Author: Susan Kay
Published: 1985, Reprinted 2010 (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Genre: Historical Fiction, 672 Pages
Rating: 5/5
Most of my readers know I love a good historical fiction novel. However, the story that could be told a thousand times over by different writers about the life of Elizabeth I is my favorite. Even more so, I am obsessed with the relationship of Elizabeth I and her childhood friend, Robert Dudley. What was it like to love someone and yet be told by your station and society not to love?
Elizabeth is just two-years-old when she learns of the horrors the male-sex can bring to a female. Her mother is beheaded because she cannot have a son. When she is eight her young stepmother, Catherine Howard, is also brought to the block.She swears to her best friend, Robert Dudley, she will never marry. At the age of 14 she is molested and fawned after by her guardian, Thomas Seymour, uncle to her brother. Through her sister's reign she learns that the wrong marriage can make your subjects despise you. When she finally ascends the throne there is few she can trust and even the man she loves the most she cannot trust. For what man will not lust after the crown even as he lusts after her royal personage?
I have to say, this book is by far the best I have ever read exploring the psychological and sociological aspects of Elizabeth's relationship with Robert Dudley. In Kay's interpretation of Elizabeth she explores the darkness that touched a child's mind and heart. As Elizabeth grows further negative experiences nourish the darkness and she begins to put up a wall around her heart. She will wear a mask to the world and even the man who loves her will never truly know who she is. In a romantic love that can never be satisfied Elizabeth and Robin love, fight, fear, never forget and always forgive each other. When he dies her world crumbles apart and she is never again quite the same. Kay has taken truly taken hold of the emotions that sometimes brings Elizabeth down and other times raises her above everything that has happened to her.
I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who is a fan of the Tudors. More so, anyone looking to read a story of a bizarre romance should find this novel very unique and stimulating. Perhaps, readers shall be reminded of the wide-range of relationships possible within human nature and history.
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