- 5/18/2025
From her tumultuous early life to her legendary reign, discover fascinating details about England's most celebrated Tudor monarch. Journey through Elizabeth I's remarkable life, including her dangerous childhood, linguistic talents, famous relationships, and lasting cultural impact on the English Renaissance.
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00:00God save your majesty.
00:02Welcome to Miss Mojo, and today we're delving into some of the reasons why Elizabeth I became one of the most iconic and well-known of the British monarchs.
00:11What do you love so much?
00:13Your majesty.
00:14Speak up, girl, I know who I am.
00:18Number 10. Her mother was a famous and doomed queen.
00:21I'm so sorry.
00:27You and I are both young.
00:30And by God's grace, boys will follow.
00:33The six wives of Henry VIII are legendary, but if you're not a student of British history, it might surprise you that Anne Boleyn was actually the mother of Queen Elizabeth I.
00:42Who knows, Mistress Bryan. Perhaps one day this little girl will preside over empires.
00:47Henry's doomed second wife. He destroyed England's relationship with the Catholic Church to marry her.
00:52Their relationship soured after she fell to produce a son, and he eventually had her executed.
00:57Wherefore, I submit to death with a good will, humbly asking pardon of all the world.
01:06If anyone should take up my case, I ask them only to judge it kindly.
01:13Henry declared Elizabeth illegitimate soon after.
01:16This all but ensured that she would never claim the throne for herself.
01:19However, the king changed his mind before his death, placing her third in line behind her younger brother, who would become Edward VI, and her sister, who would become Mary I.
01:29I will be queen, and I will cleanse all men of Satan's beasts.
01:36Number nine. Fluent in several languages.
01:39Like her siblings, Elizabeth Tudor's education was of paramount importance.
01:43Under the tuition of Roger Asham, she learnt theology, history, and moral philosophy.
01:48Of her, he wrote, her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.
01:59From her teenage years, she was writing and speaking several European languages, and even many regional British dialects.
02:06The true number of languages she spoke varies from source to source.
02:09She was more than proficient in Italian, French, Latin, and more.
02:13Not only that, but she frequently tested her skills by translating English text into different languages.
02:18Now, for most children, this kind of thing would have been an absolute torment.
02:22But Elizabeth seems to have reveled in it.
02:25She must have had the mind of a computer programmer, or an expert solver of crossword puzzles.
02:31Because she continued to do translations for the whole of the rest of her life.
02:35These skills probably gave her a huge advantage in diplomacy and international relations,
02:41as she could speak directly to her foreign allies and adversaries in their native tongue.
02:50Number 8, she almost married her stepmother's husband.
02:56Would you remember me if it was not for my status?
03:00You do yourself a disservice, princess.
03:01It's your face.
03:08How do you remember that?
03:10After Henry VIII's death, his widowed queen, Catherine Parr, married Thomas Seymour,
03:15a high-ranking officer under the new king, Elizabeth's brother, Edward VI.
03:19The orphaned princess found herself a stepchild in their household.
03:23Unfortunately, this saw her pursued by her stepmother's manipulative husband.
03:26Elizabeth was confused by Seymour's behaviour and by her reaction to it.
03:32Seymour was a handsome, sexually charged man, and she was flattered by his attentions, but she was also scared by them.
03:39Seymour's actions during this period were so suspicious to the crown that he was later executed for treason,
03:45with his political opponents accusing him of trying to murder the king.
03:48Elizabeth was nearly charged with treason for entertaining a potential marriage to him.
03:52And during a prolonged interrogation, it was only by her own wits and cleverness that she escaped charges.
03:58She was 15 years old.
04:00Have you come unarmed?
04:01Or have you some arsenal of evidence?
04:04I'm looking for it.
04:08Present it to me.
04:10Now, please.
04:11Number seven.
04:12Her half-sister almost had her executed.
04:15She escaped that treason charge, which could have resulted in death.
