Crowns in Conflict

A detailed account of when Europe's kings went to war...

The years immediately before the First World War saw the last great flowering of European monarchy. Although sovereigns no longer ruled by divine right, their prestige and positions remained almost intact. The glittering centrepieces of national life, those crowned and anointed monarchs were still widely regarded as mystical, unassailable, divinely guided. And, with the majority of them being so closely related, they constituted a royal clan, an international freemasonry through which it was assumed the peace of Europe was being maintained.

World War I shattered this assumption. King took up arms against king; cousin was pitted against cousin. Twelve leading monarchs, ranging from the vainglorious Kaiser Wilhelm II to such lesser-known figures as Nicholas of Montenegro, 'Foxy' Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the tragic Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary, were involved in the conflict. For, in the end, that celebrated kinship of the family of kings proved irrelevant. Against the upheavals of these years, monarchs were revealed as both powerless and impotent.

Here, Theo Aronson has assembled the entire cast of embattled monarchs. His is the story of eight momentous years viewed, as it were, from the monarchical standpoint; an account of the passing, not only of their particular world, but of the entire monarchic and dynastic order of the Continent. 

'An interesting version of an oft-told tale. Rather than simply being a diplomatic or military history, Crowns in Conflict uniquely personalizes World War I. It also helps place monarchies in a historic context' - Prairie Progressive

Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret. In the course of researching and writing these books he has interviewed major and minor members of Britain's royal family and members of the royal households, as well as various officials, servants, friends and others whose lives are in some way connected with the monarchy.