Arabella Stuart

by G. P. R. James

First published 1844

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3.3(18)

Set in Jacobean England in the first decade of the seventeenth century, Arabella Stuart centres on a woman whose royal blood makes her private life a political problem. As a cousin of James I with a plausible place in the succession, Arabella attracts attention from courtiers and conspirators even when she seeks personal freedom. James turns the restrictions placed around her into the engine of a historical romance about surveillance, marriage and the dangers of dynastic proximity.

The real Arabella secretly married William Seymour in 1610 without royal permission. Both were imprisoned, and their attempt to escape ended with Arabella recaptured and confined in the Tower of London. The novel draws its tension from that historical predicament: a marriage that would be ordinary for most people becomes a state concern because two bloodlines might create an alternative claim to the throne.