Elizabeth: The Enviable Bride

Her reign earned her the fame of the “Golden Age.” She is praised as the greatest queen of Europe. She turned Britain into the Mistress of the Seas. In Elizabeth Tudor’s life there was everything—her father’s rage and her mother’s execution, years of disgrace and a death sentence, nearly half a century in power, the defeat of the Spanish Armada and numerous plots against her life, worship and curses, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal… There was only one thing missing—marriage. Refusing all royal suitors, including Ivan the Terrible, Elizabeth entered history as the Virgin Queen.

Why didn’t the most enviable bride of her time, surrounded by brilliant contenders for her hand, ever find a husband? Was her heart occupied—or was it a conscious choice, a refusal to submit to a man even within marriage? Was the queen truly childless, or was it something else? The features of the genius William Shakespeare are too clearly mirrored in royal ones, and there are too many riddles in his fate…

Elizabeth carried all these secrets with her, but how tempting it is to try to unravel them…

The novel was previously published under the title “I am Elizabeth. Love of the Virgin Queen.”