Every so often I really enjoy switching off today’s world and taking a mental time machine to long-ago England, when the Tudor courts teemed with intrigue, romance, and violence. When women were nothing but the sum of their gowns, the money their fathers gave them, and the men to whom they were connected. Queen Elizabeth I stood apart from orat dinary women, not only because she was Henry VIII’s daughter, but because of her solid resolve, independence and courage in the face of terrible odds. So many centuries later, she is still considered tbe best monarch England ever had.
So, what of the speculation that she may have had an illegitimate child? Although it’s highly unlikely, Ella March Chase takes up the idea and makes alternative history of it in her book (her only book so far), The Virgin Queen’s Daughter. A very enjoyable story, if you like this sort of stuff. And, as I heard the audiobook rather than read the book, a riveting listen. It was beautifully read by Rosalind Landor. Listen to a sample!
Ella Chase tells her story well. Her main character, Elinor de Lacey, meets the imprisoned princess Elizabeth just once, when she was just five. Upset to see the princess in captivity, she steals a key and gives it to the princess telling her to escape because her head was “loose on her shoulders”. Elizabeth, of course, becomes Queen, but Elinor discovers to her horror that she may well be the illegitimate daughter of the mighty monarch. She was supposed to have been put to death on birth…but wasn’t. She was rescued by the midwife and brought up by parents who loved her. Now though, she is at Elizabeth’s court, where she faces danger, romance, and imprisonment. Seems unfair, doesn’t it? But that’s how life was at the time.
Ella Chase has a hard act to follow with historical romance writers like Phillipa Gregory, Jean Plaidy and others having written about the same period in dozens of books. Or, you might say she has the advantage of knowing how it’s done. Either way, it’s fun to read… like eating marshmallows by a fire.
There’s a discussion forum of sorts on books about the Tudors and this bookis being discussed here. It looks like everyone else also went to check if there really was a “Nell” or Elinor de Lacey and a Gabriel Wyatt.