Game of Crowns

Author: Christopher Andersen
Genre: Biography
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2016
Pages: 352
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: A moving and compulsively readable look into the lives, loves, relationships, and rivalries among the three women at the heart of the British royal family today: Queen Elizabeth II, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and Kate Middleton.

One has been famous longer than anyone on the plant - a dutiful daughter, a frustrated mother, a doting grandmothers, a steel-willed taskmaster, a wily stateswoman, an enduring symbol of an institution that has lasted a thousand years, and a global icon who has not only been an eyewitness to history, but a part of it. 

One is the great-granddaughter of a King's mistress and one of the most family "other women" of the modern age - a woman who somehow survived a firestorm of scorn to ultimately marry the love of her life, and in the process replace her arch rival, one of the most beloved figures of the twentieth century.

One is a beautiful commoner, the university-educated daughter of a flight attendant-turned millionaire entrepreneur, a fashion scion the equal of her adored mother-in-law, and the first woman since King George V's wife, Queen Mary, to lay claim to being the daughter-in-law of one future king, the wife of another, and the mother of yet another.

Review: Let’s take a moment and be glad we’re not royal. Hot mess, all of them. And the way people jockey to become one? Weird.

Even though the beginning was strange, imagining the world following Queen Elizabeth's death, I couldn’t put this down. At the same time wish I wouldn't have read it. I prefer the shiny, polished side that we see in the media, not who they really are.

There were times I was giggling, shaking my head, and nearly wanting to cry, all on the same page. There is no way William and Harry can be easy men to be married to and live with; not with their childhood. Charles and Diana's marriage, and especially that two children had to grow up in that dysfunction was heartbreaking.

I was also surprised to learn that William and Kate's relationship did not develop as organically as I thought it had. Kate's mother made sure Kate attended the same college, and orchestrated their relationship, to some degree. Fortunately, Kate and William do seem to be in love, despite these machinations.

Camilla Parker-Bowles is something else, but my least favorite member of the family is Charles. What.a.dog. There were some interesting tidbits about him.

I wish this book would have been published after Meghan Markle joined the family, but she would have been outside the scope of this novel anyway, I suppose. Harry was barely mentioned as well.