The royal European courts were unsurpassed for their glamour, wealth, fame, danger, treachery, and politics. The royal mistress was at the center of that world -- admired for her beauty and sensuality; feared for the power she wielded; even vilified, envied, and resented. In times when women had very little power, the royal mistress had enormous influence, and yet she is seldom mentioned in official histories.

In Cupid and the King, Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent recounts the stories of five very different women, each of whom became a celebrated -- or notorious --...

Though of eminent birth and status in their own right, the women of Crowned in a Far Country all left the countries of their birth to marry heirs to great thrones. They all shared an inbred sense of duty and a genuine desire to see it performed. None fought against what she saw as her destiny but only sought to fulfill it. Some were passionate, others less so. Some were good wives; some were caring mothers. They were all catalysts, the pivots of their worlds for a time.

More than just a window into the politics and power brokering of royal marriage, Crowned in a Far Country...

From HRH Princess Michael of Kent, bestselling author of The Queen of Four Kingdoms, comes the extraordinary second volume in the Anjou trilogy.

Yolande, the Queen of Four Kingdoms is dead. Agn s Sorel, beautiful, innocent, twenty years old, had arrived a year earlier with the court of Yolande's son, Ren D'Anjou, and remained with his mother at her request, knowing how much the King of France, her dissolute son-in-law Charles VII, would need wise guidance.

As a trusted confidant of Yolande, Agn s captivates everyone she meets, and in her role as a demoiselle to...