Abstract to the book "The Struggle for the Throne" by E. Pitaval : The middle of the XVI century. Princess Elizabeth Tudor triumphs over circumstances and becomes Queen of England, but this is just the beginning. There is a long confrontation ahead with the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, the wife of the French King Francis II. By the will of fate, Mary Stuart finds herself embroiled in a struggle for three crowns at once: for the English, for the French and for the Scottish. Politics forces us to claim the English crown. Her marriage to the French king makes Mary an obstacle for the powerful Catherine de' Medici, the mother of Francis II, who wants to rule on behalf of her son. And even the Scottish crown, which belongs to Mary by right, is not so easy to keep. This novel by Ernst Pitaval, a classic of historical prose, completes the dilogy "In the Struggle for the Throne." The first book of the dilogy, Mary and Elizabeth, was previously published in the same series.