Ladies in Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day

Far from being servants or decorative accessories in court, ladies-in-waiting competed for real positions of power–and many succeeded in their goals, sometimes betraying their queens in the process. A few even became royal mistresses, such as the rapacious Lady Castlemaine who amassed a fortune and flaunted her hold over King Charles II. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, including the diaries of such shrewd onlookers as Lady Cowper and Fanny Burney, bestselling author Anne Somerset provides a guide to the character, profligate or pious, of each court. This lively combination of entertaining anecdote and searching analysis is social history at its most colorful.