Royal Highness Book download in PDF, ePub & Mobi

Royal Highness is a novel written by Thomas Mann and first published in 1909.

In a tiny German grand duchy, a carefully schooled prince moves through a life of ceremony and constraint. Everything changes with the arrival of a wealthy American heiress, whose presence promises solvency for the state and purpose for its figurehead. The story unfolds as a modern fairy tale about legitimacy, gratitude, and self-invention, where destiny feels as engineered as it is enchanted.

The palace—surrounded by debt, routine, and watchful townspeople—becomes a stage on which fading aristocratic ritual collides with the drive of new money. Mann lingers on audiences, parades, and provincial politics to show how public roles blur with private longings and how charm itself can turn into a kind of currency.

Blending irony with affection, Mann offers a gently subversive portrait of monarchy and the myths that keep it alive. The result is a witty, luminous study of power tempered by romance, asking whether renewal comes from love, spectacle, or the slow, deliberate reshaping of a life.

"Artillery salvos were fired when the various new-fangled means of communication in the capital spread the news that the Grand Duchess Dorothea had given birth to a prince for the second time at Grimmburg. Seventy-two rounds resounded through the town and surrounding country, fired by the military in the walls of the “Citadel.”"

This edition of the novel Royal Highness uses the English translation by A. Cecil Curtis.