Antoinette's Sister

Giovinazzo Diana

As Marie Antoinette took her last breath as Queen of France in Paris another formidable monarch-Antoinette's dearly beloved sister Charlotte-was hundreds of miles away in Naples fighting desperately to secure her release from the revolutionaries who would take her life. Little did Charlotte know however that her sister's execution would change the course of history-and bring about the end of her own empire.

"You are the queen. You are the queen that Antoinette wanted to be."

Austria 1767: Maria Carolina Charlotte-tenth daughter and one of sixteen children of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria-knows her position as a Habsburg archduchess will inevitably force her to leave her home her family and her cherished sister Antoinette whose companionship she values over all else. But not yet. The Habsburg family is celebrating a great triumph: Charlotte's older sister Josepha has been promised to King Ferdinand IV of Naples and will soon take her place as queen. Before she can journey to her new home however tragedy strikes. After visiting the family crypt Josepha contracts smallpox and dies. Shocked Charlotte is forced to face an unthinkable new reality: she must now marry Ferdinand in her sister's stead.

Bereft and alone Charlotte finds that her life in Naples is more complicated than she could ever have imagined. Ferdinand is weak and feckless and a disastrous wedding night plunges her into despair. Her husband's regent Tanucci a controlling and power-hungry man has pushed the country to the brink of ruin. Overwhelmed she asks her brother Leopold now the Holy Roman Emperor to send help-which he does in the form of John Acton a handsome military man twenty years Charlotte's senior who is tasked with overseeing the Navy. Now Charlotte must gather the strength to do what her mother did before her: take control of a country.

In a time of political uprisings and royal executions and with the increasingly desperate crisis her favorite sister Queen Marie Antoinette is facing in France how is a young monarch to keep hold of everything-and everyone-she loves? Find out in this sweeping luxurious tale of family court intrigue and power.

>