That’s how it is for women, I said, stung into honesty. It’s not what one would choose—I grant you that. But women are the very toys of fortune.
Tell my daughter Elizabeth -- no! Tell all my daughters, everywhere, in all the ages yet to come. Tell them how I died, and why. And tell them to remember this: the future is unwritten. Know your righ...
She's ice and ambition and she would see you on the gallows before surrendering her ambition. Anne has dazzled him, and dazzled the court, and dazzled even you.''Not me.' George said gently.'Uncle lik...
She smiled an empty bitter smile that did not reach her eyes, 'Do you think it can be worse than this? I cannot be charged with treason, I am the Queen of England, I am England. I cannot be divorced,...
She poured me a cup of coffee and I drank it standing by the back door, looking out of the back garden. I felt it scald my tongue but it did not warm me. It was heavy with sugar but it did not taste s...
Richard looks into my eyes and once again I know us for the children that we were, who had to make our own destiny in a world we could not understand.
One little boy, and he a bastard,' Anne said thoughtfully.'One little girl of six, one elderly Queen and a King in the prime of his life.' She looked up at the two of us, dragging her gaze away from h...
Keep him coming forward but never let him think that you come forward yourself. He wants to feel that he is pursuing you, not that you are entrapping him. When he gives you the choice of coming forwar...
It’s as if our name is both our greatest pride and our curse, I say.
It was Anne who was before the table like a prisoner before the bar. She did not stand with her head bowed as I always did. Anne stood with her head high, one dark eyebrow slightly raised, and she met...
It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What’d you choose to do with yours?
It is hard to tell the story of Elizabeth of York without her farbetter-known husband, Henry VII, as the hero. Henry himself, Jasper Tudor, and Thomas Stanley are all described as powerful coherent ag...
If my honour is a real thing then it can’t depend on whether a man sees my face, or touches my hand, or kisses my lips. If I am an honourable woman then I am an honourable woman like a man is an honou...
If it is to be done at all, it must be done with grace.
I would rather see you dead at my feet than dishonored.
I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, but she was still at the age where she believed that if she shut her eyes and buried her head under...
I stop still with the shock and fell my head swim. Richard takes my hand. We stand for a moment, handclasped as if we are clinging to each other in this new and terrifying world. We don't notice the p...
I kneel on the planks for her blessing, and then sit beside her with my feet dangling over the edge and my own reflection looking up at me as if I were a water goddess living under the river, waiting...
I have not slept for nights. I have not eaten for days. I am a soul in torment. Tell me if you think that she loves me, if you think that she might love me. Tell me, for pity’s sake.
I have my own loyalties and obligations that I consider and honor. They are not his. They are not at the beck and call of any man.