Dynasty

"Dynasty is the tale of one of the most glamorous, colourful and foolish families ever to sit on our thrones: the faces that launched a million shortbread tins, faces of a family driven at last to extinction." "From the serial husbands of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the eccentric Cardinal with a taste for pretty young men, award-winning writer John Macleod unfolds the complex, calamitous and always entertaining history of a royal family so awful the Scots let England share them too." "Never has a royal house been so unfortunate. Stuart kings were stabbed in cellars, hacked to death in barns and repeatedly deposed; the bold 'King Billy' was felled by a common molehill. James II of Scotland was killed by his own cannon. Even their executions went wrong." "Scots, and especially the Highlanders, suffered much at the hands of Stuart ineptitude. Yet, through the farce and tumult of their years in power, there emerged a new and vigorous religion; a United Kingdom; radical new thoughts and institutions; and the foundations of a modern democracy. And when they were finally driven out, it was Highlanders in Scotland who at last came to their aid in courageous bids to restore the Stuarts to power."--Jacket.