At birth, Princess Victoria was fourth in line for the throne of England, the often overlooked daughter of a prince who died shortly after her birth. In this unforgettable novel of Queen Victoria, Jean Plaidy re creates a remarkable life filled with romance, triumph, and tragedy. In this unforgettable novel, Elizabeth emerges as one of the most fascinating and controversial women in history, and as England’s greatest monarch. But in these pages, in her own voice, Elizabeth also recounts the emotional turmoil of her life: the loneliness of power the heartbreak of her lifelong love affair with Robert Dudley, whom she could never marry and the terrible guilt of ordering the execution of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Brilliantly clever, a scholar with a ready wit, she was also vain, bold, and unpredictable, a queen who commanded and won absolute loyalty from those around her. It is the story of her improbable rise to power and the great triumphs of her reign the end of religious bloodshed, the settling of the New World, the defeat of the Spanish Armada. In this ‘memoir’ by Elizabeth I, legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy reveals the Virgin Queen as she truly was: the bewildered, motherless child of an all powerful father a captive in the Tower of London a shrewd politician a lover of the arts and eventually, an icon of an era.

Loyal in Love offers an inside look at an unforgettable time in England’s history and at the life of a queen whose story of devotion and bravery has gone untold for too long. As the royal couple watch the fall of Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, the rise of Puritanism, and Englishmen fight Englishmen, they are undeterred in their dedication to each other and in their belief in the divine rights of king and queen even as spies lurk in their very own household. Henrietta is passionate about her faith, however, and soon politically powerful people, namely Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans, turn her loyalty to her religion into a focal point for civil war. Yet her new husband is a man of principle and integrity, and Henrietta and Charles fall deeply in love. Sent abroad, she finds herself living in a Protestant country that views her own faith Catholicism with deep suspicion.

The daughter of Henry IV of France, Princess Henrietta Maria, becomes a pawn in a political strategy to stabilize relations between two countries when her father marries her to Charles I of England.

The Courts of Love by Jean Plaidy