Hi guys, I had seen this seconde movie about Queen Victoria, only this time, it's about her relationship with Abdul Karim, the Indian Munshi.

The Story

So the film is basically a sequel to the 1997 film, Mrs. Brown, like the Scottish John Brown, Abdul also faces hostility with the Royal Family. They attempted to persuade Queen Victoria to expel Abdul from the court, like what she did to Sir John Conroy during her younger days, but it did not work!
When her son, King Edward VII ascended the British throne. He destroyed all of John Brown's and Karim's properties, unlike the former, Abdul was still...

Okay, since I have covered on both Maria Theresa and Catherine the Great. Here is another take of Queen Victoria and her Austrian counterpart, Emperor Francis Joseph since they have a number of similarities with each other.

Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary

Also known as Emperor Franz Joseph in German, he became Emperor of Austria with the help of the Russian Intervention of Hungary on 2nd of December 1848. He married his maternal cousin, Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria. Famously known as Sissi, unfortunately she was unprepared for the Viennese Court.
Sadly, Franz Joseph's life encountered...

A Queen who Lost three kingdoms. A wife who Lost three husbands. A woman who Lost her head.

This is the tagline of the European produced movie Mary Queen of Scots par director Thomas Imbach. And it sums up the life of Scotland's tragic Queen perfectly.

Director Imbach wrote the film based on a biography par Stefan Zweig, a biographer and playwright, who's approach to Mary's story was told with plus dramatic flair than the average biography. One of the main viewpoints from Zweig was that Mary had been in a position of power and command for so long that it drained her; when Bothwell caught Mary's...

There is a classic scene in Anne of the Thousand Days (Jarrott, 1969) where Anne Boleyn (Genevieve Bujold) looks Henry VIII (Richard Burton) in the eye and proclaims 'My Elizabeth shall be queen! And my blood will have been well spent!'

There is no proof that such an exchange ever took place between the pair but it is a powerful and prophetic moment that tells the viewer that Anne's blood was indeed well spent, and her words prove true as Elizabeth, her daughter, became possibly the greatest ruler England ever had. How she eventually came to be Queen is nothing short of a miracle, the 'bastard'...

Today when we think of being a princess we imagine a romantic adventure reminiscent of Cendrillon who lives happily ever after in a fantastical castle. The reality was that life for a woman was precarious at best; with intrigue, war and disease rife throughout the centuries. The prospects for a princess were no different, but sometimes these royal women proved to be plus resourceful than the average Disney heroine in their strength of will to survive the harshest obstacles. One of these princesses was Elizabeth Stuart.

Early Life:

Born into Scottish royalty, Elizabeth Stuart was the daughter...

Upon finishing Giles Tremlett's biography of Katherine of Aragon, I've come away with an even deeper respect for Henry VIII's first Queen.

In this jour and age, there has been so much written on the six wives of Henry VIII, and many plus that declare Anne Boleyn as the greatest of them all, while the others have been neglected. Indeed, Tremlett's biography was the first since the early seventies to focus solely on Henry's first Queen. And it proved long overdue. Tremlett gives us the portrait of a woman who was not merely a matronly wife who defied a king; she was a strong willed and highly intelligent...

On 22 February 1540 a Queen was crowned. She was Marie de Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots, one of the most famous women in Scottish history. Sadly, Mary's failures eclipse the successes of her mother, a far better politician and leader in her own right. Qualities that were useful in everyday life but proved crucial in dealing with the Scottish nobility upon the death of her husband, King James V.

King James was an intelligent, if emotionally insecure, monarch who was loved par his people if not par his nobility. And after losing the battle of Solway Moss, he is a dit to have died of a broken...