I have never once read about Charles I or his daughters- Elizabeth, Mary, & Henrietta Anne. All of this info was new to me. I usually don’t read about this period or later in British history because, honestly, I find it boring. Ms. Watkins made the lives of these three royal women more engaging for me. Again, this was new info but I felt it was presented in a good way. I would recommend for a history buff.

Tragic Daughters of Charles I by Sarah-Beth Watkins looks at and compiles what we know about some lesser known but important figures from history. We know of the men, but many women get forgotten about. You can really tell Watkins dug for information for these women and makes you wonder what history forgot or overlooked.

There were some interesting facts, but I did to struggle to read this. I think this was a book I would have preferred as a hard copy versus an electronic copy. Sometimes you need the physical book. So, because of this I was unable to finish the book. I give this book two stars. I can tell how well researched, but it felt like an info dump.

Thank You to NetGalley, John Hunt Publishing, and Sarah-Beth Watkins for the free copy. This was an honest review.

"The Tragic Daughters of Charles I" offered some interesting facts about the lives of Charles I's three daughters, but the author's narrative style made this book rather difficult to get through for me.

I'm not sure what it was, but I just didn't like how this book was structured and how the author seemed to switch between an objective formal style, appropriate for non-fiction books, and a more informal narrative style.

Was anyone else completely unaware Charles I had daughters? Just me? History tends to gloss over those it deems unimportant, and I loved learning more about these women that had been shunted aside. Although not terribly in-depth this is very informative and an enjoyable read.

The Tragic Daughters of Charles I is an insightful look into the lives of Mary, Elizabeth and Henrietta Anne and the roles they played in Dutch, English, and French history.

Good but not great. The book just felt like it was lacking something. Maybe it would have been better off as just a biography of Henrietta Anne since the other princesses were barely featured.

The daughters of Charles I are not people that I know a great deal about - the same goes for a majority of the population I imagine! This book uses various resources including sections of letters & other quotes to tell their stories.
This was a most informative insight into these ladies' history. The book was obviously well written & researched. Like many non-fiction books it did get a bit dry & slow going in places but on the whole it was a reasonably easy read. I did enjoy the inclusion of source material - including many letters - but found that this did cause the narrative to head off at a tangent at times.
On the whole this was a good read & an interesting book.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

I really enjoyed this book and I found it to be quite engaging. I don't tend to read much about the daughters of Charles I as most history books only tend to focus on the future Charles II and James II. It does tend to show more of Charles II's time as a wandering Prince, and later his early reign in reference with Henrietta Anne. Large chunks of the book are focused between their letters, which I did find a little distracting from the narrative. The book itself was skewed towards Henrietta Anne, and I would have liked a little bit more on Elizabeth and Mary, but overall the book was quite good.

I loved this because it was very informative and enjoyed the history. I would give the book 4 stars and would have enjoyed more!

Most people discuss the son of Charles I, there is less said by Charles's daughters. Watkins does a fantastic job of looking into the sad life of the unpopular monarchs daughters in an interesting and emotive manner. I am very keen on learning about women in history so this was an excellent read for me.

A thoroughly enjoyable, well-written book following the lives of the daughters of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. The story flows chronologically, with the girls' lives being told within the context of their father's greater struggle to hold on to his crown and -eventually - his life.
Sarah-Beth Watkins has a wonderful writing style, which entices the reader in and keeps their attention throughout the tragic stories that are being retold.. The research is impeccable and the authors passion for her subjects is obvious - especially for the baby of the family, Henrietta Anne, who married the brother of King Louis XIV and died after a short and mysterious illness.
The Tragic Daughters of Charles I follows the girls throughout their lives, focusing on their relationships with each other and their family, whilst keeping the reader all-too-aware of the dramatic events surrounding them and the turmoil into which their family - and England - has been thrown. While it focuses on the daughters, the stories of Charles I, Henrietta Maria and Charles II - as well as Louis XIV and the French court - are retold in vivid detail.
I can recommend this book to anyone with a passion for the Stuarts and Louis XIV, but also to those who want to learn more about Charles I's family in particular.

Note: This review is based on an ARC I received from Netgalley:

"The Tragic Daughters of Charles I" is a group biography of three princesses. The stories have the potential to be juicy--Henrietta Ann, for example, was Louis XIV's mistress (and his brother's wife). But the problem is that potential doesn't play out here. This is possibly due to material: As we find out early in the book, all of these women had short lives; their siblings died even younger. Add in the uproar of the Civil War and potential for records to go missing, and you have a topic without a great deal of material.

To be fair, however, the brevity of coverage may also be a choice. It may also be just what interests the author, or not--the author's voice here is a dry one, sounding more encyclopedia than entertainment.

That said, there is little historical attention paid to these women (with the exception of Minuette, as mentioned), and so I was grateful for the effort Watkins put into carving this path for us.

This was an interesting book that focused on the much ignored Stuart sisters. I enjoyed how this was spilt up in the different decades and it had a perspective switch when talking about each sister. Watkin's writing was clear and was written in a way that was not dry. This really helped move the story of the women along. I have previously read about Charles I and II but I knew nothing of their daughters and sisters. This made me want to look further into their lives as this was really interesting.

I love historical biographies and this one didn't disappoint me. I had not realized that Charles II had more than one sister and that they had all died young and tragically. The book is a mine of information and was entertaining and kept me reading until the end. Women back then were often little more than political pawns but it was refreshing to see that at least one of Charles I's daughters played an important yet forgotten role in history. I highly recommend this book.

