“Effortlessly readable”
-Financial Times

“Mayer brings a novel perspective [to her subject], one that also illuminates the way the British media works”
-Bloomberg

Saints or sinners? Perfect princesses or difficult duchesses? Monarchy’s saviours or its destroyers?

They rank among the world’s most famous women – and the most misunderstood. Throughout history, royal women have been sanitised and sanctified by supporters, distorted and demonised by critics, embroiled in culture wars, pitted against each other, and misrepresented by the media of their day.

DIVIDE AND RULE: Royal Women and Their Battles, a groundbreaking new book from bestselling author and award-winning journalist Catherine Mayer, uncovers the extraordinary women behind the myths. Mayer’s portraits of Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Victoria, Elizabeth II, Diana, Camilla, Kate and Meghan are fascinating, poignant, surprising and enraging, revealing them in all their complexity, charting their achievements, quirks, kindnesses, cruelties and profound influence.

An urgent and timely book, DIVIDE AND RULE draws on historical sources and unique insider accounts to lay bare the struggles of the embattled monarchy in a world of disinformation, rising populism and dangerous polarisation. Its survival rests with royal women – and their fate affects all of us.

Anne Boleyn versus Katherine of Aragon? Elizabeth I versus Mary, Queen of Scots? Diana versus Camilla? Kate versus Meghan?

You don’t have to choose.

  “A powerful, thought-provoking book that challenges conventional narratives”
–WOW

“Insightful, entertaining, effortlessly and daringly drawing on a long lens and likewise getting up close and personal to the royal women we think we know best”
-Tessa Dunlop

“A fascinating dive into the rhyming of history”
-Harriet Tyce

Catherine Mayer is available for interview, please email for more info: Becci.Mansell@harpercollins.com