Victoria in the Wings

ENGLAND'S HANOVERIAN DYNASTY DESPERATELY NEEDED AN HEIR.

King George III was mad and locked up with his keepers. The dissipated Prince Regent was ailing, and his only heir, Princess Charlotte, had died in childbirth. Radical measures were called for: the Prince Regent's disreputable brothers must give up their mistresses, marry respectable princesses, and have babies as quickly as possible.

Jean Plaidy's story of this royal farrago resembles nothing so much as a delightful and scandalous comic opera. Yet beneath its glittering surface lies devotion, suffering, and deep-dyed villainy ... and the growing danger that adorable little Princess Victoria, last hope of the House of Hanover, might be cleverly cheated of her majestic destiny. A bold-enough enemy might even arrange her murder....

Only Jean Plaidy, queen of historical novelists, could have brought this fantastical prelude to Victoria's splendid reign so deliciously to life.