A new queen must prove she deserves the throne God gave her, while the path everyone insists will secure it might cost her everything.
Against all odds, Elizabeth Tudor has become Queen of England. Determined to fulfill what she sees as a divine responsibility, she sets out to heal a country ravaged by religious discord, war, and debt – and vindicate the legacy of Anne Boleyn, the mother who did not deserve her fate.
But Elizabeth’s crown is not fully secure: to the Catholic world, her cousin Mary Stuart is the rightful Queen of England and there are rumblings to put her there. Shoring up defenses requires that Elizabeth challenge France’s control of Scotland and Spain’s dominance on the seas, as well as calm internal strife. Above the din of menace, one question dominates all others: who will she marry?
William Cecil, her trusted Secretary of State, urges her to secure an alliance through a strategic match. Robert Dudley, the love of her life, pressures her to choose him. And Mary herself presents a cautionary tale. In the end, Elizabeth chooses not as a woman but as a queen, and learns the sobering truth of sovereignty: to rule is to stand alone.
What Love E’er Meant, the searing second volume in the Regina Trilogy, captures a young queen’s struggle to balance love and power, duty and desire…and the profound cost of choosing crown over heart.
Elizabeth Tudor
– a crucial Realisation on becoming Queen
(If you missed Janet Wertman's fascinating introduction to a young Elizabeth as part of our blog tour for the first novel in the series,
Nothing Proved, click
HERE!
What Love E’er Meant tracks Elizabeth’s experience during the first half of her reign, a time when she was still expected – and still able – to marry. There was huge pressure on her to do so: the entire country seemed to share her father’s conviction that a woman could not rule England on her own. They wanted an heir to avoid a reprise of the wars of succession that had fractured and almost destroyed the realm. And they wanted the chance to wield the great weapon that marriage could be if used well. And yet, while marriage was the main imperative, it also presented the greatest risk – they had all watched Mary marry a foreign prince who took control of England’s government, dragged her into his foreign wars, and lost her Calais.
Moreover, the terrible personal experiences of those closest to her had given Elizabeth many personal reasons to fear marriage: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard had been executed by a vindictive spouse. Kathrine Parr had escaped such a fate but then died from the childbed fever that claimed so many lives (and when that fever was on her, she accused her husband of murdering her). Indeed, childbirth itself was another danger: it could not only be deadly but also deeply shaming, as when Mary thought she was pregnant not once but twice. This must have been sobering to a woman whose own periods had also always been irregular.
What Love E’er Meant shows a queen wanting not so much to completely avoid marriage as to avoid its pitfalls. Elizabeth was determined to prove her father wrong, resolved to prove that she had been his rightful heir all along and vindicate the injustice inflicted on Anne Boleyn. And that required that she deal properly with the thorniest issue.
At the start, Elizabeth relies on the disinclination to marriage that had served her so well during Mary’s reign; the story then tracks the twists and turns of her slow progress to the inevitable decision to walk away from it completely. She might have known from the start that she never could marry, but she never would have admitted it to anyone, perhaps not even herself. Instead, she trudged on, each choice made to keep herself and England safe.
In the end (spoiler alert!), she achieves her main goal – which was to prove her father wrong. She realizes that “[s]he had spent her life avoiding marriage, fearing to make a fatal choice. God had saved her from that, but only now did she understand His price.” Even so, she would have paid it. And given the situation, I believe we all would have done the same.
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