The New York Times bestselling author of the Six Tudor Queens series explores the dramatic and poignant life of King Henry VIIIs daughterinfamously known as Bloody Marywho ruled England for five violent years.
Born from young King Henrys first marriage, his elder daughter, Princess Mary, is raised to be queen once it becomes clear that her mother, Katherine of Aragon, will bear no more children. However, Henrys passion for Anne Boleyn has a devastating influence on the young princesss future when, determined to sire a male heir, he marries Anne, has his marriage to Katherine declared unlawful, brands Mary illegitimate, and banishes them both from the royal court. But when Anne too fails to produce a son, she is beheaded and Mary is allowed to return to court as the default heir. At age twenty, she waits in vain for her own marriage and children, but who will marry her, bastard that she is?
Yet Mary eventually triumphs and becomes queen, after first deposing a seventeen-year-old usurper, Lady Jane Grey, and ordering her beheading. Any hopes that Mary, as the first female queen regent of England, will show religious toleration are dashed when she embarks on a ruthless campaign to force Catholicism on the English by burning hundreds of Protestants at the stake. But while her brutality will forever earn her the name Bloody Mary, at heart she is an insecure and vulnerable woman, her character forged by the unhappiness of her early years.
In Alison Weirs masterful novel, the drama of Mary Is life and five-year reignfrom her abusive childhood, marriage, and mysterious pregnancies to the cruelty that marks her legacycomes to vivid life.
