For more than half a century, Elizabeth I was pursued by kings, princes, and nobles from across Europe. During the marriage negotiations, romance blended with diplomacy as suitor after suitor endeavored to ally himself with her in the most intimate of treaties. Yet not one of these illustrious rivals managed to secure his quarry. Even Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—the most persistent of all the suitors to the queen—never won her, though he was dearly loved by Elizabeth all her life.

Why did so many fail? Was Her Majesty haunted by the six marriages of her father, Henry VIII? Was her traumatic early love affair with Thomas Seymour, a man who was effectively her stepfather, to blame? Or was Elizabeth simply in love with the chase?

A fascinating chronicle filled with romance and intrigue, Josephine Ross's The Men Who Would Be King tells the riveting true story of the greatest hunt in history: the pursuit of the Virgin Queen.