Royal Monastic: Princess Ileana of Romania

Royal Monastic: Princess Ileana of Romania by Bev Cooke
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a book about a princess turned nun, written by someone who (from what I understand in the last pages of the book) lived in the monastery she started. Just through that perspective, I suppose it is not unnatural to see the prescient godly touch throughout the book, the somewhat fairytale-like atmosphere created, the continuous emphasis on Ileana's goodness and her fight against the evil forces of this world.

A lot of the people in this book are split in good and bad and, while general perception of her brother Carol (for example) is that he was, indeed, one of "the bad ones", opinions on her mother (in this book an angel-like figure) are less universal (depending mostly on people's stance on whether it's more important for a ruler to be moral or efficient).

----SPOILERS AHEAD----
Some points that were "glossed over" in the book: "the good man" of Ileana's childhood, prince Barbu Stirbey, was her mother's long term lover and was rumoured to be the father of Ileana and Mircea (her younger brother). Ileana was aware of the rumours, because her brother Carol (a very sensitive soul) told her about them right before he kicked her out of the country. Joe Boyle, also described as a father-like figure, was also rumoured to be involved with Queen Marie.

There are some clumsy mistakes thrown in there - like saying that the Romanian principalities elected Cuza in 1861 and that his rule lasted 2 years. He was elected in 1859 and ruled till 1866. The book also says at some point that Ileana's brother Nicky was 16 in 1917, when it already states that he was born in 1904. These don't affect the general flow or story of the book, but they make it look poorly researched.

My overall opinion: it's a nice book but it's not necessarily an accurate book. I can't judge too much on the accuracy of her past 1940 history, since this is the first biography of Ileana I read, but the issues I mention above to make me wonder if maybe this is just a heavily Ileana-biased biography, rather than a objectively researched and written piece of history.

Read with a grain of salt.

View all my reviews