The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire
by C.M. Mayo
Named a Library Journal Best Book 2009
Unbridled Books, 2009
Out-of-print but a new edition is forthcoming in 2026
“Mayo’s intricate plot trips along at a natural, inexorable pace, easily traveling the sweeping map she has laid out for it, from Washington to Mexico City and all the way to the imperial halls of Europe… a swashbuckling, riotous good time, befitting the fairy-tale promise of the opening sentence.”
Austin American-Statesman
En México se han escrito novelas históricas que recrean con erudición, maestría y poesía una época, un episodio, una atmósfera y unos personajes. Pienso, desde luego, en Noticias del imperio de Fernando del Paso; también en la obra de Enrique Serna sobre Santa Anna, la de Rosa Beltrán sobre Guerrero o la reciente novela de C.M. Mayo: El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano, sobre el nieto de Iturbide en la corte de Maximiliano.
Enrique Krauze, Reforma (Mexico City)
“La cosecha editorial del 2010” 20 Septiembre, 2009
I have read a few sweeping historical novels that have remain inside of me forever. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is one of those, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is another, Pasternak’sDoctor Zhivago is another, and now The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is another.
James Tipton, Mexico Connect
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“The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire sheds incredible light on the day-to-day happenings in a royal court that was doomed, from the hour of coronation, to fail….Painstaking historical and cultural research is put to good use in Mayo’s narrative, but the true texture of this novel is the rich and credible representations of the secondary characters. From the emperor’s guards to the toddler’s nurse, the supporting cast of perspectives provides a full insider’s view of 19th-century life in Chapultepec Castle and Mexico City…. The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is a stunning achievement, an inspired novel that steers clear of boring history lessons and instead zeroes in on the smallest epicenter— Principe Agustin de Iturbide y Green— to spiral out into a wondrous period, 1860s Mexico, a time of political possibility and unrest in which “persons who do not appear to share even a footprint’s worth of common ground turn out to have destinies bound together in painful knots.”
Rigoberto Gonzalez, The El Paso Times
“Partiendo de una concienzuda y afortunada búsqueda en archivos públicos y privados, Mayo logró reunir un caudal de información notable de la que hace uso con bastante desenvoltura….No me queda sino celebrar esta novela, que, comenzando lentamente, termina subyugando por su notable narración.”
Pablo Soler Frost, Letras Libres
“C.M. Mayo’s novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire is the best sort of novel, the kind that allows you for the length of its story to live in another time, another world. With brilliant inmate detail and absolutely believable dialogue, Mayo gives us the inner lives of people caught in the paradoxical circumstances of royalty: enormous privilege and desperate conflicts. From the gentle love of a new mother for her princeling child, “O, how his lips made an O” — to “Her Majesty” seizing the cup of chocolate from the hand of the pope and drinking it down, we are allowed to love and live, fear and fight for survival in a real world that Mayo has exhaustively researched. Mayo’s craft in writing, personal experience of Mexico, and quality of wisdom make every character multi-dimensional in a complex yet understandable context. And in spite of teaching the reader a tremendous amount about Mexican history and life, this book is a very good read!!”
Pat Schneider, author of How the Light Gets In: Writing as Spiritiual Practice