LEGACY

by Susan Kay ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1986

Elizabeth I of England (1533-1603) presents a peculiar problem to the writer aiming for a popular/romance audience: how to pop the Virgin Queen into the sack with a lusty lover when over 300 years of scholarly consensus says ""forget it."" Kay forthrightly cuts the Gordian knot. At the close of this hyperventilating fictional biography, Gloriana treats her old adviser and treasurer, horrifed Cecil, to this tidbit: ""I was always [Dudley's] slut and I'm glad of it."" Not all the inner roiling of Kay's Elizabeth has to do with sexual matters here, however, although the monarch's razor-sharp political wisdom seems submerged in raw passion. ""I hate you! I hate all men!"" screams Elizabeth at 14 to Thomas Seymour, kin to Elizabeth's half-brother, the ""pretentious little prig"" Edward VI, and husband of Henry VIII's last Queen. (Here, Kay has Seymour make a more damning contribution to the Princess' sexual orientation than mere dalliance.) Elizabeth was certain she'd never marry--after all, her father's execution of mother Anne Boleyn left a terrible legacy, for which, years later, the young Earl of Essex's execution would atone. The familiar story of Elizabeth's remarkable struggle to survive is retold here pinnacle by pinnacle: imprisonment in the Tower and all the wily dodges and steadfast postures of wide-eyed innocence in the face of power blocs and sister Queen Mary's justifiable suspicions. Throughout most of her life, there was Elizabeth's companion--and here lover--Robert Dudley, and in spite of power jostling between the pair (Dudley's determination to wed; the mysterious death of his wife, Amy), to the end Dudley is gratefully, adoringly, on leash. And here Elizabeth does consider (briefly) wedding the French Duke of Alencon (not merely as a political tactic), but after Dudley's death, the non-affair with the reckless Furl of Essex is shrouded in gloom and doom. With anachronistic idiom and a dampening of the brilliance of Elizabeth's court, this is essentially a grandly outsized romantic portrait, decorative with jewels and furs and loud with tantrums, snarls and sighs from a steely, sexy warrior-woman monarch and her adoring men. A glitzy Gloriana; but if read uncritically, rather fun.

Pub Date: April 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1986

Categories: FICTION