Book Synopsis: Hortense was thirteen when her widowed mother Josephine married Napoleon, and all the drama, romance, and tragedy which swirled about that amazing and complicated man fills her story. Norah Lofts carefully traes the events that brought Hortense to the throne of Holland, and to ultimate disaster; her devotion to her stepfather, her unhappy marriage to his brother Louis, her love affair with one of his officers, and, after Waterloo, her decision to devote the rest of her life to her children, one of whom became Napoleon III. The result is a vivid portrait of Napoleonic France, and of a woman o became a reluctant partner in its glory, and an innocent victim of its hatreds and intrigues.
