The Virgin's Lover

The Virgin's Lover is a historical novel by the English writer Philippa Gregory, published by Simon & Schuster in 2004. It belongs to her sequence of Tudor novels, which includes The Constant Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool.

The book opens in the autumn of 1558, when the death of Mary I is announced and her half-sister Elizabeth becomes queen. Gregory tells what follows from four positions at once: Elizabeth's own, that of William Cecil, the adviser who has to make her reign work, that of Robert Dudley, the childhood friend who returns to court and becomes her favourite, and that of Amy Robsart, the wife left behind in the country. Dudley had been imprisoned in the Tower during Mary's reign, when his father and one of his brothers were executed, and his return to favour is the beginning of the trouble. Cecil's argument is that the queen must marry a prince strong enough to defend the kingdom, and Elizabeth's preference for a man who is already married is a political problem as much as a personal one.

Amy's refusal to release her husband is the point on which the private story and the public one meet, and Gregory keeps all four of her narrators close to the events they cannot control.