The dramatic, extravagant, always fascinating lives of Mary and Margaret Tudor-sisters and queens of the Renaissance, pawns in the power struggle for English supremacy-are here vividly re-created through their hitherto unpublished letters to each other and to their brother Henry VIII and through contemporary accounts-eyewitness reports, folk songs, and court poetry. These, skilfully interwoven with the narrative, reveal the whims, excesses, and hasty schemes that caused Queen Mary to lose France and Queen Margaret to lose Scotland, and impart to the story of the Tudor sisters an immediacy that no conventional historical recounting could ever provide. At eighteen, Mary, "the most beautiful woman of her time," was married to the ailing Louis XII of France. Louis doted on his witty and lighthearted young bride, but he died eighty-two days following the wedding. Suddenly alone and surrounded by members of the French court she neither knew nor trusted, Mary seduced her brother's best friend, the Duke of Suffolk, into a secret marriage, explaining why she did so in her letters to Henry. Her letrers to flim also show how, through endearing sentiments and guile, she was able to get back into his good graces. As for Margaret-short, stout, and plain-she was married at the age of twelve to King James IV to seal the peace between a warring England and Scotland. But the wars continued, and after James was slaughtered by the English in the Battle of Flodden Field, Margaret's reign as a Scottish queen of English descent was constantly challenged by rival Scottish chieftains. Her brother ignored her repeated pleas for help and in desperation she subsequently entered into two reckless marriages-the first to Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus; the second to Henry Stewart, Lord Methven. Both marriages degenerated into a struggle for power that Margaret was ill-equipped to fight, and she lost all-power, love, and finally her infant son. Alienated from her brother, her friends, and her subjects, she reveals in her letters her bitterness and confusion as she sinks further into solitary despair. The opulence and splendor, the private passions of the power-wielders, and the public pageantry of the sixteenth century are dramatically presented in The Rose and the Thorn. The author has woven a rich tapestry that vividly brings to life the personalities who altered history and have thus affected the lives of us all.