Acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald delivers a stunning account of Elizabeth I that focuses on her role in the Wars of Religion—the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism that tore Europe apart in the sixteenth century.

Elizabeth's 1558 coronation procession was met with an extravagant outpouring of love. Only twenty-five years old, the young queen saw herself as the nation's Protestant savior, aiming to provide new hope, prosperity, and independence from the foreign influence that had plagued her sister Mary's reign. Given the scars of the Reformation, Elizabeth would need all of the powers of diplomacy and tact she could summon.

Extravagant, witty, and hot tempered, Elizabeth was the ultimate tyrant. Yet at the outset, in religious matters, she was unfathomably tolerant for her day. "There is only one Christ, Jesus, one faith," Elizabeth once proclaimed. "All else is a dispute over trifles." Heretic Queen is the highly personal, untold story of how Queen Elizabeth I secured the future of England as a world power. Susan Ronald paints the queen as a complex character whose apparent indecision was really a political tool that she wielded with great aplomb.