04:18But Elizabeth came much closer to death by another sibling, when her elder sister Mary ascended the throne.
04:25You are accused of conspiring with Sir Thomas Wyatt and others against Her Sovereign Majesty, and are arrested for treason.
04:33I am commanded to take you hence from this place to the tower.
04:38During Mary's reign, Elizabeth lived virtually imprisoned at Hatfield House.
04:43The queen's devout Catholicism meant that Elizabeth's Protestantism was treasonous.
04:48Mary's hardline religiosity earned her many enemies, and all of them saw her sister as the answer to their problems.
04:54No one has come to anyone, Mary.
04:56I don't need to hear your lies.
04:58I don't need to hear your truths, either.
04:59I'm just warning you.
05:01And believe me, it will not be a warning again.
05:03We do not decide who sits on thrones.
05:09God does.
05:11Do you want to pick a fight with him, too?
05:14As well as with me?
05:15As long as Elizabeth was alive, and Mary was queen, each knew they were in danger.
05:19Although Elizabeth had no involvement in the 1554 rebellion in her name, she once again narrowly avoided a trial.
05:26I do not think to be queen at all.
05:28You may return to your own house at Hatfield, but you will remain there under arrest until I am recovered.
05:34Four years later, Mary would be dead, and Elizabeth would begin her reign.
05:39Number six.
05:40Her reign was a golden age in the arts.
05:42Once Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, at the age of 25, the kingdom began to transform in ways that allowed the arts to flourish.
05:50And her courtiers took careful notice to cultivate her own interests as if they were their own.
05:56For many young aspiring courtiers, it became not only fashionable to toss a few ducats at a poet, but also to keep one on retainer.
06:04Elizabethan England saw a booming economy and the rise of romanticism in the arts.
06:09It also saw the emergence of now-legendary playwrights, musicians, poets, and painters.
06:15Can a play show us the very truth and nature of love?
06:20I bear witness to the wager, and will be the judge of it as occasion arises.
06:26William Shakespeare's career began in the latter half of her reign, a period that would later be captured in Shakespeare in Love.
06:33Artists were falling over themselves to immortalise the queen in their work.
06:37Poet Edmund Spencer's The Fairy Queen, an ode to the queen's eternal youth and beauty, earned him a lifelong pension from Elizabeth.
06:45Spencer picks a knight to be a patron of a particular virtue.
06:51So in The Fairy Queen that exists, we get an account of holiness, of temperance, of chastity, which actually has a female knight.
07:00That's the exception.
07:01Number five, The Virgin Queen's Favourite.
07:03On a knight such as this, could any woman say no?
07:09On a knight such as this, could a queen say no?
07:14The nature of Elizabeth's relationship with Robert Dudley, a man from a disgraced but once powerful family, was widely discussed at court and abroad.
07:22Once she became queen, she restored him to his former glory, and he was counted among her most trusted advisors.
07:28They even had adjoining apartments in her palace.
07:31However, Dudley's marriage to Amy Robsart presented a problem.
07:36Elizabeth hated the gentlemen at court to bring their wives with them.
07:40She was intensely jealous of them.
07:42She wanted to be, you know, the queen bee in the hive of the court.
07:46It was even more the case for Robert Dudley that his wife just would not be welcome in the presence of Elizabeth.
07:52Her sudden death led to speculation that she had been murdered to make a marriage between Elizabeth and Dudley possible.
07:59This, along with Elizabeth's insistence on not marrying a political ally, fuelled damaging gossip about everyone involved.
08:06People were prosecuted and severely punished for gossip about the queen.
08:11Some people said that they were lovers.
08:13Some people said that they were married.
08:15Some people even said that she'd had a child by him and the child had been hidden away.
08:19Number four, she executed her own cousin.
08:22Threats to Elizabeth's power didn't end with the deaths of her siblings.
08:25I have forced myself to walk in the open freely among my people and I have never known at which moment the pistol or the dagger would do its work.
