leicester, robert dudley

Hannah Green, a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl, finds herself caught in the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half sister, Elizabeth, after her ability to foresee the future leads her to work for the Queen as a spy.

Hannah Verde and her father are Jews who have escaped the Spanish Inquisition by moving to England where her father sets up his printing business. There she meets Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who introduces her to the court of King Edward VI as a "holy" fool, because Hannah can sometimes foretell the future. She stays at court after Edward dies to serve Queen Mary I and at the same time is also accepted by her half-sister, Elizabeth. Hannah soon finds her loyalties divided and she is at the center of the intrigue to replace the Catholic Queen Mary with the Protestant Princess Elizabeth.

In autumn, 1558, Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth, is crowned Queen of England. Crucial to her success is Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who has been her supporter (and some say her lover) during her struggle for the throne. In an age where women were thought to be unable to govern on their own, Elizabeth is urged to marry soon so England can finally have peace. However, the one man she desires is Robert Dudley who is already married to Amy, a wife who will not let him fulfill his ambitions at her expense. As Robert begins to court Elizabeth he asks himself whether it will be possible to put his wife aside to marry a queen.

In the autumn of 1558, church bells across England ring out the joyous news that Elizabeth I is the new queen. One woman hears the tidings with utter dread. She is Amy Dudley, wife of Sir Robert, and she knows that Elizabeth's ambitious leap to the throne will draw her husband back to the center of the glamorous Tudor court, where he was born to be. Elizabeth's excited triumph is short-lived. She has inherited a bankrupt country where treason is rampant and foreign war a certainty. Her faithful advisor William Cecil warns her that she will survive only if she marries a strong prince to govern the rebellious country, but the one man Elizabeth desires is her childhood friend, the ambitious Robert Dudley. As the young couple falls in love, a question hangs in the air: can he really set aside his wife and marry the queen? When Amy is found dead, Elizabeth and Dudley are suddenly plunged into a struggle for survival.