I have to confess that when it comes to English royalty, I’ve never been much of a fan of the Stuarts. Somehow they lacked the charismatic panache that characterized their successors the Tudors, or the operatic tragedy of the Plantagenets. They just seemed rather bland in comparison to all of this.

Recently, however, I’ve taken an interest in them. They embodied all of the contradictions of the era, drowning in opulent wealth and yearning for absolute power yet struggling with the financial and political limits imposed by Parliament. Given these contradictions, is it any wonder that one of them, Charles I, ended up losing his head to the executioner’s axe?

Sarah-Beth Watkins takes as her subject the doomed daughter of this doomed monarch. As the title of the book suggests, Charles’ daughters fared little better than their father. Several died before they reached the age of 20, and those that lived to be older, Mary and Henriette, died before they reached 30, the former from smallpox and the latter as the result of a stomach ailment (and possibly poison).

Throughout their young lives, both Mary and Henriette faced struggle and difficulty, particularly once they were married to foreign princes: Mary to William of the Netherlands and Henriette to Philippe, brother of Louis XIV. Both also found themselves at the center of politics, first as their brother attempted to regain his throne and then, after his restoration, in the feuds and jostling that inevitably arose between the powers of Europe. In a bitter twist, Mary survived to see her brother return to the throne but died shortly afterward.

Given that she lived the longest and was married to the brother of the King of France, Henrietta’s life takes up the latter half of the book. Though plagued by personal sadness–her husband was abusive and paid more attention to his male lover than he did to her–she was nevertheless a savvy political player and a valuable ally for her brother at the heart of the French court. Through her closeness to both her brother and her brother-in-law the king, she was able exert a formidable influence on politics, and one can’t help but wonder how much more she would have been able to accomplish had she but lived longer.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. The prose is, unfortunately, rather clunky, and it lacks a certain dynamism. One learns a lot from the book, but I found it very easy to get bored while reading it. I strongly suspect that this has to do with the fact that there just isn’t a whole lot of material due to the very young age at which these women died.

Relatedly, the author tends to use far too many long quotes from primary sources. One gets the sense that she felt pressed to fill out the book to a standard length. While, of course, it is customary to include at least some quotes from letters, diaries, etc., the sheer length of the ones in this book become distracting after a while, and they certainly break up the momentum of the narrative.

That being said, the book is a serviceable introduction to these tragic young women. While their own lives were cut tragically short, those of their descendants would go on to be rather illustrious. Mary’s son William would in fact go on to become King of England as William III, while Henrietta’s descendants would go on to sit on the thrones of several different countries. Through their children, the tragic daughters of King Charles found their own form of immortality.

*Many thanks to Sara-Beth Watkins, John Hunt Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with arc in exchange for my honest review.*
This non-fiction aims at telling the stories of lives of three daughters of Charles I, who are usually left a little in the background by historians concentrating mainly on the king, and, subsequently, his son restored to the throne. I found this book exrtemely informative and learnt a lot about the lives of women, the sisters and their mother and relatives of whom I knew almost nothing. The book is easy to follow and I recommend it to any reader interested in the history of England in the 16th century.

This fascinating book reminds us, as it’s sometimes good to be reminded, that being born a princess was often not a good thing. Well researched book with nice use of primary sources.

**I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

If you’re looking for a brief biographical sketch of the daughters of England’s Charles I, look no further in this short book by Watkins. Watkins shares a brief history of each daughter – all who did not live beyond thirty years of age – as well as the tumultuous political landscape of 1600s England and Europe. The narrative is slightly choppy in parts, as the women’s lives are weaved into this political discussion, and the brevity of the narrative leaves you wanting more. But, in histories usually dominated by the male players, this book offers a candid look at how women were used as pawns, and how women sometimes help broker peace accords between warring nations.

Pick this one up to start learning about women and politics in 1600s Europe.

This is a high level historical biography of the three daughters of King Charles I. This is by no means a story with a happy ending. It is the story of three women whose lives are impacted by the English Civil War during which their father was executed. The siblings wind up living separate lives in Holland and France. Regardless of their geographical separation, the siblings find ways to stay close, especially with their brother who eventually becomes King Charles II. Henrietta Anne is probably the best known of the three sisters due to the role she played in the reign of King Louis XIV. As such, most of the book is dedicated to her story. Ms. Watkins continues to provide her readers with an opportunity to learn about the members of the royal families without saturating the books with historical fluff that has little to do with the subject(s) of the story being told. There are instances where letters between the siblings take up large portions of the text. While I recognize that this is important in capturing the relationship between the siblings, the author could have focused on the major points of the text needed to support the biographical story and provided a citation for the source of the letter in the index. Regardless, this was a good, well researched account of Mary, Elizabeth, and Henrietta Anne.

If the daughters of Charles 1 lived now. they could have happy marriages and successful careers because they were remarkably clever. Unfortunately, the poor girls had to endure the regicide of their father, exile from home, and unhappy lives. Mary's marriage was relatively happy, but she was homesick for England, and Henrietta had an extremely tough time in France.

I enjoyed reading about these sisters. Sarah Beth-Watkins has written a detailed, well-research account and the letters help to bring them alive. The relationship between Charles II and Henrietta is especially poignant. The only problem that I have is that Charles 1 is regarded as a saint in the Anglican church because he would not agree to make England Presbyterian, and I didn't feel that she really gave the controversy about his relationship with the Covenanters of Scotland a fair hearing.

However, this book certainly made me want to read more about the period.

I received this free ebook from Net Galley in return for an honest review.