In May of 1553, Durham House in London witnessed a triple wedding. The eldest of the couples were barely past their mid teens; the other two brides were age twelve, their husbands not much older. One of these boys was severely ill, dragged out of bed to stand by his new wife's side.

No one objected to what we now would howl down as child abuse, to say nothing of illegality. The average marriage age for ordinary English folk was twenty, but these were all noble children, and the entire purpose behind these weddings was political--an attempt to consolidate power in order to prevent Mary Tudor from being regarded as the severely ill Edward's heir. It didn't work. Most of those who arranged it would lose their heads in the gamble.

Of those children, none of them had a family intact, and indeed, the number of beheaded relatives was going to climb. Meantime, sickness was going to strike down a grim number of these young people, but even so, there was a remarkable number of youths during this stressful time after the death of Henry VIII, as every court faction struggled to secure the succession.

The most remarkable result was two generations of female queens or potential queens, in spite of firm conviction that women were subordinate to men according to the Great Chain of Being, the orderly hierarchy of the universe.

I read de Lisle's first book, After Elizabeth, which I felt was unmoored at times, shifting back and forth in order to delineate all the remarkable figures on England and Scotland's royal stages. This book suffered no such lack of focus. It's brilliantly organized, with the three Grey sisters central; the Stuarts succeeded in winning the throne, though by rights Katherine Grey's son Beauchamp should have been the next king, according to Henry VIII's will.

But Elizabeth Tudor, having grown up witnessing the bloody destruction caused by power mongers impatient to replace a reigning monarch with the next heir, spent her entire reign refusing to acknowledge anyone as heir. When the surviving Grey sisters sneaked away to marry, the infuriated queen threw them into prison until they died.

The first of the sisters, of course, was famous Lady Jane Grey, and it's her story that really makes the book earn its price. De Lisle uncovers with painstaking scholarship the accretions of fiction and politically motivated sentimentality around Jane Grey, providing a fascinating portrait of a teen who not only accepted queenship, but fought all her nearly fortnight's rule to hold onto power, and chose death rather than compromise.

It might be good to be king (it wasn't for Jane!) but one thing for certain, it is very dangerous to be near the king, or queen, as this book demonstrates with unflinching eye to detail. It makes riveting reading, with careful explication of motivation within the Tudor paradigm, and the decisions that led to the idea that Parliament must decide who is the future monarch. Once that jack in the box had popped out, it could not be stuffed back in by the Stuarts' attempt to emulate Henry VIII's absolute rule.

The flamboyant court figures, most of whom died at tragically young ages, come to life under de Lisle's skilled description, backed by formidable notes and bibliographic sources.