Margaret, the first Tudor princess and queen consort and queen regent of Scotland, is the forgotten Tudor. Yet the elder sister of Henry VIII led a life of great drama, composed in equal parts of privilege and pain, highlighted by personal danger, hardship and loss. Overlooked or dismissed by historians as ‘Henry VIII in a dress’ (not, in itself, necessarily an insult), Margaret has been ill-served by superficial biographies or heavy-handed academic attempts to paint her as an early feminist prototype. Yet recent research has revealed a quite different woman from the popular image of an oversexed whinger, whose main interests were her wardrobe and attractive young men. ‘The Thistle and the Rose’ reveals a woman who was a gifted politician and diplomatist.