Princesses Behaving Badly

Writer: Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

Hardcover, 303 pages

Published by Quirk Books, 2013

It’s like a love at first sight. I saw this book at Periplus Soekarno-Hatta airport and fell in love. Its classic hardcover jacket promises me an eternity. But it is the first word of the title that caught my eyes: Princesses. I’m a big fan of history, especially those of princesses. I love “princess dresses” and I spent my childhood imagining myself as a princess.

So, although the subtitle is “real stories from history WITHOUT the fairy-tale endings”, I still bought this book.

My love at first sight turned out to be the stories of at least 30 princesses that were supposedly behaving badly and wreck havocs into their own lives. The time period spans widely, from Hatsepsut in Egypt (CA. 1508-1458 BCE) to Princess Margaret of Britain (1930-2002).

The bad behaviours are divided into seven categories:

• ·         Princesses who fought their own battles,
• ·         Princesses who grabbed power in a man’s world,
• ·         Princesses who plotted and planned,
• ·         Princesses who made controversial and questionable choices,
• ·         Princesses who loved to live it up
• ·         Princesses notorious for their sexy exploits
• ·         Princesses who were likely mad, or close to it

McRobbie tried her best to be objective while writing their interesting stories, tragedies, unhappiness, and achievements. She wrote a brief biography for each of the princesses. Sometimes she added some narratives about the parents and extended families, and also political situation in the region. She gives background and tries to explain why those princesses did what they did.

Sometimes after a tale of a particular princess, McRobbie inserted short stories of other princesses who experience the same fate. These give readers another point of view that actually the behaviour of the princess is something common, at least in court lives at certain times.

Besides “blue blood” princesses, McRobbie also wrote about fake princesses. I haven’t heard any news about a fake princess nowadays, but I think these famous fake royals appeared in the right time. One of them is Mary Baker from Devonshire who dubbed herself Princess Caraboo from the Malaysian country of Javasu. This kind of lie was possible because UK in the early 19^th century was crazy about anything oriental; besides, the technology wasn’t advance enough to detect any forgery.  

Another notable case is that of Anne Anderson/Franziska Schanzkowska who until in her deathbed in 1984 still believed that she's Anastasia of Russia. The missing Russian royal family, and Anne’s correct age make it easier to convince people of her false identity. Sometimes I wonder if these kinds of princesses are just like me who dream of becoming a princess, on my craziest day, in an extreme version.

Despite of the great contents, I disagree with the title because not all of those princesses were behaving badly.

Some of them are just unlucky enough to be born as a baby girl, like Christina of Sweden. It’s not her fault that she was the only child of the king; moreover she became a queen in the age of 6 years old under a protection of a mentally unbalanced mother. 

While many of the princesses faced tragedy from political yet unhappy marriage plus inability to produce an heir. Let alone princesses who suffered from genetic diseases resulted from close blood relatives marriages of their parents. Even for me, those princesses who behaved badly just did what they did because they want to survive the demanding court life. These princesses deserve something better than to be judged of behaving badly.

A quote from the last page:

“And they all lived happily ever after? Not exactly.”

It hurts. But like love at first sight, there are no regrets.  Although I find flaws, I’ll always try to accept it the way it is. I will keep on re-reading this book. And when the time has come, I will read this to my children and grandchildren, the story of my love at first sight.