A spellbinding novel about Elizabeth I from the internationally bestselling author of the Guenevere and Tristan and Isolde trilogies.

Publicly declared a bastard at the age of three, daughter of a disgraced and executed
mother, last in the line of succession to the throne of England, Elizabeth I inherited
an England ravaged by bloody religious conflict, at war with Spain and France, and
badly in debt. When she died in 1603, after a forty-five year reign, her empire
spanned two continents and was united under one church, victorious in war, and blessed
with an overflowing treasury. What’s more, her favorites-William Shakespeare, Sir
Francis Drake, and Sir Walter Raleigh-had made

the Elizabethan era a cultural Golden
Age still remembered today.

But for Elizabeth the woman, tragedy went hand in hand
with triumph. Politics and scandal forced the passionate queen to reject her true
love, Robert Dudley, and to execute his stepson, her much-adored Lord Essex. Now
in this spellbinding novel, Rosalind Miles brings to life the woman behind the myth.
By turns imperious, brilliant, calculating, vain, and witty, this is the Elizabeth
the world never knew. From the days of her brutal father, Henry VIII, to her final
dying moments, Elizabeth tells her story in her own words.