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The Weight of the Crown #2
The Disgraced Princess
Prince Gerd Crysander-Gillan has long held a torch for beautiful Rosie Matthews. But three years ago that need turned to rage when he discovered that Rosie's affections were apparently for his brother.
Now Gerd has taken the crown, and His Majesty needs a princess. The obvious candidate for marriage is Rosie—a chance to take sweet revenge for the wound that has never healed. Only, once he has his royal bride, he is astounded to find that she's still a virgin….
Now Gerd has taken the crown, and His Majesty needs a princess. The obvious candidate for marriage is Rosie—a chance to take sweet revenge for the wound that has never healed. Only, once he has his royal bride, he is astounded to find that she's still a virgin….
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 2009
9 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Robyn Donald
449 books149 followersRobyn Elaine Donald was born on 14 August 1940 in Northland, New Zealand. She was the oldest child in her family, and as a child, she thrilled her four sisters and one brother with bloodcurdling adventure tales, usually very like the latest book she'd borrowed from the library.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses. The first was a younger sister's flu. She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections. One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining. Robyn found three paperbacks- one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances. Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down more Mills and Boon books. This was much more difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busy 10 years she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack. He was so young it terrified them all. While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off. It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off. Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since 1977, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening. It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images. Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache.Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands. She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit - a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
Robyn owes her writing career to two illnesses. The first was a younger sister's flu. She was living with her husband and Robyn and spent most of that winter acquiring, suffering, and recovering from various infections. One day she croaked that she had read everything on Robyn's bookshelves, so would Robyn please buy her something cheerful and sustaining. Robyn found three paperbacks- one Mills and Boon Modern Romance novel and a couple of other romances. Robyn read them, too, of course, and so enjoyed them she spent the next couple of years hunting down more Mills and Boon books. This was much more difficult then than it is today, so she decided to write her own, and for the following busy 10 years she wrote and hoped that one day she would finish a manuscript good enough that was good enough to send to a publisher.
The second illness was her husband's, and it was bad a heart attack. He was so young it terrified them all. While he was recovering, he suggested that Robyn finish the manuscript she was writing and send it off. It wasn't a perfect manuscript, but the doctor had said to humour her husband, so she finished the manuscript, edited it as best she could, and sent it off. Three months later, she was astounded to read a letter from the editor saying that if She made a few revisions they would buy her novel Bride at Whangatapu.
Published since 1977, Robyn sees her readers as intelligent women who insist on accurate backgrounds, so she spends time researching as well as writing.Robyn Donald sometimes thinks that writing is much like gardening. It's a similar process creating landscapes for the mind and emotions from the seeds of ideas and dreams and images. Both activities can also lead to moments of extreme delight, moments of total despair, and backache.Now Robyn lives in the Bay Islands. She continues writing, and also finds time for a very supportive husband, two adult children and their partners, a granddaughter and her mother, not to mention the member of the family that keeps her fit - a loud, cheerful, and ruthlessly determined "almost" Labradordog.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 2, 2018
“I suppose it was my damned pride that kept me silent. Two complete idiots,’ he said. ‘We deserve each other.”
Hero was totally correct. Lol
Hero was totally correct. Lol
November 23, 2011
2-1/1 stars. First off the title had nothing to do with the book. She was neither a princess nor was she going to become a princess and she was in no way disgraced. Plus the blurb on the back was incorrect since they didn't get married until the epilogue.
The book was okay. Fairly well plotted and competently written but nothing particularly stands out. There was more discussion and working out of their relationship at the end than is usual in HPs.
The book was okay. Fairly well plotted and competently written but nothing particularly stands out. There was more discussion and working out of their relationship at the end than is usual in HPs.
December 28, 2022
Read this way back in 2010 and I remembered being hooked enough to skim over the series it was a part of (it's connected to the Royal House of Illyria series, but is about another fictional country, Carathia. I've been trying to figure out if Robyn Donald mentioned Carathia in any of her earlier books but haven't found anything). Most of the books in this series have good stories, interesting characters...but reeeeally awful book titles. This one is no exception.
The "talkative teen cousin" Rosie from "Rich, Ruthless and Secretly Royal" is the h of this one , and the H, Gerd, is the elder brother of the hero of the previous book. It turns out that even before the events of the previous book, Gerd had kissed Rosie and neither of them had quite gotten over it. First because Rosie was only 18 at the time, and second because the next morning Gerd finds her trying to kiss Kelt (Rosie's PoV: Gerd's kissing was so fantastic the poor girl started wondering if all kisses were like that or if it were just him, and basically just grabbed Kelt to experiment).
