Anne stood up to Marlborough( spelling?) She helped stop the Thirty years war. Page? She told her negotiators what to do. Page ?
Anne was described by an elite Scottish man as having dirty wrappings on her legs Page?

For all the history I try to read, my encounters with Queen Anne have been relatively rare - she's generally an afterthought, noted as the last Stuart monarch before the start of the Hanoverian dynasty, a character in someone else's story (such as a novel about Sarah Churchill I read a few years ago), or she comes up as a possible lesbian due to her relationships with female favorites. Overlooked seems to be the word to describe her, even during her own reign. Repeatedly, the author of this biography describes how the courtiers and advisors around Anne appeared to not think she had her own ideas, could come to her own conclusions, or make her own decision, despite evidence to the contrary. I had a lot of sympathy for Anne by the end of this biography, considering the politics she navigated, the personal tragedies she endured, and fracturing of so many of her personal relationships after she became queen. ( )

I usually try to make a point of finishing every book I start and try to give each one a chance. I made it about halfway through this one before concluding that life is too short to be reading long books you don't really care for. Even though Queen Anne is a relatively obscure figure, I had heard of her before because she promulgated one of the first copyright laws ever (the Statute of Queen Anne). So I started out interested and wanting to learn more about her life and times. Unfortunately, this book never really brought her to life for me, and I got especially bogged down in the tedious descriptions of the convoluted politics of the time. Don't get me wrong; I fully understand politics are important, especially when the subject is a queen, but I need to be more invested in the person before I can really dive into lengthy and detailed political accounts. To me the best kind of biography gives insights into who a person was and allows for an exploration of the times in which he or she lived, but I just couldn't get that from this one. ( )

I usually try to make a point of finishing every book I start and try to give each one a chance. I made it about halfway through this one before concluding that life is too short to be reading long books you don't really care for. Even though Queen Anne is a relatively obscure figure, I had heard of her before because she promulgated one of the first copyright laws ever (the Statute of Queen Anne). So I started out interested and wanting to learn more about her life and times. Unfortunately, this book never really brought her to life for me, and I got especially bogged down in the tedious descriptions of the convoluted politics of the time. Don't get me wrong; I fully understand politics are important, especially when the subject is a queen, but I need to be more invested in the person before I can really dive into lengthy and detailed political accounts. To me the best kind of biography gives insights into who a person was and allows for an exploration of the times in which he or she lived, but I just couldn't get that from this one. ( )

Without doubt a very thorough and scholarly work, but I found it hard going, especially towards the end. I felt the author relied too much on extensive quotations from letters and documents rather than attempting to create a flowing narrative, which is what the best biographers do. The characters didn't really come alive for me and there is very little sense of what life was like in Stuart England or the great flourishing in the arts that was taking place at the time. Even the melodramatic relationship between Anne and Sarah becomes tiresome after pages and pages of repetitive letters. I did learn a lot about Queen Anne however. ( )