They were both young, though he was a year older; beyond childhood but not yet adults, not in the way that their lives would soon force them to be…

They had been together since their early years, and what they were experiencing, now, would, on an emotional level at least, bind them together for life. How much more frightened could you be than to be locked up in the place from which your mother was led to her execution? In the darkness, she tells him, that she will never marry, should they survive. It is a sentiment and an intent shared with one she feels deeply for; and it will carve a signature of longing throughout his illustrious life.

They will never marry, though he will try to change her mind. They may have been lovers, but the risks to her kingdom of England and Ireland would have been grave. Better, I think, to consider them as lovers of the heart, as two intense and intelligent people who had to come to terms with an England and Ireland changing faster than anyone could have imagined…

Robert Dudley, the future Earl of Leicester, and Elizabeth Tudor, the future queen of England, were prisoners in the Tower of London. It’s 1554, and England was about to change, forever.

Continue reading: The Deadly Edge of Love (part 1) – The Silent Eye