Williams - Rival queens the betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots

Kate Williams is an author, social historian and broadcaster. She fell in love with history whilst studying for her BA and DPhil at the University of Oxford and has MAs from Queen Mary and Royal Holloway. She is a Professor of History and appears regularly on television she recently presented her series on The Stuarts, is the in-house historian and royal expert for CNN and has appeared on programmes from The Great British Bake Off to election coverage and comedy panel shows. She has written four historical biographies, a series of historical novels and loves nothing more than a spending her time in dusty archives.

This thrilling history from bestselling historian and broadcaster, Kate Williams tells the story of Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of Marys eventual betrayal, by forces around her, by herself and by her cousin.

At the end of the Tudor era, two queens ruled one island. But sixteenth-century Europe was a mans world and powerful voices believed that no woman could govern. All around Mary and Elizabeth were sycophants, spies and detractors who wanted their dominion, their favour and their bodies.

Elizabeth and Mary shared the struggle to be both woman and queen. But the forces rising against the two regnants, and the conflicts of love and dynasty, drove them apart. For Mary, Elizabeth was a fellow queen with whom she dreamed of a lasting friendship. For Elizabeth, Mary was a threat. It was a schism that would end in secret assassination plots, devastating betrayal and, eventually, a terrible final act.

Mary is often seen as a defeated or tragic sovereign, but Rival Queens argues against this, showing instead how she attempted to reinvent queenship and the monarchy in one of the hardest fights in royal history. Where the Queen of Scots failed, Elizabeth, as Gloriana, would succeed. Yet in doing so, she would lose a part of herself and her power.

Kate Williams has examined letters and archives to create an electrifying new perspective on Mary and on Elizabeth and, ultimately, on the great sacrifices a woman must make to be a queen.

It has been an incredible journey into the world of Mary and Elizabeth and the sixteenth century. I have often been told while writing this book that one is either Elizabeth or Mary you cant be both. You have to pick a side. I hope I have proved that you dont!

I always wanted a time machine. As a child, I made one myself out of a large cardboard box and put my brother into it and took him travelling across time. I got in myself but I could never get it to work for me. And now, I have one in the form of the letters that I read. It is so exciting to read one of Marys original letters in the archives, touching the page where she once did. And it is wonderfully satisfying when, after an hour of trying to make it out, you finally realise what a particularly faded or scribbled sentence says. It feels like a key when you are truly unlocking the secrets. I am very grateful to the staff of all the archives who were very generous with their time, particularly at the British Library, where I spend so much happy time, and the Manuscripts Staff and the staff of the Public Record Office, Bodleian Library, and Lambeth Palace Archives, as well as the overseas archives I have visited in France and Russia. We are so fortunate that with their hard work, and that of their predecessors, these letters and archives are preserved for us to read.

I couldnt have written this book or any of my books without the support of fellow historians, their friendship and scholarship. For the help, support and discussions about Mary, Elizabeth and the sixteenth century, I am grateful to the distinguished and brilliant historians and friends Tracy Borman, Helen Castor, Jessie Childs, Lisa Hilton, Dan Jones, Suzannah Lipscomb, Sarah Gristwood, Charles Spencer, Nicola Tallis, Melita Thomas and Alison Weir, all of whom kindly shared scholarship, points of view, very generously sent me notes and transcripts from their research, and saved me from many errors! I am so very fortunate that the superb historians Charles Spencer, Lisa Hilton, Nicola Tallis, Sarah Gristwood and my old tutorial partner Sarah Baker read the manuscript in its entirety and noted many points and so I no longer call Mary a hot potato! I also learned that as well as being a Stuart himself, one of Charles Spencers relatives was actually at Marys execution which is so fascinating to think thank you to him for reading it. My father, Gwyn, read it through with legal precision and picked up many anachronisms and dubious word uses.

I am very grateful to Antonia Fraser, the queen and trailblazer of us all, for always being so kind. Alison Weir was one of the first historians I ever met, gives so much great advice and she has been the most supportive friend. Lisa Hilton gave me so much of her generous time in long conversations in Venice and deftly unknotted a particularly problematic Gordian narrative knot, has shared so much of her excellent scholarship and is always there for me.

I am grateful to all the scholars who have written on Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth over time. The scholarship is dazzling and I have been in awe of it. Antonia Fraser, John Guy, Linda Porter, Leanda de Lisle and Alison Weir in particular have all written magnificent books about the period and its legacy.

Hutchinson published my first book and turned me into an author and I am so grateful to be with them. Hutchinson have gone beyond the call of duty in their patience, kindness and time given to me thank you to Jocasta Hamilton, Sarah Rigby, Isabelle Everington and Grace Long for their utter brilliance, editorial genius and enthusiasm for the book. Many thanks to the eagle-eyed copyeditors and proof readers. Thank you to Susan Sandon and all the team at Cornerstone for their support and friendship and for making the world of books such great fun. I am grateful to my agents, Robert Kirby and Ariella Feiner, who are always there for me with patience and friendship and kindness; and to my television agents, Sue, Sue, Helen and all at Knight Ayton for always cheering on my endeavours. Thank you also to my students who have engaged in such detail in the question of sixteenth-century queens while studying History of Women with me. Thank to the staff at University of Reading for their friendship.

Marcus Gipps has read this book more times than he can count, kept track of the different versions and pages, made brilliant points and even scanned quite a lot of it page by page when things got close to the deadline thank you and I am so grateful!

I am most grateful to the readers without you, we authors wouldnt exist! Thanks to all of you who read my books, come to my events, review my work and contact me on social media. To use an un-Elizabethan term, you rock.

Also by Kate Williams

NON-FICTION

Englands Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton

Becoming Queen

Young Elizabeth: The Making of our Monarch

Josephine: Desire, Ambition, Napoleon

The Ring and the Crown (co-authored)

FICTION

The Pleasures of Men

The Storms of War

The Edge of the Fall

The House of Shadows

It is an incredible privilege to read the original letters and documents of Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth, and men and women who crafted the age. I am thus grateful to all those archives and museums which made it possible for me to turn the pages of the letters in which Mary pours out her heart and made me so close to the words that it was almost as if I was there.