Books like Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart by Anka Muhlstein

Elizabeth and Mary is a dual biography of England’s Elizabeth I and Scotland’s Mary, Queen of Scots, exploring their rivalry, political strategies, and personal dynamics as sisters‑in‑law and rivals for the English throne.

The drama of Elizabeth I's tumultuous romance with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, as depicted in Giles Lytton Strachey’s historical novel, chronicling the court intrigue and love triangle of the Tudor era. An exploration of Elizabeth’s twilight years and the dramatic consequences of her forbidden love for the powerful and handsome Essex, this historical novel captures the essence of Elizabethan court and the complex dynamics of power, love, and politics. The book delves into Elizabeth's personal journey and the political machinations that shaped her final years, offering a fascinating glimpse into the tumultuous period of Elizabethan England.

In this spirited United Kingdom bestseller, Starkey presents a brilliant examination of the formative years of the "Virgin Queen, " recreating a host of extravagant characters, mad-cap schemes, and tragic plots, while using original documents to depict the princess's tumultuous life before her accession to the throne in 1588. Two 8-page color photo inserts. An abused child, yet confident of her destiny to reign, a woman in a man's world, passionately sexual -- though, as she maintained, a virgin -- Elizabeth I is famed as England's most successful ruler. David Starkey's brilliant new biography concentrates on Elizabeth's formative years -- from her birth in 1533 to her accession in 1558 -- and shows how the experiences of danger and adventure formed her remarkable character and shaped her opinions and beliefs. From princess and heir-apparent to bastardized and disinherited royal, accused traitor to head of the princely household, Elizabeth experienced every vicissitude of fortune and extreme of condition -- and rose above it all to reign during a watershed moment in history. A uniquely absorbing tale of one young woman's turbulent, courageous, and seemingly impossible journey toward the throne, Elizabeth is the exhilarating story of the making of a queen.

Elizabeth I, who reigned over Shakespeare's England and defeated the Spanish Armada, is familiar both from her portraits and as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen. Yet the reality of her character and her personal attitudes are harder to detect behind the public mask. Elizabeth I, a major biography by a leading Tudor expert, looks in detail behind the public life at the private woman. It treats at length her early years and examines her actions and policies as queen. By any standards, her life was an extraordinary one: her father, Henry VIII, executed her mother, Anne Boleyn, for whose sake he had set up the Church of England; her sister, Queen Mary, came near to having her executed. Coming to the throne in 1558, she remained the only unmarried queen regnant in England's history, holding, for a woman, unprecedented power. She faced major religious and political problems at home and abroad for much of her reign, coping with them by a combination of guile, procrastination and shrewdness. - Back cover.