Word: frasers
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CHARLES II OF ENGLAND wasn't good-looking, but Antonia Fraser makes him very attractive. It's not a difficult task. In Fraser's new biography, Royal Charles, she points out that even so sedate a lady as Queen Victoria found Charles II the most appealing of her predecessors. Despite the permanent scowl that marks all his surviving portraits, Charles II, immensely popular in his own day, had a romantic allure that has lasted to our own century. A dashing young prince and then a recklessly debauched monarch, he remains great fun to read about...
Educational fun, though. Royal Charles has no pretensions to profound historical interpretation, but, with clear exposition of many tangled situations and with careful research, Fraser reliably guides the reader through 17th-century politics. Biography can be the best history for the layman--with a clear chronology and a well-defined cast of characters, events become easier to follow...
Nevertheless, Fraser emphasizes the personal character of Charles II over political events--a justifiable technique in recounting 17th-century history, where the idiosyncrasies of reigning monarchs deeply influenced national policy. The psychological portrait is not sophisticated. Fraser argues that deep melancholy lay behind Charles's self-indulgence--hardly a new or clinical insight. She says she wants to strip away the layers of romantic gloss, but Fraser's left enough to make this an entertaining, if overly adulatory biography...
...next 11 years skulking about European capitals, with one disastrous attempt to claim his rightful crown. Parliament abolished the monarchy, and then General Oliver Cromwell declared himself the nation's Lord Protector. King Charles II, as he styled himself, though uncrowned, lived dependent on the charity of others. Fraser quite rightly emphasizes the humiliation and the poverty of these years. Charles II, unlike any other monarch of 17th-century Europe, learned about hunger and cold at first hand...
...Fraser doesn't explain this amazing reversal of public opinion. "The tide of revolution had run out," she says, feebly. That doesn't explain much. She's bored us with details of unsuccessful intrigues for a hundred pages; giving us at least a chapter on this final, successful intrigue would seem only fair. She's chosen to emphasize the drama and the inexplicability of the Restoration. It surprises us, as she wants it to, but we're just a little too astonished to be pleased...