Some of the stories herein may be apocryphal. It’s not certain that Raleigh brought the potatoes or not, but it’s plausible and makes for a good story. No one (thus far!) knows where the famous locket ring came from, but I like to think it came from someone who loved her and knew of her desire to keep her mother close to her heart, and the timing was right. Some say that both faces in the locket are of Elizabeth, but lockets, then and now, are known for keeping a portrait of oneself and a loved one close by; it was unlikely that anyone would keep two portraits of themselves in a locket. It’s clear that Elizabeth kept mementos of her mother about, but subtly, and this would have fit right in. It was fun to invent a provenance. The girdle prayer book I described was most likely to be owned by Elizabeth Tyrwhitt; it exists still in the British Museum and you can see it online. However, all highborn women had highly decorated prayer books attached to their girdles. I have tried throughout to keep the integrity of the dates as much as possible, but births, marriages, and deaths are not always clear nearly five hundred years on, so there may be some unintentional variations.

I don’t know the whole story of poor Eleanor Brydges; I do know that her aunt was accused of poisoning her husband, that Eleanor appeared at court with her sister but then disappears from the record, and that her husband was caught fleeing to the Jesuits in the year that Mary, Queen of Scots, was apprehended. I built upon that for those truths, with apologies for any wrongly taken liberties in her story.

I do not know if Helena retired from more active service, or if the queen would have allowed for that, for certain. But I do know that her ladies wished for it to be so; evidence remains of the letter quoted in the book from Francis Knollys to his wife, the queen’s beloved Lady Knollys. The Earl of Leicester reported that Lady Cobham wished to visit her husband at his country home “to rest her weary bones awhile, if she could get leave,” but he didn’t think it was likely that the queen would allow her to go. So it was certainly an issue among her ladies. Elizabeth had a firm will but always was willing to bend when it made sense, especially for those she loved; and because I wanted to explore this angle of ladies in waiting, the storyline made sense to me.

Although James I had Tudor blood, of course, his reign was the beginning of the English Stuart years and Elizabeth’s is considered to be the concluding reign of the Tudor era. In a Renaissance century rich with intelligence, intrigue, faith, factions, passion, and drama, nearly five hundred years on, she truly stands out, the marvelous daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.

To quote Elizabeth herself, though she was not speaking of herself at the time, “The end crowneth the work.”



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is truly a team sport, and I feel thankful and blessed to have a number of wonderful people who graciously contributed their many talents.