INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

Elizabeth never married; once remarking, 'I am already bound unto a husband which is the Kingdom of England.

Her network of spies, orchestrated by Walsingham, successfully protected her from the very real threat of assassination.

Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots never met. Mary was executed in 1587. Elizabeth, torn between her own safety and the horror of executing a fellow queen, was inconsolable.

Her greatest legacy was to have secured the Protestant faith in England, avoiding bloodshed.

She owned more than 3,000 gloriously coloured gowns and wore new shoes each week.

She despised the smells of leather and 'kitchen smells' - raw vegetables, particularly. One of her castles had her apartments right over the kitchen, and she was so upset at the smell that she had another kitchen built.

She could speak extemporaneously in Latin and was fluent in almost every civilized language Europe used. She was fond of 'showing off' in these and in her other areas of expertise, including dancing and playing various musical instruments.

Elizabeth was wild about horses and horseback riding, and made sure to spend a couple hours every day at it, even when she got old.

She was proud of her translation skills and of her reading, boasting that probably nobody except professors were as learned as she. She spent at least an hour every day reading history.

She was a moderate eater and drinker, never eating too much, and usually drinking only 'small beer' with meals. Everybody drank alcoholic drinks because the water was so bad, so this restriction was seen as very moderate compared to previous monarchs' consumption habits.

When not appearing in public, Elizabeth sometimes wore the same dress for days in a row.

Before Elizabeth was crowned, she consulted an astrologer who foretold that if she chose the day the stars selected, she'd have a long and glorious reign. She went with his advice and was crowned on the day he picked. For her whole life, she frequently consulted astrologers.

For her coronation, Elizabeth bought London out of crimson silk and demanded that she get first pick of any that arrived in the city (her courtiers' livery was that color).

When her courtiers wanted Sir Walter Raleigh tried for heresy, she refused to allow it because, while they were right, she thought he was a wonderful conversationalist.

She nicknamed her favorite courtiers. Sir Robert Dudley became her 'Eyes'; another courtier was her 'Spirit'. A French wooer became her 'Frog', another her 'Monkey'.

Elizabeth demanded that her ladies in waiting be extremely learned and erudite, but also good dancers, because she herself was exceptionally good at dancing.

Elizabeth scandalized her court by frequently performing a very controversial dance called La Volta, which required the man to put his hands around his partner's waist and lift her up into the air and twirl her around.

She hated long sermons. If she disapproved of the pace of the sermon, she wasn't above shouting at the speaker from her seat to get a move on. If she didn't like the subject preached, she also yelled for a change.

She wasn't above asking for presents. She was seen as very frugal / pennypinching and depended upon those gifts to maintain appearances. On one visit to a courtier's home, she received a skirt and blouse. She told him she also wanted an agate spoon and a few other things. She got them.

When she began to get old, she made it a rule that painters could not depict her as she 'really' looked. The image they worked from was called 'The Mask of Youth'. Very few contemporaneous portraits of the aging queen that do not use this mask exist, though after her death, many more accurate depictions were made.

She was very vain about her hands and liked them to be prominently displayed in paintings.

She was a ditherer. She never could make up her mind, and when she did, a Spanish diplomat complained, she'd call ambassadors back in the middle of the night to change her decision! When pressed for answers, she'd panic, then explode in fury or weeping.

Elizabeth liked to claim she never lied and always meant what she said, but her reputation was exactly the opposite.

She was afraid of mice. It is said that she would climb on a  chair screaming if she saw one.

When angry, she would swear relentlessly. Once she spat on the clothes of an unfortunate courtier who had not dressed to her liking.

Parliament continued its pressure on the Queen to deal with the question of the succession. However, Elizabeth died in 1603 still refusing to name her successor.

She didn't approve of her maids of honour marrying without her consent and if they did she would beat them. She'd jail them, sometimes

She had black teeth and also had some teeth missing which made it difficult to understand her at times.

She is usually remembered as 'The Virgin Queen' or 'Good Queen Bess'. A third nickname was 'Gloriana'.

The ghost of a lady dressed in black has been seen by several people walking in the library of Windsor Castle and is said to be the ghost of Queen Elizabeth.

At 63 she embarked on the last great love affair of her life with the 34-year-old Earl of Essex, courting him with all the skill and power of her personality and loving him with all the intensity of her emotions. He responded by leading an open rebellion against her throne. Her answer to his betrayal was to cut off his head.