Historian Linda Porter brings to life a queen best remembered for burning hundreds of Protestant heretics at the stake, but whose passion, will, and sophistication have for centuries been overlooked. Porter cuts through the myths to reveal the truth about the most hated, least understood monarch in English history. Daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, wife of Philip of Spain, and sister of Edward VI, Mary Tudor was a cultured Renaissance princess. She learned politics in a hard school, cruelly treated by her father and bullied by her brother's strongmen. An audacious coup brought her to the throne, and she needed all her strong will and courage to keep it. Her attempts to revitalize England at home and abroad were cut short by her premature death at the age of forty-two.--From publisher description.