![]() ![]() The story takes us to courts across Europe, and looks at the fate of Henrietta Maria’s mother and sisters, who also faced civil wars. When civil war came, the strategic planning and fundraising of his ‘She Generalissimo’ proved crucial to Charles’s campaign. No bigot, her closest friends included ‘Puritans’ as well as Catholics, and she led the anti-Spanish faction at court linked to the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years’ War. We meet a new bride who enjoyed annoying her uptight husband, a leader of fashion in clothes and cultural matters, an innovative builder and gardener and an advocate of the female voice in public affairs. Here she considers Henrietta Maria’s point of view, unpicking the myths to reveal a very different queen. Leanda de Lisle’s White King was hailed as ‘the definitive modern biography about Charles I’ ( Observer ). Condemned as that ‘Popish brat of France’, a ‘notorious whore’ and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic - so causing a civil war - and a cruel and bigoted mother. ![]() Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s queen, is the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain’s three kingdoms. A myth-busting biography of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, which retells the dramatic story of the civil war from her perspective ![]()
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