The Lounge

 Elizabeth I

Born: September 7th, 1533

Died: March 24th, 1603

(Died at age 69)

Reigned: From her half-sister, Mary's, death on November 17th, 1558 to her own death on March 24th, 1603.

She ascended to the throne at the age of 25 and reigned for 44 years. (She is the ninth longest reigning British Monarch-- and of the six sovereigns who were/are women (Mary I (1553-1558); Lady Jane Grey (ruling 9 days); Elizabeth I (1558-1603); Anne, Queen of Great Britain (1702-1714); Victoria (1837-1901); and Elizabeth II (1952-present), Three of the top ten longest reigning monarchs are women (Victoria with 63 years; Elizabeth II with 59 years; and Elizabeth I with 44 years).

Although it is cliche, I have to say that Elizabeth I is my favorite Queen (Charles II being my favorite king).

In a great play by Alan Bennett, one of the characters has a great line when responding to how he answered a question on said queen while taking his exams-- "Queen Elizabeth.. less extraordinary for her abilities but, unlike so many of her sisters, she was able to practice them". This quote begs the question, was she only truly great because she did not lose her head or her bed to a power-grabber? I think no single factor goes into anything, but is a mixture of many things, and I do attribute Elizabeth I's success to her never marrying-- yet this was not her sole reason for success, but liberal ideals, shrewd tactics that usually manifested as self-protection, resolve, education, and surrounding herself with trustworthy advisers.

Elizabeth was only two-and-a half-years-old when her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed for supposed adultery. After her mother was done away with, Elizabeth was declared a bastard and lived her youngest years in poverty and ridicule.

Later, when Elizabeth was four, she watched her stepmother, Jane Seymour, die in childbirth. And even before the princess's issue, her father, Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon was cruelly divorced and thrown from favor, and later died (earlier the same year of Boleyn's death) of a heart condition said to be caused by the trauma of the divorce.

When Elizabeth was six, she witnessed her father's second divorce less than six months after the marriage. This divorce based solely on the fact that he did not find Anne of Cleves attractive and, to legitimate his annulment, claimed the German noblewoman to have not been a virgin before their marriage.

Catherine Howard, lascivious and childishly stupid, was only nine years Elizabeth's senior when she married Henry VIII and was within a year beheaded for treason and adultery.

The sixth and final wife of Henry VIII was Catherine Parr, who survived the marriage with her neck and most of her dignity intact. Catherine became the caretaker of the then fourteen-year-old Elizabeth. Catherine though, marrying Elizabeth's uncle through her first stepmother, became pregnant and died in childbirth when Elizabeth was just two days shy of her sixteenth birthday.

In the course of fifteen years Elizabeth had witnessed the death of six queens all because of marriage and sex (I say sex because you can't die in childbirth without first having it.) Thus it is no surprise she would not been to keen on the idea of marriage and thereby putting herself in a situation of danger.