Author John Staines here argues that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers in England, Scotland, and France wrote tragedies of the Queen of Scots - royal heroine or tyrant, martyr or whore - in order to move their audiences towards political action by shaping and directing the passions generated by the spectacle of her fall. In following the retellings of her history from her lifetime through the revolutions and political experiments of the seventeenth century, this study identifies two basic literary traditions of her tragedy: one conservative, sentimental, and royalist, the other radical, skeptical, and republican. Staines provides new readings of Spenser and Milton, as well as of early modern dramatists, to compile a comprehensive study of the writings about this important historical and literary figure. He charts developments in public rhetoric and political writing from the Elizabethan period through the Restoration, using the emotional representations of the life of this tragic woman and queen to explore early modern experiments in addressing and moving a public audience. By exploring the writing and rewriting of the tragic histories of the Queen of Scots, this book reveals the importance of literature as a force in the redefinition of British political life between 1560 and 1690.

ONE DECISION IS ENOUGH TO TEAR APART A NATION. In summer AD51, yet another battle is raging. The invaders are intent on turning the precious Isle of Albion into Roman Britannia. Caradoc, now with the Ordovicii, is determined to fight to protect the land and his gods. Eventually, with his people defeated, he flees to the queen of the Brigantes, hoping to find salvation. Queen Cartimandua has other ideas. Blinded by the wealth and power of the Romans, she will not listen to reason. She is determined to keep Caradoc in chains and hand him over to the Roman governor no matter how much her husband Venutius or her archdruid Galchobhar plead otherwise. The gods step in to guide Venutius, the only man who has a chance of defeating Cartimandua and stopping the Romans from taking over entirely, but this is going to take time and Venutius is running out of patience.

As an historical figure Mary Queen of Scots has been perpetually represented on canvas, page and stage, and has captured the British imagination since the time of her death in 1587. The 'real' Mary Stuart however has remained an enigma. Mary Queen of Scots: Romance and Nation sheds light on Mary's life by exploring four main themes: * the history of Mary's representation in Britain from the late Tudor period focusing on key periods in the formation of the British identity and closely analysing several texts against a background of the visual, musical and literary works of each period * the reasons why those representing Mary have been so conscious that her image was largely a debatable fiction * the identification of symbolic styles, using Mary to reveal the habits of representation in each historical period * The link between the image of Mary Stuart and Britain's long struggle to define itself as a single nation, focusing on the roles of gender and religion in this development.

In John Banks’s Female Tragic Heroes, Paula de Pando offers the first monograph on Restoration playwright John Banks. De Pando analyses Banks’s civic model of she-tragedy in terms of its successful adaptation of early modern literary traditions and its engagement with contemporary political and cultural debates. Using Tudor queens as tragic heroes and specifically addressing female audiences, patrons and critics, Banks made women rather than men the subject of tragedy, revolutionising drama and influencing depictions of gender, politics, and history in the long eighteenth century.

Cult graphic novelist Dylan Meconis offers a rich reimagining of history in this beautifully detailed hybrid novel loosely based on the exile of Queen Elizabeth I by her sister, Queen Mary. When her sister seizes the throne, Queen Eleanor of Albion is banished to a tiny island off the coast of her kingdom, where the nuns of the convent spend their days peacefully praying, sewing, and gardening. But the island is also home to Margaret, a mysterious young orphan girl whose life is upturned when the cold, regal stranger arrives. As Margaret grows closer to Eleanor, she grapples with the revelation of the island’s sinister true purpose as well as the truth of her own past. When Eleanor’s life is threatened, Margaret is faced with a perilous choice between helping Eleanor and protecting herself. In a hybrid novel of fictionalized history, Dylan Meconis paints Margaret’s world in soft greens, grays, and reds, transporting readers to a quiet, windswept island at the heart of a treasonous royal plot.

In Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz provide a forum for the underexamined, anomalous reigns of queens in history. These regimes, primarily regarded as interruptions to the ?normal? male monarchy, have been examined largely as isolated cases. This interdisciplinary study of queens throughout history examines their connections to one another, their constituents? perceptions of them, and the fallacies of their historical reputations. The contributors consider historical queens as well as fictional, mythic, and biblical queens and how they were represented in medieval and early modern England. They also give modern readers a glimpse into the early modern worldview, particularly regarding order, hierarchy, rulership, property, biology, and the relationship between the sexes. Considering topics as diverse as how Queen Elizabeth?s unmarried status affected the perception of her as a just and merciful queen to a reevaluation of ?good Queen Anne? as more than just an obese, conventional monarch, this volume encourages readers to reexamine previously held assumptions about the role of female monarchs in early modern history.