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Historical person

Mary Grey

1545–1578

Mary Grey was the youngest sister of Lady Jane Grey and a possible claimant in the Tudor succession. Like her sister Katherine, her marriage choices and royal blood made her vulnerable under Elizabeth I.

In 1565 Mary secretly married Thomas Keyes, Elizabeth I’s sergeant porter, without the queen’s permission. Because Mary stood within the Tudor succession, Elizabeth treated the marriage as a political offence: Keyes was imprisoned in the Fleet and Mary was kept under house arrest in a succession of households. The couple were never allowed to resume married life before Keyes’s death in 1571. Mary eventually obtained greater freedom but remained childless, dying in 1578 and receiving burial in Westminster Abbey.

Elizabeth Fremantle’s Sisters of Treason follows Mary Grey and her sister Katherine after Jane Grey’s execution, when their Tudor blood makes ordinary marriage and motherhood politically dangerous under Mary I and Elizabeth I. Philippa Gregory’s The Last Tudor gives Mary her own final section, emphasising the determination of the physically small youngest sister to claim a private life despite surveillance and imprisonment. Leanda de Lisle’s The Sisters Who Would Be Queen reconstructs the historical Mary alongside Jane and Katherine, showing how secret marriages and disputed succession rights kept all three sisters within the monarchy’s field of suspicion.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Mary Grey (2 series)

The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels in Order

by Philippa Gregory 16 books 4.4(140,052)

The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…

All books in this series

1. Royal Witch

First published 2026 · 2.5(5)

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2. The Lady of the Rivers

First published 2011 · 4.5(11,180)

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3. The White Queen

First published 2009 · 4.3(12,869)

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4. The Red Queen

First published 2010 · 4.2(7,734)

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5. The Kingmaker’s Daughter

First published 2012 · 4.4(7,921)

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6. The White Princess

First published 2013 · 4.3(10,296)

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7. The Constant Princess

First published 2005 · 4.2(7,135)

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8. The King’s Curse

First published 2014 · 4.4(13,285)

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9. Three Sisters, Three Queens

First published 2016 · 4.3(13,946)

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10. The Other Boleyn Girl

First published 2001 · 4.5(8,539)

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11. The Boleyn Inheritance

First published 2006 · 4.4(7,419)

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12. The Taming of the Queen

First published 2015 · 4.3(14,681)

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13. The Queen’s Fool

First published 2003 · 4.4(6,116)

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14. The Virgin’s Lover

First published 2004 · 4.3(4,112)

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15. The Last Tudor

First published 2017 · 4.4(9,972)

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16. The Other Queen

First published 2008 · 4.2(4,842)

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The Tudor Trilogy in Order

by Elizabeth Fremantle 3 books 4.0(10,435)

The Tudor Trilogy follows three generations of women whose proximity to the English crown makes marriage, faith and family matters of state. Firebrand, originally published as Queen’s Gambit, centres on Katherine Parr during the final years of Henry VIII. Sisters of Treason turns to Katherine and Mary Grey…