Shakespeare’s Queens Books in Order

Anna Stuart's Shakespeare's Queens, published as Joanna Courtney, is a themed historical trilogy that takes famous female figures from Shakespeare and asks what their real stories might have looked like before drama and legend flattened them. The three novels are Blood Queen, built around the woman remembered as Lady Macbeth, Fire Queen, which reimagines Ophelia as Ofelia, and Iron Queen, which turns to the historical roots behind Cordelia.

The idea is simple and clever, what if the women Shakespeare borrowed were far more formidable than the plays allow?

Each book stands alone, but they speak to one another beautifully. Blood Queen is set in eleventh-century Scotland, where rival claims to the throne turn love, marriage, and motherhood into political weapons. Fire Queen moves to an older Denmark and reshapes Ophelia into a fighter and protector at Hamlet's side rather than a tragic ornament. Iron Queen goes back further still, into Iron Age Britain, where Cordelia must survive family treachery and fight for her people's future.

What links the trilogy is not plot but purpose. Courtney is interested in women who have been handed down in simplified form, mad girl, wicked wife, dutiful daughter, and giving them back ambition, intelligence, anger, and practical power. These are not literary games in costume. They are full historical adventures with hard settings, unstable politics, and women who have to make difficult choices in order to survive.

The worlds themselves are rough-edged and important. Scotland, Denmark, and ancient Britain are shown as places shaped by clan loyalty, inheritance, warfare, and the constant question of who gets to rule. Travel is dangerous, families are rarely safe, and every relationship comes loaded with political meaning. That gives the books strong forward drive even for readers who are not especially interested in Shakespeare.

In tone, the trilogy blends myth, history, and character drama in a very readable way. There is plenty of tension, but also a real curiosity about the gap between the story most people know and the lives that may have inspired it. You can begin with whichever heroine interests you most, but reading in publication order, Blood Queen, Fire Queen, then Iron Queen, shows the full range of what Courtney is doing. She is not trying to out-Shakespeare Shakespeare. She is doing something more fun, handing the women the microphone back.