Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots: The Controversial History of Cousins Turned Rivals

England's Queen Elizabeth had to fight for her life and position time and again in an era that was already unsafe for female leaders and she probably had remembered the searing feeling of realizing that her mother, Anne Boleyn had been executed by her father on a trumped-up charge. Danger was pervasive, and strategy was needed not just to thrive but to survive.

Perhaps nothing underscored that fact quite like Elizabeth's relationship with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary's fame as a ...