The Queen, Elizabeth I, is in love. And the man she is in love with is the unpopular – and already married! – Robert Dudley. If somehow he were to get an anullment and she married him and he assumed the role of a pseudo-king, there could be civil war. Especially as Mary Stuart, ex-Queen of France by marriage and Queen of Scotland by right, is considered by many people to be the rightful Queen of England. She is the legitimate granddaughter of Henry VII of England, whereas Elizabeth, in the eyes of many, is illegitimate, a bastard, the daughter of Ann Boleyn, whose marriage to Henry VIII was never legal as he had not been granted an anullment of his previous marriage by the Pope.
But of course, the real point was that Mary was a Catholic, whereas Elizabeth was a Protestant. The civil war would be a religious war.
And then, in September 1560, Robert Dudley's wife Amy Robsart is found lying with a broken neck at the foot of the staircase in their house. Was it murder – as many suspect? Murder instigated by Dudley – or even by the Queen herself?
Enter a new, gorgeous young sleuth, Ursula Blanchard, brought up Cinderella-style by her sadistic aunt and uncle, then widowed young after a runaway marriage, and now trying to support her daughter and herself in a very harsh world. Her mother had been one of Ann Boleyn's ladies-in-waiting, had become pregnant at court and borne the illegitimate Ursula, then died. But now Ursula is offered a post at the court of Elizabeth, who shows a not unnatural sympathy with any who knew and loved her mother, as Ursula's mother had. They are in fact almost exactly the same age.
I won't tell you the story, but of course it is Ursula who unravels the mystery, and at the same time uncovers a widespread Catholic plot against the Queen – in which it turns out her new, sexy, half-French lover, Matthew de la Roche, is involved. Now where do her loyalties lie?
Also highly recommended are Queen's Ransom and To Ruin A Queen, the third and fourth in the series. In Queen's Ransom, Ursula travels to France, ostensibly to accompany her first husband's father who has to bring a young ward of his to England and arrange a marriage for her, but covertly Ursula is carrying a secret letter from Elizabeth to the Queen of France, Catherine de Medici. And there, she meets her French Catholic husband (the lover of the first book, whom she appears to have married in the second book – I have not read that) and decides to stay in France with him.
The fourth book, To Ruin A Queen, is set in 1564, and opens with Ursula in France, where she has been living as a Grande Dame at her husband's chateau for two and a half years. But they are quarrelling, she has lost a baby, and when she learns that her daughter by her first husband, who is being cared for by friends in England, has disappeared, she races off to London to find her. And gets involved in another mystery on behalf of Elizabeth. I had not read it when I chose The Robsart Mystery for our Non-Medieval page, but it is actually my favourite in the series, which seems to get better and better as Ursula's character develops. Don't miss them. I'm looking for both the second and the fifth now.
MBG