They finally manage to get together three years later after his Coronation. He assumes she's now experienced and his feelings for her remain the same, so it makes sense that they can have at least a passionate sort of fling now. Rosie however has developed a reputation as a tease, because she has spent the last three years kissing other guys just to get over Gerd, but never quite ready to go to be with any of them.
They sleep together pretty early on in the book, since that's the one thing the two catch on about each other immediately - that the other person is *definately* attracted to them. Gerd is shocked (and a little delighted) to find that Rosie is a virgin, a fact Rosie forgot to let slip coz she was too deep in the throes of lust. They decide to pursue the fling a little further by holidaying at a beach villa Gerd owns. We see a lot of nostalgia for NZ's beaches from Rosie's end and some amount of angst because she realises she's in love when he finishes work early to join her there.
A photo of them together, clicked by the paps in secret, makes its way to Carathian news. That, as well as the trouble caused by some ancient legend about replacing the ruler with his younger brother for good fortune, winds up "forcing" Gerd's hand into proposing to her (we later find he was only thinking about making the heroine his at that point).
Rosie would have loved to marry Gerd, but is conflicted because she doesn't think he loves her and agonizes over spending the rest of her life loving a man who won't love her back. There's backstory in that her mother loved her father, but never got that love in return (said mother features a couple times in the story and there's a lot of tension and resentment between her and Rosie) and Rosie automatically assumes she won't be loved, and that a life with a man she loves who won't return her feelings will be hell.
Gerd for his part tries to keep his hands off her during their engagement because he's already worried he's pushed the h into a situation she didn't want, and didn't want sex to further complicate the situation.
When the couple from the previous book, Kelt and Hani, inform them of their second pregnancy, Rosie breaks down thinking of how different their relationship is from the one she has with Gerd. Gerd assumes she's doing so coz she still has not gotten over Kelt and finally confronts her about this misunderstanding, learning that Rosie never had a crush on Kelt in the process. He still doesn't know she loves him, though, and attempts to break off the match, pushing both of them into finally confessing their feelings. HEA with a state wedding a year later, and a pregnancy.
Almost a decade later I'm still quite fond of this book. It has all the tropes that hit the right spot for me: intense mutual pining, secret crush, Alpha Hero, sunny-on-the-surface-sad-inside heroine, forced engagement bringing out their real feelings. The chemistry between the two was fantastic and the misunderstandings were just enough that it kept me hooked rather than making me want to tear my hair out.
The H can be controlling and domineering, but does try as much as he can not to breathe down the h's neck and apologizes when she points out he's not taking her opinion into account. The h for her part calls him out when he goes overboard or doesn't ask her before making decisions for her. We also see flashes of Gerd's PoV scattered in small scenes, allowing us to read into his actions and decisions in a way that Rosie cannot.
The "OW" of this book is Serina (the heroine of the next book "Brooding Billionaire, Impoverished Princess"). I put "OW" in quotes because she really is made a nonfactor early on, since only rumour ties Gerd and Serina together and they rarely interact in the book otherwise. Gerd perceives Kelt to be the OM, but we see Rosie interact a lot more with his wife Hani. It's made clear early on that Gerd and Rosie have eyes only for each other.
Both this book and the next one (Serina's story with Rosie's half-brother Alex) have scenarios where the H assumes his h has feelings for the hero of the previous book, while the h herself has been secretly into the H the entire time. Gerd feels Rosie loves Kelt and not him, Alex assumes in his book that Serina has feelings for Gerd. I thought those parallels across books were pretty interesting.
Of the three "Carathia" books, this one seems to do the most in terms of worldbuilding - especially since both its prequel and sequal are largely set in NZ and this one is largely set in Carathia and its islands. Because the hero is the ruler of the country, we get a lot in terms of background - there's a lot of references to the Norsemen and Greek soldiers who form the ancestry of the royal lineage, and a lot of discussion on the topography of the country (mostly to make us understand why the legend about the second son being the ideal leader over the first is so popular - it's because the people in the more mountainous regions tend to feel ignored by the center of power, and the lack of education makes them incredibly superstitious.
