Romance novels, to me at least, have always been about the same thing, some type of forbidden love and smut. A LOT of smut. The Virgin Lover and My Enemy the Queen are no different. The Virgin Lover shows the reader that Queen Elizabeth is a normal girl who is using her innocence of being of virgin, as well as her mother's reputation of sleeping around, to get herself ahead. But of course she falls in love with the one man she cannot have, and we deal with what the offer makes happen.
My Enemy the Queen does something similar, except it is from Lettice's point of view, and it details her plot to keep Robert Dudley to herself. She narrates that she is Robert's lover when the Queen does not want him, but he favors Queen Elizabeth when he is in her favor. Lettice does not like this, and her infatuation with Robert becomes so obvious to the point that Elizabeth sends her home to her family (husband and children), because she needs to focus on what should be important to her. Instead, Lettice plots revenge on the Queen, intending to keep Robert for herself. Her husband dies, she conceives a child with Robert, and then convinces him that they need to get married regardless of how the Queen will feel. This romance novel is about how one of Queen Elizabeth's court maidens steal away the love of her life, preventing her from ever being with him.
Sound like another case of forbidden love to anybody else?
