My review of Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown, by Maureen Waller

Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown

by Maureen Waller

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Interesting account of the end of the Stuarts in England. Until the last century there remained vehement opponents of the switch to Hanoverian rule.

James II's daughters, Mary and Anne, were Anne Hyde's daughters. They resented their stepmother, Mary of Modena, and were so bitter at her baby son's arrival (cue pushing towards their throne) that a family row ensued, escalating into a coup against their father aided by public fears and anti-Catholic prejudices.

James II, as Charles II's younger brother, had not always been expected to rule. The latter, however, left no legitimate heirs. Only when James came under greater scrutiny as king did his Catholicism come into much question publicly, the matter having been kept discrete like many sensitive royal details.

Malicious rumours erupted concerning the baby prince's legitimacy, the harshest being that he was an imposter smuggled into the palace in a bed-warming pan after Mary's real baby died. The likelihood, or not, of this is examined, as is the issue of post-reformation England's then governmental power mongers (and proletariat) dreading any return to a Catholic monarchy. The last had been Bloody Mary Tudor, under whose watch 283 Protestants had been executed for heresy, most by burning.

James II's baby heir, James Francis Edward Stuart, later to become nicknamed the Old Pretender, was taken to France by his mother who feared for his life, and kept by his cousin Louis XIV of France.

James II then fled England for his safety when it became apparent that his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange would invade at the request of James' detractors. James' baby son was railroaded from the succession by Mary and William. That couple ruled jointly until William died, leaving just Queen Mary II. With no offspring, Mary's demise left Queen Anne to wind up the Stuart rule. Her disastrous run of 17 pregnancies left no living offspring either. So came their Hanoverian cousins, descended from the same Stuart grandparents via the maternal line.

These two 'Ungrateful Daughters' on James II, as the title suggests, are not portrayed sympathetically. This may not be author bias, but more likely the way many have remembered them. Neither went down in history as hugely popular monarchs, although Anne's reign saw nationalistic development, notably the 1707 Acts of Union whereby her realms of England and Scotland became united as Great Britain, creating Europe's largest free trade area.

Ungrateful Daughters is an insightful account of the 1688 Glorious Revolution and two rather troubled and troublesome sisters, neither of which became greatly revered. Anne became more iconic than Mary but without attaining much personal popularity with all those around her. Political and diplomatic achievements of Anne's governments, and the absence of constitutional conflict between herself and parliament, indicate that she chose ministers and exercised her prerogatives wisely. Her reign marked an increase in the influence of ministers and a decrease in the influence of the Crown

The Stuarts have been tagged a jinxed dynasty, with Mary of Scots and her grandson Charles I's executions, the latter's triggering England's republic. Then, after the long awaited and greatly hailed Restoration, Charles II's morally lax court attracted fresh disrepute. His many controversial bastards but no legitimate heirs signalled the beginning of the end for these Stuarts. Two unsuccessful invasions and coups by leftover Stuarts were plotted after the Hanoverian branch was called in: the 1708 Jacobite Rising, led by the Old Pretender, and the 1745 Jacobite Uprising led by his son, the Young Pretender (Bonnie Prince Charlie).

An important era to study in piecing together how the UK got today's royals, whose convoluted lineage runs from William the Conqueror ... via the tragic forbear of these very Stuarts: Mary Queen of Scots (and her Hanoverian descendants). Maureen Waller makes the characters and their motives accessible, coherent and dramatic without switching from meticulous documentation to melodrama.

Well-crafted high calibre biography.