Maria Fitzherbert became famous when in 1785 she secretly and illegally married the heir to the throne, later King George IV. Maria came from a Catholic landed family and had already been twice widowed. Sympathetic biographers, several of whom were fellow Catholics, presented her as a much abused and almost saintly woman who was used, betrayed and taken up again by a fickle and mentally unstable Prince. This biography, using for the first time diaries kept by her closest friends, shows that Maria was far from abused. She had a healthy, if not excessive, opinion of herself and it was her pride more than her religious convictions that demanded marriage before pleasure. She was sophisticated and cultured, if not highly educated, an acute businesswoman and strong willed. While this biography does not 'debunk' her it does give us, at last, a fully rounded portrait of a fascinating woman, her topsy-turvy marriage and the bizarre worlds of court and politics in which she lived and for a time, triumphed.