Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens-Fast Shipping

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“Superb…. A perceptive, suspenseful account.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Dunn demythologizes Elizabeth and Mary. In humanizing their dynamic and shifting relationship, Dunn describes it as fueled by both rivalry and their natural solidarity as women in an overwhelmingly masculine world.” —Boston Herald

The political and religious conflicts between Queen Elizabeth I and the doomed Mary,Queen of Scots, have for centuries captured our imagination and inspired memorabledramas played out on stage, screen, and in opera. But few books have brought to lifemore vividly the exquisite texture of two women’srivalry, spurred on by the ambitions and machinations of the forceful men who drama has terrific resonance even now as women continue to struggle intheir bid for executive power.

Against the backdrop of sixteenth-century England,Scotland, and France, Dunn paints portraits of a pair of protagonists whose formidablestrengths were placed in relentless opposition. Protestant Elizabeth, the bastarddaughter of Anne Boleyn, whose legitimacy had to be vouchsafed by legal means, glowedwith executive ability and a visionary energy as bright as her red hair. Mary, theCatholic 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 ofrare spark and page-turning power.