Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince - Hardcover

[An] ambitious re-examination of the intersection of gender and monarchy. New York Times Book Review

Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her weak and feeble woman s body to do so for political gain. But inElizabeth, historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton s fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince an expert in Machiavellian statecraft.

Elizabeth depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most accounts claim, challenging readers to reassess Elizabeth s reign and the colorful drama and intrigue to which it is always linked. It s a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England s first recognizably modern head of state.

Hilton transforms an irreverent, centuries-old vision of a bewigged farthingale with a mysterious sex life into a resolute, steel-spined survivor who far surpassed Henry VII s wildest hopes for his new dynasty. Publishers Weekly

Lisa Hilton is the acclaimed author of Athenais, Mistress Peachum s Pleasure, Queens Consort, and The Horror of Love. She is also the author of three novels, the best-selling Wolves in Winter, The House with Blue Shutters, which was short-listed in the UK for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Stolen Queen.
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A thoughtful, often ingenious account ("Kirkus Reviews") that casts the queen as she saw herself: not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler Queen Elizabeth I was all too happy to play on courtly conventions of gender when it suited her weak and feeble woman s body to do so for political gain. But in"Elizabeth"," " historian Lisa Hilton offers ample evidence why those famous words should not be taken at face value. With new research out of France, Italy, Russia, and Turkey, Hilton s fresh interpretation is of a queen who saw herself primarily as a Renaissance prince an expert in Machiavellian statecraft."Elizabeth "depicts a queen who was much less constrained by her femininity than most accounts claim, challenging readers to reassess Elizabeth s reign and the colorful drama and intrigue to which it is always linked. It s a fascinating journey that shows how a marginalized newly crowned queen, whose European contemporaries considered her to be the illegitimate ruler of a pariah nation, ultimately adapted to become England s first recognizably modern head of state."