The court welcomes me and acknowledges me as queen. I could almost think that there had never been another. In turn, I welcome the two youngest children, Prince Edward and Lady Elizabeth, and weld them into a royal family where they have never truly belonged before. I add royal nieces: Lady Margaret, the daughter of the king’s sister the Scots’ queen, and little Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of his sister the French queen. Prince Edward is an endearing mixture of formality and shyness. He has been schooled since the day of his birth in the knowledge that he is a Tudor son and heir, and everything is expected of him. In contrast, Elizabeth has never been sure of her position: her name and even her safety are completely uncertain. At the execution of her mother she fell, almost overnight, from the grandeur of being a tiny beloved princess addressed as “Your Grace” in her own palace, to being a neglected bastard named “Lady Elizabeth.” If anyone could prove the rumors that still swirl around her paternity, she would be an orphan “Miss Smeaton” in a moment.

The Howards ought to love and support her as their girl, the daughter of the Boleyn queen, their kin. But when the king is counting his injuries, and brooding over the wrongs done to him, the last thing the duke and his son want him to remember is that they have put several Howard girls in his bed and two on the throne, and that both queens ended in heartbreak, disgrace, and death. Alternately, they support or neglect the little girl, as serves their purpose.

She cannot be betrothed to any foreign prince while nobody knows if she is a princess or a bastard. She cannot even be properly served while no one knows if she is to be called Princess or Lady Elizabeth. Nobody but her governess and Lady Mary have loved this little girl, and her only refuge from her fear and loneliness is in books.