The Royal Link

Did you ever want to be a princess?

Probably most of us did.  I can remember reading a biography of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret when I was in the fifth grade. I remember that it was written to show they were like children everywhere, just a bit different, like the rich.

Your chances of being a princess are dramatically increased if you can count either Queen Victoria of Great Britain or King Christian XI of Denmark—preferably both—as your ancestors.

At the outbreak of the First World War, King George V of Great Britain, William II of Germany and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia, were all first cousins, linked by Queen Victoria. Other European royal families with ties to Victoria and Christian were Romania, Greece, Denmark, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Belgium.

It’s through Romania though that the British throne has links to another royal house—that of Vlad the Impaler.

In November 2012 the London Telegraph ran a story that the Romanian Tourist Board has traced a link from Vlad to Prince Charles.

Prince Charles? Princess Diana’s ex-husband? Father of Prince William? 

Who knew?

The tourist board is using this as a marketing program to entice tourists from Great Britain and they developed a list of direct ancestors linking Charles’ great-grandmother, Princess Mary of Teck to Vlad.

And with most of the European royal houses interlinked through blood and marriage, maybe Vlad had a lot more influence than we ever thought.

It’s kind of a shame that Baron Stephan Kandesky, the leader of the Kandesky vampire family, never had a link to Vlad.  He was turned as a vampire before Vlad came on the scene and acquired his title through marrying the daughter of a Hungarian baron.

True, the Baron and his family live in a castle in Hungary—at least when they’re not traveling for the international media conglomerate, SNAP, which they own. The Kandeskys came to their current wealth and power through trade.  They were merchants for the first four hundred years, but in the middle of the twentieth century they discovered celebrity gossip and developed SNAP, a media empire that covers the world’s celebrities in print and broadcast.

They may not be royalty but they live like it—private jets, limos, bodyguards, staff, houses and apartments around the world.

When non-vampire Maxie Gwenoch takes a job as the managing editor of SNAP: The Magazine, she has no idea who or what her employers are and how far they reach. As she gets more and more involved with the family including falling in love with the second-in-command, the sexy Jean-Louis, she discovers some five hundred years of history and along-running war with another vampire family, the Huszars.

Maxie struggles to find her footing with a family who are truly different, not only through their wealth but their lives as well.

She’ll never be a princess. She’s not related to Queen Victoria, Prince Charles or Vlad, she was born into the wrong family.

But if she sticks with Jean-Louis, she can live like one...and maybe forever.

Michele Drier is the author of The Kandesky Vampires Chronicles; SNAP: The World Unfolds, SNAP: New Talent, Plague: A Love Story, Danube: A Tale of Murder and just published, SNAP: Love for Blood. The first four books are available in a boxed set.
Visit her website at http://www.micheledrier.com
or her fb page http://www.facebook.com/AuthorMicheleDrier or Twitter @MicheleDrier