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 adviso...