Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her

By Susan Kay

A Spellbinding Tale of England's Most Passionate Queen—and the Three Men Whose Destinies Belonged to Her Alone.

Beloved for its stunning storytelling, Legacy offers an exquisite portrait of the queen who defined an era. Tracing the unlikely path from her tragic childhood to her ruthless confrontations with Mary, Queen of Scots, and capturing in all its glory her brilliant reign as Europe's most celebrated queen, Susan Kay peels back the layers of a mysterious monarch and satisfies the questions of history.

Winner of the Georgette Heyer Historical Novel Prize and the Betty Trask Award, Susan Kay gives us Elizabeth the woman: proud, passionate, and captivating in her intensity. The queen who inspired men to love her with bewitching devotion, no matter what the cost, but the depth of her love for England required a sacrifice that would haunt her to the grave.

"Full of dramatic twists and turns, not to mention a scintillating central character and colorful supporting cast. Readers will lose themselves for hours in this richly entertaining novel." —Booklist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781402256431

Susan Kay

Susan Kay is currently working as an Administrative Receptionist with a local company and has always enjoyed writing. She has three daughters and two grandchildren. She currently lives in Springfield, Illinois, where she is hard at work on her next book. Seasons Change is her debut novel.

Reviews for Legacy

[kasthu_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Legacy is the fictional story of one of England greatest queens—Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 until her death in 1603. It was during her reign that England achieved a certain amount of political stability and created a sense of national identity in the English people. Her relationship with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was highly debated, and it’s the focus of part of the plot of this novel. Elizabeth’s relationship with William Cecil is also central to the plot.I haven’t read many novels about the life of Elizabeth I (Jean Plaidy wrote one called Queen of this Realm that I wasn’t so keen on because she focused more the legend, not the actual person), but this is easily the best. Susan Kay gets into the head and heart of Elizabeth, who’s a very difficult person to write fiction about, I think—probably because so much is known about her life that there’s not much room for invention. And it’s hard for an author to present these well-known facts about Elizabeth’s life in a new, exciting way. I actually felt, for example, the tension that Elizabeth felt while imprisoned in the Tower, not knowing what would happen to her. It’s also pretty ambitious for an author to tackle Elizabeth’s entire life (actually, starting with Henry VIII’s break from Rome so that her could marry her mother, Anne Boleyn), but Kay does it in an admirable way.Susan Kay does play around a bit with the history in this novel, however, especially with regards to what happened to Robert Dudley’s wife, Amy. But the author gives her reader great insight into Elizabeth’s thoughts and feelings in a believable, real way. I think that history has put Elizabeth on a bit of a pedestal in terms of what she accomplished during her reign, but Kay turns her into a real, fallible person in this novel, easily likeable despite her faults and mistakes. The author glossed over the fact that Elizabeth was a patron of the arts in real life; she was even a published author herself. But since this book has a lot of ground to cover, it’s understandable that some things would be missed. Overall, this is an excellent novel about the life of Elizabeth I. Sourcebooks is coming out with a reprint of this next month, and it's good that this book will be enjoyed by a new generation of readers.

[t1bnotown · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that I might one day buy, though I only got it from my high school library. This is an excellent account of Queen Elizabeth I's life from her perspective. After I read it she was a bit of a personal hero, and I used her as my hero in sophomore Spanish class "hero for defeating the Spanish Armada" (because I wanted to be ironic). Anyway, she's just an all-around fascinating person, and this is a completely excellent retelling of her story.

[sgerbic · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reviewed May 2000 A first novel for author Kay, it says she spent years reading about Elizabeth before she felt confident to write her bio. She does a good job with the details she has many. Anne’s “6th finger” and lump on her neck - the various gardens - QE1’s dog (I think that is correct?) - QE1’s hands and making (amazing they didn’t die from ingesting that) - Lettice’s lover - the dress...etc... She leaves out much of the dinners ect... She mentions Cecil’s son has a hunchback at least 6 times, almost half the time he is brought into the story. Much is made of her being a witch and I think far too much of Elizabeth’s relationship with the Admiral. Good for the story, but missing the facts are the story of QE’s headless doll, sex with Robin, relationship with Essex, soulness with Cecil and many conversations. Of course these are needed to make story flow and add drama - that’s why its called an historical novel. Oddly enough this book really helped me humanize her and the people around her. I can picture events and people clearer. As well as the order of events. The author made QE1 a bit too inflaulable and clever. Portraying her as an atheist goes too far and the death of Amy Dudley as a murder set up by Cecil is too far out there. An interesting read, good for a beginner, if they understand that some liberties are taken.

[eloupas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite books about Elizabeth I.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

had mixed feelings about this one. The author is an evocative writer and this was a good page turner. But it did veer more towards the romantic end of the historical novel spectrum than I am wholly comfortable with. It committed for me the cardinal sin of depicting Elizabeth and Dudley as having sex, almost casually after years of non-physical romance. I do not think their romance should be seen in modern terms as necessarily involving physical sex and I think if it had the course of events in the Queen's reign and her impact on government and the country would have been different.I would also say that the author rather exaggerated Elizabeth's lack of enthusiasm for religious persecution in certain situations; while to a degree genuinely not seeking to make a window into men's souls, she is here depicted as having an unrealistically modern agnosticism or even atheism that doesn't fit the facts about her religious upbringing or resistance to trimming to the wind in her sister Mary's reign. Finally, the crowning psychological idea that Elizabeth's execution of the Earl of Essex was symbolic vengeance against all men for the execution of her mother by her father struck me as rather absurd, though I suppose we can never know exactly what psychological effects the trauma of her upbringing and the first 25 years of her life might have had on her reign. 3.5/5

[auntieclio · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I LOVED this book. There were a few things which made me wince and I had to remind myself that it's meant to be fiction. Could Dudley and Elizabeth been lovers all those years right under William Cecil's (not to mention the entire court's) nose? We'll never know and I suspect not for reason too many to enumerate here. The last section The Effigy seemed hurried, as though the author realized her book was already over 500 pages long and couldn't spend as much time on Essex as she might have. It felt very realistic to me in many ways, as though those conversations had happened and those complex emotional paths were that obvious. This book really brought home to me how incredible Elizabeth was: her mind, her shrewdness and political instinct and what a tightrope she had to walk every minute of her life. Thank you again SantaThing for choosing this wonderful book!

[jepeters333 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of Queen Elizabeth I, a woman who spends a lifetime in search of a man strong enough to be her equal - and of the men who suffer for their devotion to her.