(Really 3.5 stars)

I've been a bit back and forth on Weir's more fiction-based novels, though I've enjoyed her biographical looks at Tudor history. While I understand that in fiction you can take certain liberties, and especially given the length of time that has passed and the lack of any concrete evidence or support for some of the more scandalous rumors of history it's easy to embellish or give life to the details that make for a good story, no matter how true or untrue they may be. And, in the beginning, I thought Weir was doing a good job of showing what life may have been like for young Elizabeth, going from "Princess" to "Lady" almost overnight, and what her life may have been like in the years of her fathers' many queens. The influence of seeing all those marriages playing out and comparing them (and other scandals) to her mother's demise and how that may have shaped her thinking as an adult is interesting to see evolve; it's a look into the inner mind and trauma of a woman who wore her personality as a shield in a world where she had to be both a woman and her father's daughter.

The further along the book goes, the less I find myself invested, however, starting with the take on Elizabeth's relationship with Thomas Seymour. While I could reasonably see Elizabeth's childish "love" and devotion, Weir even admits in her author's note that she believes that Elizabeth was indeed the virgin she claimed to be, so suggesting that she and Seymour had a physical affair and that resulted in a pregnancy/miscarriage feels more like it was there for a reader's shock value than anything else. From that point on, it seemed like the time jumps happened so frequently that you stopped getting a clear view into Elizabeth's mind and motives, and it becomes just watching history play out the same as if you're reading any other description of it. I just wish the whole book had kept up the momentum of the first third of it.