Absolute Power: The Real Live of Europe's Most Infamous Rulers is a 2006 book on the lives of ruling monarchs in Europe from the last Tarquin King in Rome and the last Tsar in Russia written by C.S. Denton.
ROME
IBERIA
FRANCE
THE BRITISH ISLES
SCANDINAVIA
GERMANY AND AUSTRIA
ITALY
HUNGARY AND THE BALKANS
THE BYZANTINE AND OTTOMAN EMPIRES
Phokas
RUSSIA
I give this book a 2/5. I apologize for only giving you links instead of summarizing the book, however, as you can tell there is a great multitude of people featured in this book and to write about all of them would simply kill me. The characters that aren't so well known in history are often only given a page which begs the question of why they are in the book in the first place. The book at times contradicts itself i.e. In Tiberius' chapter, he is painted as an innocent man who is blamed for all the wrong in his time and then in the Caligula section the Emperor is painted as the monster most people believe him to be. The general grouping and naming leads to confusion i.e. The Iberian section is a mix up of Portuguese and Spanish rulers that leaves one confused which country you're in. It's also riddled with inaccuracies:
"Nicholas, at the age of seventeen, fell in love with the 21 year old Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt....It's worth pointing out that Alix had previously turned down a proposal from her cousin, the man who stood to become George V of Great Britain"
( For people who don't know the love story of Nicholas II of Russia and Alix of Hesse and by the Rhine: Nicholas was born in 1868 and Alix was born in 1872, making the Princess 4 years younger than the Tsarevich and not the other way around. And it was Albert Victor, George's older brother, that proposed to Alix)
The book is incredibly thick but it's all bulk and nothing special.
