Penguin Books Australia

I do not remember when I discovered how my mother died, it seems to be something I always knew, a horror I absorbed through my skin.

Determined, passionate, privileged and headstrong, Elizabeth was born into a world where she felt she didn't belong and had to fight to survive.

Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed by her father Henry VIII.  From that moment on, Elizabeth competed with her two half-siblings for love and for Britain's throne.  In the gilded corridors of the royal palace, enemies she couldn't see – as well as those bound to her by blood – plotted to destroy her.

How do you find the courage to become queen even though you are just a girl?