After a pardon from the King keeps Anne Boleyn's head firmly on her shoulders, she is exiled to the country to live no longer as Queen of England, but as the significantly less powerful, less influential and less wealthy Marquess of Pembroke.

As court life continues on without her, king Henry VIII moves on to his third, fourth, fifth and sixth wives, and Anne Boleyn deals with the effects of her almost-execution that left her suffering from trauma and turned the lives of her sister, daughter, and all those near her upside down. Determined to get Elizabeth to the throne, she hatches a plan that involves poison, intrigue and the killing of a king. She no longer has anything of value left to lose.

(Title comes from a quote by Elizabeth I herself: "I may not be a lion, but I am lions cub and I have lion's heart”)