Thursday, March 4, 2010

New cover for Royal Road to Fotheringhay



"Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland at the tender age of six days old. Her French-born mother, the Queen Regent, knew immediately that the infant queen would be a vulnerable pawn in the power struggle between Scotland’s clans and nobles. So Mary was sent away from the land of her birth and raised in the sophisticated and glittering court of France. Unusually tall and slim, a writer of music and poetry, Mary was celebrated throughout Europe for her beauty and intellect. Married in her teens to the Dauphin François, she would become not only Queen of Scotland but Queen of France as well. But Mary’s happiness was short-lived. Her husband, always sickly, died after only two years on the throne, and there was no place for Mary in the court of the new king. At the age of twenty, she returned to Scotland, a place she barely knew.

Once home, the Queen of Scots discovered she was a stranger in her own country. She spoke only French and was a devout Catholic in a land of stern Presbyterians. Her nation was controlled by a quarrelsome group of lords, including her illegitimate half brother, the Earl of Moray, and by John Knox, a fire-and-brimstone Calvinist preacher, who denounced the young queen as a Papist and a whore. Mary eventually remarried, hoping to find a loving ally in the Scottish Lord Darnley. But Darnley proved violent and untrustworthy. When he died mysteriously, suspicion fell on Mary. In haste, she married Lord Bothwell, the prime suspect in her husband’s murder, a move that outraged all of Scotland. When her nobles rose against her, the disgraced Queen of Scots fled to England, hoping to be taken in by her cousin Elizabeth I. But Mary’s flight from Scotland led not to safety, but to Fotheringhay Castle..."

6 comments:

  1. It's nice and I like the red, but I still prefer the old version on the right...that's the one I own.

    When does that come out Arleigh or is it already out?

    Amy
    Passages to the Past

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  2. It's pretty - looks like they are changing them to go with their "new" design. They did that with The Thistle and the Rose and Mary Queen of France last year (one of them has what looks like to be a bad 80's prom dress!).

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  3. Amy - I also have the blue one and it matches my collection of the 'portrait' covers from Three Rivers Press.

    I do believe this one is out and available to buy... seems they are just doing a cover switch.

    Daphne - lol I love the classic look of the portrait ones so much more than the headless (and legless) women.

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  4. I own the copy on the right too. The actual portrait covers emphasize who's the lead, these new ones don't.
    If the companion "Captive Queen of Scots" is re-released, wonder what will go on that!

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  5. Stolen from Michelle Moran's FB page: Here is the lady who is posing for the new covers-- she's also the editor of the books:

    http://read-it-forward.crownpublishing.com/2010/03/01/the-editor-model-hybrid-is-born-posing-for-the-covers-with-editor-heather-lazare-category-meet-the-editor/

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  6. Looks like I'm not the only one who preferred the portrait-style covers. I wish they had stuck with those. They look so nice lined up on the shelf together, with the portraits at the bottom of the spines.

    But noooo ... the world just didn't have enough headless lady covers.

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