Regularities, cause-and-effect relationships, plans or accidents, luck, black swans: what rules the history of states and each of us? Can the choice of one ruler determine the future of generations? Or is this an illusion? In her new book “Without the Right to the Throne,” screenwriter and historian Irina Belova-Fliera will immerse us in the history of five great European dynasties, whose destinies are connected by invisible threads much more tightly than we remember from a school history course. Ivan the Terrible, Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, Philip II, Catherine de Medici, Francis II of Valois - all of them are contemporaries who left a bright mark on history, but mystically left no descendants. None of the heroes of this book managed to leave behind heirs who could truly continue the family line for hundreds and hundreds of years. Why dynasties one after another went into oblivion almost immediately after the zenith of glory? Why didn't they have a future? Or was there a chance and it was missed? Peering together with the author into the interweaving of destinies, into the parallel lives of the rulers of the brightest era in history, into their hopes and how they chose and made mistakes, we will be able to recreate the past as a three-dimensional reality and, perhaps, unravel the mystery of choice, the mystery of the fate of the rulers and the mystery the fate of every person. The publishing layout of the book is saved in PDF A4 format.