Perhaps my only quibbles have to do with the blurb of the book (tho tbh most blurbs are inaccurate) and its alternate title. The blurb made it sound like Gerd viewed Rosie kissing Kelt as some grand betrayal and was actively planning revenge, when it was more like him thinking that now that she was older and Kelt was married he would have more of a chance to be with her. For some reason the alternate title was "the Disgraced Princess" which has very little to do with Rosie at all - Gerd nips any possible gossip about their relationship in the bud by swiftly announcing his engagement, and Rosie isn't a "princess" until she marries Gerd (and not even then - she becomes Carathia's Grand Duchess).
Though TVaHM is part of a series, it can easily be read as a standalone. The writing isn't the greatest or anything, but the setup hit all the right spots for me. I liked the characters and they had great chemistry together. I actually liked this one the most of the three books in the "Carathia" series.
The "talkative teen cousin" Rosie from "Rich, Ruthless and Secretly Royal" is the h of this one , and the H, Gerd, is the elder brother of the hero of the previous book. It turns out that even before the events of the previous book, Gerd had kissed Rosie and neither of them had quite gotten over it. First because Rosie was only 18 at the time, and second because the next morning Gerd finds her trying to kiss Kelt (Rosie's PoV: Gerd's kissing was so fantastic the poor girl started wondering if all kisses were like that or if it were just him, and basically just grabbed Kelt to experiment).
They finally manage to get together three years later after his Coronation. He assumes she's now experienced and his feelings for her remain the same, so it makes sense that they can have at least a passionate sort of fling now. Rosie however has developed a reputation as a tease, because she has spent the last three years kissing other guys just to get over Gerd, but never quite ready to go to be with any of them.
They sleep together pretty early on in the book, since that's the one thing the two catch on about each other immediately - that the other person is *definately* attracted to them. Gerd is shocked (and a little delighted) to find that Rosie is a virgin, a fact Rosie forgot to let slip coz she was too deep in the throes of lust. They decide to pursue the fling a little further by holidaying at a beach villa Gerd owns. We see a lot of nostalgia for NZ's beaches from Rosie's end and some amount of angst because she realises she's in love when he finishes work early to join her there.
A photo of them together, clicked by the paps in secret, makes its way to Carathian news. That, as well as the trouble caused by some ancient legend about replacing the ruler with his younger brother for good fortune, winds up "forcing" Gerd's hand into proposing to her (we later find he was only thinking about making the heroine his at that point).
Rosie would have loved to marry Gerd, but is conflicted because she doesn't think he loves her and agonizes over spending the rest of her life loving a man who won't love her back. There's backstory in that her mother loved her father, but never got that love in return (said mother features a couple times in the story and there's a lot of tension and resentment between her and Rosie) and Rosie automatically assumes she won't be loved, and that a life with a man she loves who won't return her feelings will be hell.
Gerd for his part tries to keep his hands off her during their engagement because he's already worried he's pushed the h into a situation she didn't want, and didn't want sex to further complicate the situation.
When the couple from the previous book, Kelt and Hani, inform them of their second pregnancy, Rosie breaks down thinking of how different their relationship is from the one she has with Gerd. Gerd assumes she's doing so coz she still has not gotten over Kelt and finally confronts her about this misunderstanding, learning that Rosie never had a crush on Kelt in the process. He still doesn't know she loves him, though, and attempts to break off the match, pushing both of them into finally confessing their feelings. HEA with a state wedding a year later, and a pregnancy.
Almost a decade later I'm still quite fond of this book. It has all the tropes that hit the right spot for me: intense mutual pining, secret crush, Alpha Hero, sunny-on-the-surface-sad-inside heroine, forced engagement bringing out their real feelings. The chemistry between the two was fantastic and the misunderstandings were just enough that it kept me hooked rather than making me want to tear my hair out.
The H can be controlling and domineering, but does try as much as he can not to breathe down the h's neck and apologizes when she points out he's not taking her opinion into account. The h for her part calls him out when he goes overboard or doesn't ask her before making decisions for her. We also see flashes of Gerd's PoV scattered in small scenes, allowing us to read into his actions and decisions in a way that Rosie cannot.
The "OW" of this book is Serina (the heroine of the next book "Brooding Billionaire, Impoverished Princess"). I put "OW" in quotes because she really is made a nonfactor early on, since only rumour ties Gerd and Serina together and they rarely interact in the book otherwise. Gerd perceives Kelt to be the OM, but we see Rosie interact a lot more with his wife Hani. It's made clear early on that Gerd and Rosie have eyes only for each other.
