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About the BookWhen my daughter was going into seventh grade, she had a summer reading assignment to learn about someone who lived before 1600. She had heard me talk about the Tudors and their complex family ties and she decided to read about "Bloody Mary" because she was intrigued by the name. But she and I were disappointed to find there was no young-adult biography of Mary, only some tomes with tiny print and footnotes. This inspired me to investigate the situation of books about other queens. Again, nothing in print for the age group. The more I looked, the longer my list of neglected ruling women became. When I finally got the chance to write about Mary I of England, I bore in mind the saying, "History is written by the winners." Mary's side, the English Catholic side, was destined to lose to the Protestants in the long run. I decided to take a fresh look at Mary, especially at her leadership qualities. She was both a leader of a persecuted religious minority in her teens and twenties and a ruler in later life. I found that in one of these roles she was very successful, while she was much less effective in the other. One reason, I thought, was that the two roles called for entirely different traits of character. The other was that she believed it her duty as queen to marry, an action that immediately put her into the classic bind of women throughout most of history. How was she to be both a good (submissive) wife and a royal decision maker? This last, the "marriage hang-up," was a problem for most, though not all of the women whose stories will be told in this series.  |
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