![]() Mindful always of England’s interests and the vulnerability of her throne, Elizabeth made several anguished decisions regarding both “the marriage game” and her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. ![]() Lively bedroom scenes and discordant council meetings reveal Elizabeth’s complexities, depicting her as a wily coquette determined to rule England alone. Elizabeth exasperated everyone with promises, flirting, impossible demands, and prevarication. ![]() Yet her council pressured her repeatedly to provide an heir, while innumerable Catholic and Protestant courtiers and royalty sought her hand, hoping to cement an alliance. Weir posits that Elizabeth, deeply scarred by early experience, never intended to marry and had numerous personal and political reasons to avoid it. Here Weir trains her spotlight on Elizabeth’s equivocations over marriage from her accession to the throne in 1558 until the death of her most persistent suitor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 30 years later. Weir deftly follows The Lady Elizabeth, her 2008 novel about the young Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603). ![]()
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