A Life of Love and Scandal

Lady Penelope is one of the most beautiful and sought-after women in Elizabethan England. Daughter of the queen's nemesis, Lady Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex, she becomes the stepdaughter of Robert Dudley when he marries her mother in style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(15,17,17);font-size:14px;">Penelope's life is full of love and scandal. The inspiration for Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet Astrophel and Stella, she is inevitably caught up in her brother Robert's fateful style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(15,17,17);font-size:14px;">A complex and fascinating woman, her life is a story of love, betrayal, and tragedy. Discover how Penelope charms her way out of serious charges of treason, adultery, and forgery, and becomes one of the last truly great ladies of the Tudor style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(15,17,17);font-size:14px;">A maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, Penelope outlives the end of the Tudors with the death of the old queen and the arrival of King James, becoming a favourite lady-in-waiting to the new queen, Anne of