Both this book and the next one (Serina's story with Rosie's half-brother Alex) have scenarios where the H assumes his h has feelings for the hero of the previous book, while the h herself has been secretly into the H the entire time. Gerd feels Rosie loves Kelt and not him, Alex assumes in his book that Serina has feelings for Gerd. I thought those parallels across books were pretty interesting.
Of the three "Carathia" books, this one seems to do the most in terms of worldbuilding - especially since both its prequel and sequal are largely set in NZ and this one is largely set in Carathia and its islands. Because the hero is the ruler of the country, we get a lot in terms of background - there's a lot of references to the Norsemen and Greek soldiers who form the ancestry of the royal lineage, and a lot of discussion on the topography of the country (mostly to make us understand why the legend about the second son being the ideal leader over the first is so popular - it's because the people in the more mountainous regions tend to feel ignored by the center of power, and the lack of education makes them incredibly superstitious.
Perhaps my only quibbles have to do with the blurb of the book (tho tbh most blurbs are inaccurate) and its alternate title. The blurb made it sound like Gerd viewed Rosie kissing Kelt as some grand betrayal and was actively planning revenge, when it was more like him thinking that now that she was older and Kelt was married he would have more of a chance to be with her. For some reason the alternate title was "the Disgraced Princess" which has very little to do with Rosie at all - Gerd nips any possible gossip about their relationship in the bud by swiftly announcing his engagement, and Rosie isn't a "princess" until she marries Gerd (and not even then - she becomes Carathia's Grand Duchess).
Though TVaHM is part of a series, it can easily be read as a standalone. The writing isn't the greatest or anything, but the setup hit all the right spots for me. I liked the characters and they had great chemistry together. I actually liked this one the most of the three books in the "Carathia" series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2014
Sigue la misma linea que muchas novelas harlequin, un matrimonio a la fuerza y muchos malentendidos, personalmente pienso que depende de la autora que lo escriba puede ser mas o menos atrapante.
No es la mejor novela harlequin que he leido, pero cumple su funcion : ser entretenida y facil de leer.
2.5 Estrellas!
September 6, 2018
.....sooooooo why is the heroine considered disgraced? Oh right. She's not. Ignore the title. The hero makes some pretty LARGE assumptions about the heroine, even though he has known her a long time, thanks jerk. Then after having sex he kinda turns crazy and demanding, even though the dude has a country to run. Hop to it, sir. Some misunderstanding continue for the entire plot and could have(was) solved in like half a page of dialogue. Very harmless overall. If you like royalty enjoy but you probably wont remember it in the long run.
July 16, 2021
I actually have a question.
Why is this book called the disgraced princess?
If Hani's book had been called it would have more sense.
🤔
Why is this book called the disgraced princess?
If Hani's book had been called it would have more sense.
🤔
June 2, 2021
Prince Gerd Crysander-Gillan has long held a torch for beautiful Rosie Matthews. But three years ago that need turned to rage when he discovered that Rosie's affections were apparently for his brother.
Now Gerd has taken the crown, and His Majesty needs a princess. The obvious candidate for marriage is Rosie--a chance to take sweet revenge for the wound that has never healed. Only, once he has his royal bride, he is astounded to find that she's still a virgin....
Now Gerd has taken the crown, and His Majesty needs a princess. The obvious candidate for marriage is Rosie--a chance to take sweet revenge for the wound that has never healed. Only, once he has his royal bride, he is astounded to find that she's still a virgin....
November 3, 2018
I almost gave up on this book. I adore Robyn but somehow I couldn't help dreading my time as I read this book. I was only able to power through it thinking that I wanted to see if it would somehow redeem itself in the end. It was fine but I wouldn't reread the book.
Read
December 24, 2014Miniseries: The Weight of the Crown
April 3, 2016
A Sweet Romance
I enjoyed this story very much. It made me smile. I enjoyed the characters. The story was not like a typical Harlequin romance.
I enjoyed this story very much. It made me smile. I enjoyed the characters. The story was not like a typical Harlequin romance.
Read
December 24, 2014Miniseries: The Weight of the Crown
April 17, 2017
An OK HQ. The official summary is way off, though. While Gerd thinks that Rosemary still "carries a torch" for his married brother, there is *no* revenge and no marriage until the end *after* everything is settled.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews