Arbella: England's Lost Queen
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Discover the incredible, forgotten true story of England’s lost queen and in-depth account of a key figure in Tudor history, perfect for readers of Alison Weir.
‘A powerful story of the dynastic insecurity of the Tudors and Stuart' The Sunday Times
'This is historical biography at its best...Don't miss it' Alison Weir
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Lady Arbella Stuart’s royal bloodline suggested a glorious future.
A descendant of Henry VII, niece to Mary Queen of Scots, and granddaughter to the great Tudor dynast Bess of Hardwick, Arbella was brought up in the belief that she would inherit Elizabeth I's throne.
When this did not become reality, she briefly gained the independence she craved at the heart of Jacobean society.
But then she made the mistake of angering her cousin, the newly crowned King James I, by secretly marrying another distant heir, William Seymour, thus strengthening her claim to the throne.
The consequences would be deadly.
A tale of forbidden love, disguised escape and wild flight, to an agonizing imprisonment and death in the Tower in 1615, this is the beguiling biography of an extraordinary woman who became a pawn in the power struggles of her time.
Meticulously researched and drawing on a wide variety of sources, Arbella brings to life a woman who, despite the turmoil in her life, strove to love freely, speak her wrongs loudly, and - rare for a woman of her time - take charge of her own destiny.
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Praise for Arbella: England’s Lost Queen:
‘An enthralling account of an extraordinary life' Spectator
‘A Jacobean tragedy … Fresh, vivid and beautifully detailed … Gristwood conveys it with exactly the right mixture of suspense and sympathy.’ Independent
'Well researched and stimulating...A sad but enthralling story' Evening Standard
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The history of Tudor England is rife with claimants to the throne. Gristwood tells one of the more heartrending of these stories: that of Arbella Stuart, the young cousin of the future James I, who appears at times to have been bred by her grandmothers for the precise purpose of challenging the throne. Raised mostly by her maternal grandmother, Bess Hardwick (wife of Mary Stuart's jailer), Arbella grew up isolated and virtually imprisoned by Bess, with an inflated sense of her status and destiny. As a young woman, she attempted to gain her freedom with schemes that were treated as dangerous intrusions into dynastic policy. Her rambling letters from this period suggest that desperation had driven her mad. By the time of Queen Elizabeth's death, Arbella's royal hopes were dashed, but the new king, James, invited her to court. While she gained some independence then, she was still enough of a political hot potato that the king would not sanction her marriage. Frustrated, Arbella eventually arranged her own marriage and ended up, as a result, in the Tower, where she apparently starved herself to death a few years later. Despite the intriguing story, Gristwood occasionally engages in excessive foreshadowing and inconclusive speculation when facts are thin. But she fully supports the contention that contemporaries took very seriously this now obscure young woman's pretensions to the throne.
