The Betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

Kate Williams

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781643130002
• eBook ISBN:
  9781643130873
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Elizabeth and Mary were cousins and queens, but eventually it became impossible for them to live together in the same world.This is the story of two women struggling for supremacy in a man's world, when no one thought a woman could govern. They both had to negotiate with men—those who wanted their power and those who wanted their bodies—who were determined to best them. In their worlds, female friendship and alliances were unheard of, but for many years theirs was the only friendship that endured. They were as fascinated by each other as lovers; until they became enemies. Enemies so angry and broken that one of them had to die, and so Elizabeth ordered the execution of Mary.But first they were each other's lone female friends in a violent man's world. Their relationship was one of love, affection, jealousy, antipathy – and finally death. This book tells the story of Mary and Elizabeth as never before, focusing on their emotions and probing deeply into their intimate lives as women and queens.They loved each other, they hated each other—and in the end they could never escape each other.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Conducted by the Winds’
• 2 ‘It Will End with a Lass’
• 3 ‘Rough Wooing’
• 4 ‘A Princess on This Earth’
• 5 ‘Marvellous in Our Eyes’
• 6 ‘A Thousand Deaths’
• 7 ‘Excluded and Banned’
• 8 ‘A Calm Mind’
• 9 ‘Not of Ladies’ Capacity’
• 10 Queen of All Realms
• 11 ‘A Rash and Hazardous Young Man’
• 12 ‘I Will Never See You Again’
• 13 ‘A Stone of Marble’
• 14 ‘Malicious Talk’
• 15 ‘To Use Me as Her Sister or Daughter’
• 16 ‘The Scots Proclaim Much But Their Threats Are Not Carried Out’
• 17 ‘I Would Have Taken My Husband’s Dagger and Stabbed Him with It!’
• 18 Looking Through Their Fingers
• 19 ‘So Horrible and Strange’
• 20 The Mermaid
• 21 ‘Whether She Would or Would Not’
• 22 ‘So Wearied and Broken’
• 23 ‘They Have Robbed Me of Everything I Have in This World’
• 24 ‘The Conspiracy for Her Husband’s Murder’
• 25 ‘Forced Out of My Kingdom’
• 26 ‘Pain and Peril Seem Pleasant to Her’
• 27 ‘With Her Own Hand’
• 28 ‘You Have Promised to Be Mine’
• 29 ‘Unnatural Sister’
• 30 ‘No One Can Cure This Malady as Well as the Queen of England’
• 31 ‘That Devilish Woman’
• 32 ‘Green Ribbons’
• 33 ‘I Am a True Queen’
• 34 ‘Shipwreck of My Soul’
• 35 ‘We Princes Are Set upon Stages’
• 36 ‘I Am Ready’
• 37 ‘An Abundance of Tears’
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Illustrations
• Index
• Also by Kate Williams
• Copyright