Passionate, fearful, emotionally needy, this is a queen who will stop at nothing. Then someone acts in secret, and for Elizabeth, Dudley and the emerging kingdom, nothing will be as planned.īlending historical fact with contemporary rumor, Philippa Gregory has created a dark and tense novel of Tudor times, which casts Elizabeth I in a light no one has suggested before. The very coin of England is shaved and clipped to nothing as Elizabeth uncertainly leads her bankrupt country into a war that no-one thinks can be won. Behind the triangle of lovers, the factions take up their places: the Protestants, the priests, the assassins, the diplomats and the moneymakers. William Cecil, the queen's wisest counselor, knows she must marry for policy her uncle hates Dudley and swears he will be murder him first. Others too oppose the marriage, but for very different reasons. She refuses to set her beloved husband free to marry the queen but she cannot prevent him from becoming the favorite and the focus of the feverishly plotting, pleasure seeking court. From the author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool comes a stunning portrait of the first perilous years of Elizabeth I's reign.Īs a new queen, Elizabeth faces two great dangers: the French invasion of Scotland, which threatens to put Mary Queen of Scots on her throne, and her passion for the convicted traitor Robert Dudley.īut Dudley is already married, and his devoted wife Amy will never give him up, least of all to an upstart Protestant Princess.
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