In London, a queen fights to build a nation. In Rome, a pope plots to save its soul.

When Pope Pius V declares Queen Elizabeth I a heretic and releases her subjects from their allegiance, he unleashes a spiritual declaration of war that threatens to tear England apart . From the shadowed corridors of the Vatican to the glittering court of Whitehall, a battle of wills begins—a clash of irreconcilable faiths and ambitions that will shape the future of the Western world.

As assassins sharpen their blades and Catholic lords muster for rebellion, Elizabeth must rely on more than her armies. Guided by the cold calculations of her spymaster, Francis Walsingham, and her steadfast advisor, William Cecil, she must navigate a shadow war of spies and traitors, turn suitors into pawns, and transform art and culture into weapons of statecraft.

From the disastrous Rising of the North to the intricate Ridolfi Plot and the apocalyptic arrival of the Spanish Armada, Heretic in a Crown is a sweeping epic of a queen who defied an empire, a pope who challenged a monarch, and a nation that discovered its own identity in the crucible of faith, fire, and the divine tempest of a "Protestant Wind."