Moniek Bloks, Author at History of Royal Women

October 2017 Book News

Saturday, 23 September 2017, 7:00 Moniek Bloks 0

Catherine of Aragon: An Intimate Life of Henry VIII’s True Wife Paperback – 15 October 2017 (UK) & 1 February 2018 (US) Catherine of Aragon continues to fascinate readers 500 years after she became Henry VIII’s first queen. Her life was one of passion and determination, of suffering and hope, but ultimately it is a tragic [read more]

Sophia of Hanover – Heiress of Great Britain

Friday, 22 September 2017, 7:00 Moniek Bloks 1

Sophia of Hanover was born on 14 October 1630 in The Hague, the Netherlands, where her exiled parents, Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark and Frederick V, Elector Palatine, lived. She was christened on 30 January 1631 in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague, where only three days earlier her elder sister Princess Charlotte [read more]

Fontevraud Abbey – From abbey to prison

Wednesday, 20 September 2017, 7:00 Moniek Bloks 3

Fontevraud Abbey was founded between 1110 and 1119 and was located in what was then the Angevin Empire. As a monastery, it was home to royal and noble ladies and it became the burial place of Eleanor of Aquitaine, her husband Henry II and their son Richard the Lionheart and the wife of their son [read more]

Maria Anna of Austria – Governor of the Austrian Netherlands

Monday, 18 September 2017, 16:00 Moniek Bloks 0

On 18 September 1718, Maria Theresa was joined in the nursery by a younger sister named Maria Anna. She would be the only one of three of Maria Theresa’s siblings who would survive to adulthood. An elder brother named Leopold died on 4 November 1716, not even one year old and younger sister Maria Amalia died on 19 [read more]

The Daughters of William the Silent – Emilia of Nassau

Monday, 18 September 2017, 7:00 Moniek Bloks 0

Emilia of Nassau was the fifth but third surviving child of William the Silent and his second wife, Anna of Saxony. She was born on 10 April 1569 in Cologne. She was named after the Countess of Neuenahr, who was the head of Anna’s household. From the beginning, she was under the care of a [read more]

Wallis Simpson – An ordinary woman with insatiable ambition

Friday, 15 September 2017, 7:00 Moniek Bloks 0

On 19 June 1896, Bessie Wallis Warfield was born as the daughter of Teackle Wallis Warfield and Alice Montague in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. She was just a few months old when her father died of tuberculosis. She and her mother heavily depended on Wallis’s father’s wealthy brother. In 1901, they moved in with Wallis’s aunt, Bessie Merryman. [read more]