Henrietta Maria is one of British history’s most reviled queen consorts. Condemned in her lifetime as that ‘Popish brat of France’, an adulteress and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic, so causing a civil war, and a cruel and bigoted mother. This biography unpicks the myths and considers Henrietta Maria’s point of view, setting her story as a royal consort alongside that of her mother and sisters.