Why did Henry VIII marry six times? Why did Anne Boleyn have to die? And why did Elizabeth I's courtiers hail her as a goddess come to earth? Here the author of Game of Queens reveals the way that the notion of courtly love made and marred the Tudor dynasty, noting how these royals re-enacted the roles of the devoted lovers and capricious mistresses first laid out in the romances of medieval literature.

"Compelling…. Gristwood's prism of courtly love is smashed by the cruelty of power politics and we get the gripping—and heartbreaking—story of trapped royal women over more than a century."—NYTBR