Alison Weir – Elizabeth the Queen

When you are madly pregnant and on an epic painting spree, it is natural to fall back on old favourites, which means Ye Olde Tudor Tymes. But it was a mistake to think that Any Tudor Will Do, like some medieval Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Instead of bodices and feasting and jousting, instead I have been reading Proper Historical Information, and more often than not, falling asleep and then waking up with the Spanish Armada stuck to my face. Elizabeth the Queen is pretty good, but timing is everything.

PREVIOUSLY ON YE OLDE TUDOR TIMES: after Henry was done with his wife-massacring, Prince Edward reigned for all of five minutes before going to the great Tudor palace in the sky. Then Queen Mary was all, hurrah, now I can restore Catholicism by burning lots of people and marrying a hugely unpopular Spanish dude who doesn’t love me. And then promptly dies as well.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been shipped off to the countryside where she may or may not have been endlessly plotting against Mary and may or may not have been entertaining herself by flirting with her stepmother’s husband (keep up, won’t you?).

When Mary dies, the people are all, ick, another woman, it’s not natural, we like wife-murderers better. So Elizabeth has a tough job on her hands to win them over. Luckily, she is as clever as a clog, and blessed with perhaps the greatest rhetorical ability in English history. When told Mary is dead, for example, she doesn’t just sob or even say ‘about bloody time’ but comes out with ‘this is the Lord’s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes.’ Never stuck for a nice turn of phrase, our Liz.

So, Alison Weir didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, because my Tudor obsession is deep and long lasting. But it’s all covered comprehensively and nicely here. The endless ‘will they, won’t they’ of her relationship with Robert Dudley. Every man and his dog constantly nagging her to marry, until it looks like she might actually do so, and then they are like, woah, we didn’t mean him. Mary, Queen of Scots, lurking ominously in the background, flattering with one hand and plotting with the other. The bad Spanish King Philip on his high horse and moral crusade against the harlot/Queen.

What I found most interesting was Elizabeth’s relationship with the men she liked. She is all YOU MUST LOVE ME AND ONLY ME and they are all – OF COURSE YOUR MAJESTY. Then they immediately run off and get mistresses and heirs and there is weeping and throwing in the Tower, and this happens fifty million times. Seriously, guys, you need to learn from other people’s mistakes.

I could have done with a bit less non-Elizabeth background detail, as I’m more interested in individuals rather than facts about palaces and diet and population changes, but some people like all that. Also, I do not need to be told several times in a chapter that the people saw Elizabeth as a second Deborah or Judith. I heard you the first time, thanks. And a bit more editing wouldn’t have gone amiss. I understand that Elizabeth lived her entire life between a rock and a hard place, but there are other ways of conveying that than with poor sentence structure: ‘Yet Elizabeth had yet to sign the death warrant’. Other words exist.

It took me a month to read 484 pages which is unprecedented, but that is a sign of my current mental state and not a sign of how enjoyable and informative the book is.