Subtitled Cousins, Rivals, Queens, Jane Dunn's impressive double
biography brings to vivid life one of the most turbulent
relationships of Tudor history: the memorable struggle between
Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. While the subject has been
treated to many fictional and non-fictional approaches over the
years, Jane Dunn has a different strategy from most of her
predecessors, combining an analysis of the individual personalities
of Elizabeth and Mary with a rigorous treatment of the political
and religious imperatives that ruled their lives - and which
dictated the radical actions they were both obliged to undertake.
Dunn pays particular attention to the sex of her subjects,
stressing the anomaly of how these women undertook masculine
responsibilities of power in a society in which women's roles were
carefully confined, and how both women found it difficult to look
for reliable advice in a situation which had few precedents.
Individual personalities in the drama are as intelligently drawn as
the two protagonists. The famous climax of the conflict between the
two women is dramatically handled, as a heavy-of-heart Elizabeth
reluctantly signs Mary's death warrant; an action that changed the
course of British history. Apart from Jane Dunn's impeccable
scholarship, her remarkable story is made even more accessible by
some well-chosen illustrations. (Kirkus UK)
This is the first biography of the fateful relationship between
Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It was the defining
relationship of their lives, and marked the intersection of the
great Tudor and Stuart dynasties, a landmark event in British
history. Distinguished biographer Jane Dunn reveals an
extraordinary story of two queens ruling in one isle, both
embodying opposing qualities of character, ideals of womanliness
and of divinely ordained kingship. Theirs is a drama of sex and
power, recklessness, ambition and political intrigue, with a
rivalry that could only be resolved by death. As regent queens in
an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were deplored for their
femininity, compared unfavourably with each other, and courted by
the same men. By placing this dynamic and ever-changing
relationship at the centre of the book, Dunn throws new light and
meaning on the complexity of their natures. She reveals an
Elizabeth revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone, while
Mary is not the romantic victim of history, but a courageous
adventurer with a reckless heart. Vengeful against her enemies and
the more ruthless of the two, she was untroubled by plotting
Elizabeth's murder. Elizabeth, however, was in anguish at having to
sanction Mary's death warrant for treason. Working almost
exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, she lets them
speak to us across more than four hundred years, their voices and
responses surprisingly familiar to our own, their characters vivid,
by turns touching and terrible.
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