08:31So make no jokes with me about death.
08:33Religious partisanship continued as many Catholics manoeuvred to install Elizabeth's Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, in her place.
08:42Elizabeth initially considered aligning with Mary, especially once she was forced to step down from the Scottish throne.
08:47When the embattled Mary arrived in England for help, the queen and her council had her imprisoned.
08:54If you forbid me to go to France, what will you do with me?
08:56I shall take you deeper into England for your protection.
09:01Then I am your prisoner.
09:03If you are innocent, what have you to fear?
09:04This didn't stop rebellions in Mary's name.
09:07And in 1587, nearly 20 years after she arrived in England, Mary was beheaded.
09:12The intrigue surrounding their relationship inspired several retellings in literature, on stage and on screen.
09:19Shockingly, the two never met in real life.
09:21You know I cannot.
09:26Did you come so far at such great risk only to refuse me?
09:30Number three, she never married.
09:32I will have one mistress here.
09:34And no master!
09:39Not only was it customary for women to marry in the 16th century, but Elizabeth I's reign and the stability of the Tudor dynasty was assumed to depend on it.
09:48While the moniker of the Virgin Queen may have been necessary to protect her reputation, Elizabeth's decision not to marry was often challenged.
09:55Will you give me some suggestion?
09:59For some say France and others Spain and some cannot abide foreigners at all.
10:07So I'm not sure how best to please you unless I married one of each.
10:12It was long assumed Elizabeth would make a politically advantageous marriage with a foreign ruler of equal stature.
10:19Like former brother-in-law Philip II of Spain, Mary I's surviving husband.
10:23By never marrying, she could be free to engage in political agreements as she saw fit, without having to consider a husband's pre-existing entanglements.
10:31Observe, Lord Burley.
10:37I am married to England.
10:41Number two, the myth that makeup killed her.
10:43Paintings of the era seem less concerned with realism compared with written documentation of what Elizabeth actually looked like.
10:50However, her white makeup was true to life.
10:52You can see it giving, you know, that sort of idea of virginal purity that was so important to her image.
11:00She adopted this extreme look after smallpox scarred her face beyond repair.
11:05Some claim that she used Venetian cerus, a popular cosmetic of the time that included lead in its ingredients.
11:11Ironically, these concoctions tended to age the skin even faster.
11:15So the irony being that your skin is getting worse and worse, and you're putting more and more of this toxic substance on it to try and cover up the effects of the actual product itself.
11:26So then it gets worse and worse and worse, and you're in a vicious cycle.
11:29A myth that the blood poisoning that eventually killed her was due to the buildup of lead in her system over time has never been proven.
11:36But it's true that contemporary makeup and makeup removers were loaded with ingredients like lead, mercury, and other toxic chemicals.
11:44And eventually the moisture from your skin would react with those chemicals and slowly eat away your flesh.
11:50Nasty.
12:06Number one, she never named a successor.
12:09When the queen was approaching her 70th year, one of her closest companions noted that the talk of the succession every day rudely sounded in her ears.
12:21Despite constant threat of usurpation or rebellion, Elizabeth never named an heir to the throne in her lifetime.
12:27Without marriage or royal issue, the Tudor dynasty would die with her.
12:31There will never be a queen with more zeal and devotion for her country and her subjects.
12:38But it is my desire now to reign no longer than for your good.
12:47As she became more withdrawn and depressed in her final years, the topic of succession was handled mostly in secret by her advisors.
12:54In 1603, Elizabeth's death saw the arrival of James Stuart, King of Scotland, and the son of Elizabeth's former political rival, Mary, Queen of Scots.
13:04After six rulers, 118 years, and 45 years of sovereignty by Elizabeth alone, the Tudor era ended.
13:12I am mother to my people.
13:16God, give me strength to bear this mighty freedom.
13:20Did any of these facts surprise you?
13:22Tell us in the comments.
13:23I am your queen.
13:28I am myself.
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