The French queen's letters

The life of Mary Tudor the French queen, younger sister of Henry VIII, has been chiefly defined by the scandal of her secret marriage to Charles Brandon after the death of her husband, Louis XII of France. Such limited focus has obscured Mary's role as a political figure, one whom poets celebrated for bringing peace between England and France. In this biography, Erin A. Sadlack contends that Mary was neither a weeping hysteric nor a love-struck romantic, but a queen who drew on two sources of authority to increase the power of her position: epistolary conventions and the rhetoric of chivalry that imbued the French and English courts. By reading Mary's life and letters within the context of early modern political culture, this book broadens our understanding of the exercise of queenship in the sixteenth century. - - From back cover.