This volume gives an account of the women both behind the scenes and at the forefront of 16th-century English history, including Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, and Henry VIII's six wives. The women of the royal family are the central characters; what they ate, how they dressed, the books they read, and the letters they wrote are all addressed. Yet even the greatest of these women suffered the universal legal and physiological disabilities of womanhood, and while some triumphed over them, others went under.