yet the book is very witty and engaging, and it is a great introduction into the princesses’ lives. I recommend this for anyone who loves to read about royalty or for anyone who is looking to read a good juicy, gossipy, tale looking to satisfy their guilty pleasure.

Good for when you want a quick historical sketches about different royal(ish) women of history. Doesn't go into too much detail. Rejected Princesses is probably a more interesting treatment of similar stories with the added bonus of visuals.

Princesses Behaving Badly was highly entertaining and fun to read. Linda Rodriguez McRobbie took the fairytale trope of a princess and turned it on its head in this book filled with stories of real royal women who "behaved badly."
I really enjoyed the breadth of women she profiled both in time and geography. I particularly enjoyed the stories of the non-european princesses.
Princesses Behaving Badly is a fun and informative read.

Not quite ladies. An interesting glimpse into the lives of some of the royal women in history. From ancient, to current, these women forgo the dainty and proper manners of their counterparts. Although the book itself had some interesting tid-bits, I found myself annoyed with some of the stories. It seems as though some of them could have been more of a paragraph, rather than drawn out, and it seemed as though they repeated themselves at times, just using different wording.But I pushed through the irritant, and finished the entire thing. While some of the women were known to me, there were some in there that I had never heard of.This would be a fun, in the car read, while you have some time to kill!

I read the original version earlier this year, and enjoyed the newer additions to the book. As a history teacher, the new edition offers even more to students who are looking at figures past and present.

The concept for this book is fantastic. However, it does not quite live up to the premise. Perhaps I just expected the wrong thing, but I thought this would be full of rebellious women overthrowing injustice, making waves in the face of uptight societies in fun ways, or at least being villainous in a quest for power. Few of the stories are inspirational, fascinating, or all that scandalous though. Instead, many feature women who were forced into horrible situations and then maligned publicly by their rivals. The author does a nice job of covering a diverse group of women from different eras and countries who are not often featured in history books. However, the storytelling is often dry while remaining superficial and the women are not always the leads in their own stories (which is particularly strange in a book of this nature). Overall, I appreciated the intent behind this book, but wish it delivered more.

I already purchased a copy of this book for my cousin for Christmas, and as I had already wrapped it up, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to devour it myself (thanks, NetGalley!). It's fun, it's gory, it's gruesome, and it's real. These stories range from the macabre to the hilarious and are told with an intelligent snark that will appeal to readers of all ages, especially girls who long for more stories like Brave and Moana.

I am absolutely loving this book - haven't completed it yet as I am rationing myself - and it has given me a different view of (in)famous women from the pages of history, both well known and not so well known. Although the book is made up, mostly, of précis histories of these ladies, it has certainly made me want to know more about what I have always suspected. In a patriarchal society, it tends to be men who write the history of the world and so women tend to be shown as taking a seat at the back of the "bus". A real pity because so many women have or would have done a much better job than their male counterparts!

p.s I'm a male who wouldn't be here if it weren't for a woman, who did all the work: my mother.

Delicate, educate, timide, passano il tempo sospirando mentre suonano l'arpa e aspettano l'Amore - sì, il Vero Amore, con le maiuscole.

O anche no.

Tratte da storia e leggende, l'autrice propone decine di principesse che sfatano l'immagine canonica: piratesse, statiste, guerriere, spie, truffatrici, assassine, sante (ma dalle mani bagnate di sangue).

Donne che, tutte, hanno dimostrato presenza di spirito, un carattere imprevedibile e una certa mancanza di scrupoli.

Esempi non proprio da seguire? Vero; ma anche la prova che, se ogni ragazza è una principessa, ci sono infiniti modi di esserlo, senza tradire sé stessa e le proprie inclinazioni.

Meno sanguinarie - si spera! - di quelle illustrate nelle brillantissime piccole biografie che propone l'autrice di questi istruttivo, liberatorio volume. ;)