The introduction explains that the book is not a biography of either Bess or Mary but an attempt to consider the effect of keeping Mary captive on Bess and some of her descendants. The impact of Mary Queen of Scots’ years in the Shrewsbury household is particularly apparent in the families of four of Bess’s children: her second son William, whose great-grandson rebuilt Bess’s Chatsworth as the house we see now and themed its Painted Hall on depicting William of Orange as Julius Caesar, echoing the faintly Caesarian flavour of the murder of Rizzio; her youngest son Charles, whose descendants included a crop of writers including the prolific Margaret Cavendish; her second daughter Elizabeth Cavendish, mother of Lady Arbella Stuart; and her youngest daughter Mary, two of whose own daughters wrote books of recipes and remedies which offer clues to the medical history of both Arbella and Mary Queen of Scots as well as a glimpse of life in the households of Bess and her children. The introduction also proposes that life in the various Cavendish and Talbot households had an imaginative and emotional dimension as well as a material one and glances briefly at possible mindscapes of various inhabitants.