Fotheringhay Castle. Northamptonshire, England.
February 8, 1587.

The Great Hall has been transformed into a theater of death. A scaffold, two feet high and covered in black cloth, stands in the center. A fire crackles in the hearth, fighting the winter chill, but it does little to warm the blood of the three hundred spectators crowded into the room.

They are waiting for a woman who has been a prisoner for nineteen years. A woman who was Queen of France at sixteen, Queen of Scotland at birth, and who—according to the government of Elizabeth I—is now a condemned traitor.

When she enters the hall, she doesn't look like a criminal. She walks with a limp, yes, ravaged by rheumatism, but her head is high. She wears black satin over velvet, a long white veil flowing to the ground, and a rosary hangs from her waist. She looks every inch the anointed sovereign.

But in less than an hour, the illusion of majesty will be shattered by the clumsy swing of an axe. This isn’t just a political execution; it is the first time in history a crowned monarch will be legally tried and put to death by another. And it will go horribly, famously wrong.

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