Sarah Gristwood

"Sixteenth-century Europe saw an explosion of female rule. From Isabella of Castile and her granddaughter Mary Tudor, to Catherine de Medici, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth Tudor, women wielded enormous power over their territories for more than a hundred years. In the sixteenth century, as in our own, the phenomenon of the powerful woman offered challenges and opportunities. Opportunities, as when in 1529 Margaret of Austria and Louise of Savoy negotiated...

A historian describes the drama and family feuding within the Plantagenets, England's fifteenth-century ruling family, from the perspective of the mothers, wives and daughters who wove a web of loyalty and betrayal that ultimately gave way to the Tudors.