Penelope – Tudor Baroness

by Tony Riches Book 4 in the The Elizabethan series.

First published 2023

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4.4(1,586)

Penelope Devereux grows up in one of Elizabethan England’s most politically charged families. Her mother, Lettice Knollys, secretly marries Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, while Penelope herself becomes the celebrated object of Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella sequence. Marriage to Robert Rich does not contain her ambitions or affections, and her long relationship with Charles Blount eventually draws her into a public scandal involving separation, remarriage and accusations that touch the limits of what an aristocratic woman could openly defy.

The novel also follows Penelope through the catastrophe of her brother Robert Devereux’s rebellion against Elizabeth I. Her family connections place her close enough to power to be vulnerable to treason charges, yet she survives the fall of Essex and adapts to the arrival of James VI and I and Anne of Denmark. Riches uses her life to explore the Elizabethan Privy Chamber, aristocratic marriage and the uncertain boundary between private desire and political allegiance at the end of the Tudor dynasty.

Historical Periods

Essex Rebellion1601 CE Elizabethan Privy Chamber and Court Society1565–1603

Genres

Biographical Fiction Court & Political Fiction Romance

Historical people

Elizabeth I1533–1603 Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester1532–1588 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex1565–1601 Philip Sidney1554–1586 Lettice Knollys1543–1634 Penelope Rich, Lady Rich1563–1607