I'm the same as you, except I did read Evelyn first and enjoyed it purely because of the old Hollywood content but wasn't inspired to read any more. Then Daisy was a happy surprise. Much better writing style.

It's just occurred to me that there are a lot of plot parallels with Daisy Jones & the Six>!, a tragic death to pull it all together and validate these shallow people!<

There were a lot of those "purple" marriages in Hollywood around that era. Rock Hudson was marched off to get married before a newspaper could do an expose on his love life. And even someone like Cary Grant apparently lived long term with another man - but I have no idea how he fitted that in seeing he was married so often.

I loved 7 Husbands, but I did assume it was the content rather than the author's style - I love all those all Hollywood autobiographies, so I can tell you that there were a lot of authentic little details in Evelyn H's life! But I wasn't tempted to read another book by her.

Then someone gave me Daisy Jones & the Six and the writing style is so much better, plus it's another completely authentic world. So maybe I'll try another one of her books.

I don't believe there was a deeper meaning. There were superficial private jokes, based on the children's names being worked into the story as animals (real life Alice's sisters). But basically, it's a witty nonsense story invented to amuse a group of children on a day out and then it was written down and expanded later.

I always assumed those incompetent aristocrats didn't know what they were doing when they were poisoning cakes etc.

Instead of admitting they were incompetent, they turned Rasputin into some kind of superhero who would could survive all their attacks.

Once you are connected to the Windsors, you are automatically connected to Tudor, Stuart and Hanover. But there would be a lot of Tudors, Stuarts and Hanovers who didn't progress so far in the heritage game.