By Influence & Desire

Out of the pages of European history comes a story as colorful and torrid as any modern fiction—the never-been-told-before-told account of the lives of the grand duchess of Courland and her daughters Wilhelmina and Dorothea. By Influence and Desire is the story of how these independent, intelligent women helped shape the course of history in the only way open to them—in the boudoirs of Paris, Vienna, Saint Petersburg and Berlin. Catherine the Great was in power when in 1779 the beautiful, eighteen-year-old Anna-Dorothea von Medem, daughter of one of the richest and most cosmopolitan families of Courland (now Latvia), was chosen to be the wife of Courland’s Grand Duke Peter. When Anna proved more popular and politically astute than her husband, Peter took her abroad where the grand duchess’s influence, and her list of male admirers, grew. In Paris the grand duchess, whose romantic escapades had long titillated Central European court circles, became the mistress of Talleyrand,