Marrying Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen and her suitors
Linda Porter

Elizabeth I is supposed to have stated before she was ten years old that she would never marry. There is, incidentally, no reliable source for this assertion, though it has become received wisdom. This book will challenge the long-held perception, which Elizabeth herself developed as part of her carefully manufactured image as her reign progressed, that she was determined to remain single. But her actions tell a very different story.  The queen’s marriage was never a case of Elizabeth making a clear personal choice and sticking rigidly to it. She was too pragmatic for that. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that, had the right circumstances existed, she would have taken a husband, even well after her childbearing years were over. But who? A string of suitors came and went, until the late 1570s. Some were keener than others, some had known her and some she never met, yet all had something to offer, and also something to deter. Three were monarchs, including the queen’s own brother-in-law, Philip of Spain, others were high nobility from places as far apart as Savoy, Scotland and Vienna. Two became insane.  And the leading English suitors were tainted with treason, duplicity and violence. Several were serious prospects, until personal or political difficulties intervened. One was perhaps her only true love. It is time to tell their stories properly. We should look at Elizabeth through their eyes, not just through hers, or those of her increasingly desperate councillors. The attractions of this imperious, red-headed queen as a worthy prize remained tempting for twenty years. At the age of forty-five, she broke the heart of the youngest son of Catherine de Medici.

Elizabeth’s marriage was an important aspect of European relations at a time when the continent was riven by religious unrest and dynastic rivalry. It is a topic ripe for re-examination. For caught up in these machinations was another queen, Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, held under house arrest in England after fleeing her own realm in 1568. The marriage prospects of Elizabeth and Mary were intertwined, though this aspect of their relationship has often been overlooked. Elizabeth was an accomplished coquette and though she seems to have lacked the personal charm of Mary, this behaviour was an essential part of her character. She was, after all, the daughter of that seductive flirt, Anne Boleyn.