Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty

Since 1714, Britain has been ruled by a clan of inbred Germans with a history of mental instability and a talent for profligacy and private debauchery. But compared to their blue-blood cousins across the Channel, they are neither remarkable nor particularly mad. In the last three hundred years, Europe has been plagued by dysfunctional rulers - the insane kings of Spain, the psychopathic kings of Prussia, the sex-fixated French kings, the famously inbred Habsburgs of Austria, and of course, the drunken, debauched and always dangerous czars of Russia. This unusual and amusing account of the great and the sordid will make even the ardent royalist wonder whether Europe’s republics really miss this collection of madmen, philanderers, sexual misfits, sociopaths and tragic emotional cripples. Karl Shaw lives in the UK. He has written a number of humour books including Gross and The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists . He describes himself as an iconoclast.