"I have a proposition for you." Their marriage has all the makings of a great romantic movie: a beautiful Mediterranean setting, a handsome prince and fantastic sex. Too bad it's not real. When Prince Stefan Alexander weds Victoria Dane, the agreement between friends is supposed to be in name only to secure his crown. But it doesn't take long for buried passion to erupt…. Victoria gave up a lot for this seemingly fairy-tale life with Stefan, but all too soon she discovers she's fallen in love with the "Playboy Prince." Now Victoria must fight for what really matters. Because the one thing she can't give up is him.

Spanning 500 years of British history, a revealing look at the secret lives of some great (and not-so-great) Britons, courtesy of one of the world’s most engaging royal historians Beleaguered by scandal, betrayed by faithless spouses, bedeviled by ambitious children, the kings and queens of Great Britain have been many things, but they have never been dull. Some sacrificed everything for love, while others met a cruel fate at the edge of an axman’s blade. From the truth behind the supposed madness of King George to Queen Victoria’s surprisingly daring taste in sculpture, Behind the Palace Doors ventures beyond the rumors to tell the unvarnished history of Britain’s monarchs, highlighting the unique mix of tragedy, comedy, romance, heroism, and incompetence that has made the British throne a seat of such unparalleled fascination. Featuring: • stories covering every monarch, from randy Henry VIII to reserved Elizabeth II • historical myths debunked and surprising “Did you know . . . ?” anecdotes • four family trees spanning every royal house, from the Tudors to the Windsors

The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. One day, the houses will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will remain. In this dazzling work of imaginative re-construction, Edward Hollis takes us to the sites of five great spaces now lost to history and pieces together the fragments he finds there to re-create their vanished chambers. From Rome's Palatine to the old Palace of Westminster and the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and from the sets of the MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal Palace and his own grandmother's sitting room, The Memory Palace is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the people who, for a short time, made them their home.

In the freezing cold winter of 1739/40, Europe was in the grip of the worst weather for 30 years. The Seine, Rhine, Danube and Thames froze solid for months. Tsaritsa Anna Ivanovna gave an order to build a palace made completely of ice on the frozen river. She ordered the architect Pyotr Eropkin to design the building. The Ice Palace had been designed for a cruel jest. She made the prince marry a particularly ugly Kalmyk (area of Mongolia) serving woman, and the ice palace was for their honeymoon! It amounted to no more than a sick and perverse death sentence.The unhappy couple were paraded in a cage on the back of an elephant at the head of a procession of freaks, dwarves, cripples and all manner of grotesque human beings. In the palace the newlyweds were enclosed into an icy nuptial chamber under heavy guard and bedded down publicly in the icy room. The couple barely survived the night; but survive they did with the help of the Princes aide and friends of the Kalmyk bride.

She had been in the palace for a year and hadn't even seen the emperor's face before she mysteriously jumped several levels and became the imperial concubine.After the ceremony, she thought that she would finally be able to experience the pleasures of water and fish, but she didn't think that the one inside the palace wouldn't be the emperor, but the empress.Legend has it that the Empress prefers martial arts, and likes to show off her manhood, giving off an extraordinary heroic air.Under her pressure, she knew that the queen, who was loved by her subjects, was a complete man.The corners of his mouth curled up into an evil smile. "You're the woman that the Emperor specially selected for me.""The Emperor has granted me ten years of life, and I will hold this country for him for ten years."However, when his front legs left, the Emperor forced her onto the dragon bed. "You are my concubine, so you must accept my fortune."

This book explores the principles of the display of art in the magnificent Roman palaces of the early modern period, focusing attention on how the parts function to convey multiple artistic, social, and political messages, all within a splendid environment that provided a model for aristocratic residences throughout Europe. Many of the objects exhibited in museums today once graced the interior of a Roman Baroque palazzo or a setting inspired by one. In fact, the very convention of a paintings gallery— the mainstay of museums—traces its ancestry to prototypes in the palaces of Rome. Inside Roman palaces, the display of art was calibrated to an increasingly accentuated dynamism of social and official life, activated by the moving bodies and the attention of residents and visitors. Display unfolded in space in a purposeful narrative that reflected rank, honor, privilege, and intimacy. With a contextual approach that encompasses the full range of media, from textiles to stucco, this study traces the influential emerging concept of a unified interior. It argues that art history—even the emergence of the modern category of fine art—was worked out as much in the rooms of palaces as in the printed pages of Vasari and other early writers on art.