In March, 1603, Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, lies dying at Richmond Palace.
The queen’s ministers cluster round her bedside, urging her to name her successor — something she has stubbornly resisted throughout her reign.
Almost with her last breath she whispers that James VI of Scotland should succeed her.
Or so we’ve been led to believe.
But, as new research shows, this is not what happened. Elizabeth went to her grave without formally naming an heir.
The notion of an approved succession from Tudors to Stuarts is little more than an elaborately constructed fiction — a fiction that went on to have devastating consequences.
The Stolen Crown: Treachery, Deceit and the Death of the Tudor Dynasty by Tracy Borman is published on 4 September, 2025.
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