The Queen was accused of having been a woman of "abominable carnal desires" who had craftily and traitorously misled her royal spouse into believing she was "chaste and of pure, clean, and honest living." Worse still, she had followed "daily her frail and carnal lust" and had actually "conspired, imagined, and encompassed" the final destruction of the King. This book is an analysis of a life and a multitude of circumstances that culminated in violent death; a study of how chance and personality, morality and adultery, deliberate malice and good intentions, when operating within the limits set by environment, can create a single act in time, the swift descent of the executioner's axe.