A Book Review From Ecce Homo: "The Life of Elizabeth I"

I finished Alison Weir's monumental biography of Queen Elizabeth I, and here's a few thoughts.

I've read about her in history books, though never a biography dedicated to her. I was aware she was intelligent, but this book explains how brilliant she truly was. As the daughter of Ann Boleyn (whom her father executed--really murdered because she didn't give him a son), she was acutely aware of an ax hovering over her neck throughout her childhood due to dynastic infighting.

It's a difficult read at times because of so many characters (in a reign as long as hers was, she interacted with hundreds of people, many of them important politically), and also because of extended quotes from correspondences at the time in Ye Olde English. They were difficult to translate in my head sometimes, but nonetheless my biggest takeaway is how damn smart she was (she translated weighty books from Latin to English just for distraction).

(Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth's closest advisor and best friend, all-around brilliant intellect, surrogate big brother/father figure to her and that rarest of political figures in the Tudor era, a genuinely devoted husband and father to his family)

And that intelligence continued in every way throughout her reign. One of the biggest pleasures of this book is seeing how she played the "helpless female" to get her councilors and the ambassadors from foreign countries off their guard and find out more than they wanted to reveal. Elizabeth had a mind like a steel trap, but she was crafty enough to downplay it if it served her purpose. 

This quote from her in 1593 to members of Parliament is astonishingly ferocious, and accurate: "Had I been born crested, not cloven, you would not speak thus to me!" Fucking breathtaking. She had a sophisticated, very droll sense of humor as well. When the French Ambassador complained about her keeping him waiting for 6 days for an audience she laughed, "It is true the world was made in 6 days, but it was by God, to whose power the infirmity of man is not to be compared."

And to a dreary courtier's complaint about not being advanced: "Anger makes dull men witty...but it keeps them poor." Keeping it jovial, but there's an implied threat as well.

(Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, the one great romantic love of Elizabeth's life. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London with her when they were young, both of them facing summary execution, which forged a relationship between them that was unbreakable. They fought and argued often, but she loved him till the day he died, even though he wenched his way through Elizabethan London)

Her accomplishments? She did her best to keep England out of war (and she was uninterested in expanding the British empire), but when her country did go to war she was an inspiration to all of her soldiers. She also calmed the country of the Catholic/Protestant infighting and made it clear that people should not be terrorized for differing beliefs, which made the lives of many of her subjects a whole lot easier, especially when they remembered the reign of her older sister Queen Mary.

(Elizabeth's cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, challenger to Elizabeth's throne, seen here practicing her side-eye with her son James. She receives a great deal of attention in this book, and IMO, she was a complete fucking nitwit, who basically kept daring QE I to execute her. She finally got her wish)

Elizabeth I had an extraordinarily long reign, marked by long periods of peace and a resurgence of the arts, in particular the works of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

The last chapter is heartbreaking. For the last few weeks of her life she'd sit on pillows on the floor of her bedroom, and everyone would try to get her to go to bed, but she refused. "If you saw what I see in that bed, you wouldn't say that. When I go into that bed, I won't wake up again." A detail that gave me chills, and terrified everyone around her: very close to the end, she stood up and stared straight ahead for fifteen hours, unspeaking, seemingly not hearing the entreaties of her doctors, her ladies in waiting, and her friends, to lie down and get some rest.

She finally did allow people to help her into bed, and then 4 or 5 hours later she died. Although she'd been incommunicative with anyone for days, when the minister performed the last rites she smiled and made the motions with her hands to indicate she was aware.

I think when someone has had a reign as long and marked by peace, prosperity and triumph as hers was, there must be psychological trauma when it ends for the citizens. Her countrymen felt it when she died. Victoria's subjects certainly felt it when she passed, and Queen Elizabeth the 2nd's citizens undoubtedly do as well. As always, it's interesting to me that the greatest rulers in Britain's history were all women. And it fills me with foreboding for the future, with none to follow her fit to wipe Queen Elizabeth the II's shoes.

And still, the magnificent QEI lies in her hawk-nosed sarcophagus alongside her deranged sister Mary. I would not want to be a night watchman in Westminster Abbey after hours, because I bet those queens get testy when the votives start flickering out and no one else is around. Add in all those dead, buried, storied, murderous Plantagenets and Tudors buried there as well, and it would not make for a pleasant tea-time.

A minor character in this book (and in real life) is Lettice Knollys, the one woman Elizabeth hated immoderately (whatever one thinks of her otherwise, she was remarkably pragmatic, and viewed any situation in terms of how it might affect her). Lettice was close with her cousin Elizabeth growing up, but she was always proud of being more beautiful than Elizabeth, arrogantly so. And then she made the biggest mistake of her life, she willfully went after the one man Elizabeth truly loved, married him and earned the Queen's everlasting enmity as a result.

She's fascinated me since I read "My Enemy, the Queen" (a historical fiction book that actually hews quite close to the facts) when I was 11. Apparently she's gotten a more comprehensive, real biography since. I'd like to read it, but I'm sure she'll be just as much a self-absorbed asshole in this book as she was in "My Enemy, The Queen."

Photo Credits: Wikipedia; Ballentine Books