Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn

Description

They were powerful women in a world that favoured men. They were cousins. And they were rivals for the same throne: one of them had to die.

History knows them as Elizabeth I–Virgin Queen, Gloriana–and Mary Queen of Scots–seducer, conspirator and martyr. But behind these masks were real women full of intelligence, passion and ambition. Jane Dunn’s biography brings us face to face with the complex reality of history’s most fascinating women.

Against the backdrop of sixteenth-century England, Scotland, and France, Dunn paints portraits of a pair of protagonists whose formidable strengths were placed in relentless opposition. Protestant Elizabeth, the bastard daughter of Anne Boleyn, whose legitimacy had to be vouchsafed by legal means, glowed with executive ability and a visionary energy as bright as her red hair. Mary, the Catholic successor whom England’s rivals wished to see on the throne, was charming, feminine, and deeply persuasive. That two such women, queens in their own right, should have been contemporaries and neighbours sets in motion a joint biography of rare spark and page-turning power.