In her highly praised "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" and its sequel, "Children of
England", Alison Weir examined the private lives of the early Tudor kings and q
ueens, and chronicled the childhood and youth of one of England's most successfu
l monarchs, Elizabeth I. This book begins as the young Elizabeth ascends the thr
one in the wake of her sister Mary's disastrous reign. Elizabeth is portrayed as
both a woman and a queen, an extraordinary phenomenon in a patriarchal age.
