Part of Series
The tale of the treacherous battle for the throne between Catherine the Great and her son Paul, set against the backdrop of late-eighteenth-century Russia The year is 1773. Catherine the Great has been in power for a decade. Since the assassination of her husband, Peter III, in a coup d'état, she has been empress of all the Russias. She rules with enlightenment and grace, driven by ambition and her secret dream to free Russia’s millions of serfs. Tonight she is celebrating the wedding of her son Paul Petrovitch. He was nine—and the rightful heir to the throne—when Peter died and Catherine seized power. Her son has neither forgotten nor forgiven, and hatred for his mother—and his father’s murderer—festers in his heart. He doesn’t know that Catherine committed a terrible crime to safeguard his liberty and his life. She prays that marriage will be the solution to his violent rages and the dangerous enmity between them. Curse Not the King chronicles the struggle for dominance between mother and son. Notorious for her love affairs, Catherine ruled an empire shadowed by treachery, intrigue, and deadly betrayals. But she was never able to make peace with Paul, who would go on to become czar, finally attaining his long-awaited revenge, and whose own son Alexander would reign after him. Curse Not the King is the 2nd book in the Romanov Trilogy, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Author
Evelyn Anthony was the pen name of Evelyn Bridgett Patricia Stephens Ward-Thomas, Started her career as a writer of historical fiction, later switched to writing contemporary thrillers, often with an espionage theme. She met Michael Ward-Thomas on a double date in The Dorchester and both were attracted to each other.] He worked for the Consolidated African Selection Trust. They switched partners and were married a few months later. They bought Horham Hall in 1968 but found that it was costly and sold it in 1976 and moved to Naas, County Kildare where she had relatives. Increased income from her writing allowed her to buy Horham Hall back in 1982. In 1994 she became High Sheriff of Essex, the firswt woman in over 700 years to hold this office. In 1995 her daughter Kitty died of a heroin overdose, leading Evelyn to not write for another seven years. In 2004 her husband died of a stroke. She was survived by her children Susan, Anthony, Ewan, Christian and Luke as well as 16 grandchildren. NB:Some sources give Ms Anthonys year of birth as 1926. Additional information added from Wikipedia
