The role of a queen for most of English history had, up until the Tudor period, been non-existent. No queen had ruled in her own right, their role was to serve as a woman should and be subservient to their husband. When Mary ascends in 1553, a new type of monarch is forged, and a new question arises. Does a queen gain an independence never before seen and serve her country as ruler, or remain within patriarchal values and place her country second to her husband? Since Mary’s reign was too short for her to truly answer this question on her own, it is her sister Elizabeth who truly defines what it means to be a queen.
For this period, women were primarily viewed as a commodity; a resource to be traded in the hopes of gaining something. Regal women were of no exception, princesses were betrothed often before they could even speak; Mary I was set to be engaged to the son of the King of France when she was just 2 years old. Interestingly, this is where Elizabeth already becomes the anomaly for women and queens alike. Through a combination of her being declared illegitimate under Henry VIII and Edward VI and the suspicion thrown on her under Mary, Elizabeth was never betrothed to a man as nearly every royal woman before her was. Elizabeth was one of the few female members of royalty who was not valuable as a commodity but as her status as a royal woman. This helped set the stage for her infamous Virgin Queen persona; what was originally a matter of coincidence and fortunate timing soon became a deliberate decision. Despite decades of pressuring from councillors and centuries of traditional practices weighing on Elizabeth, she remained steadfast in her belief that she should remain unmarried telling her councillors, “I have already joined myself in marriage to a husband, namely the Kingdom of England”. In fact, through her reluctance to wed, Elizabeth not only resisted the expectations placed upon her as a woman, and subsequently as a Queen, but challenged a long-standing expectation of marriage among monarchs in general. Elizabeth I is one of the four English monarchs that remained single, of which two were children and unable to be wed. Through her lack of marriage, Elizabeth was able to fight back the expectations placed on her as a woman, a queen and a monarch.
It was also through marriage that Elizabeth was able to resist another fundamental aspect of womanhood at the time: being a mother. While at the same time she defied one of the most important parts of being a monarch: naming an heir. The refusal to wed, and thus to bear a child, meant Elizabeth was already rejecting her ‘role’ as a woman and monarch; the Tudor line would end with her. Even after the obvious heir came forth, James I of England, Elizabeth gained his favour but never officially declared him heir. Due to the various uprisings, primarily led by James’ own mother, Elizabeth was reluctant to name James her successor for fear of further revolts. Though he would rise to the throne unchallenged, this small fact that he was never actually declared heir further highlights Elizabeth’s resistance to the expectations placed on her at the time. In this sense, Elizabeth redefined what it meant to be a woman and a monarch, prioritising herself and her reign over all else. Through her lack of motherhood and lack of heir, Elizabeth defied her supposed role and defined what it meant for her, and later others, to be queen.
Finally, Elizabeth had a unique perspective of her own femininity at the time, fuelled partially by her sister’s work. As Mary was the first true Queen of England, she had to set the precedent for her and future female monarchs. Despite her generally more traditional attitudes, Mary was steadfast in her stance that she be treated with equal authority, telling her council, “My father possessed the same regal estate [as me]; to him ye were always loving subjects”. Mary paved the way for Elizabeth to take this one step further. Instead of just arguing for her equal authority, Elizabeth seemed to argue that she was of equal intellectual and mental capacity as the kings that preceded her. Famously in 1588, Elizabeth stood in full armour on the cliffs at Tilbury, proudly declaring, “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and the stomach of a king, and a king of England too”. It is here that we begin to truly see how far Elizabeth resisted the ‘female role’, using her sister’s work to defy the misogynistic hierarchy that deemed women lesser than their male counterparts.
In several fundamental ways, Elizabeth defied the very basics of what femininity and womanhood meant in this period. While she was still subjected to a plethora of patriarchal attitudes of the era, she fought many of them wherever she could. Elizabeth was far from a traditional monarch by most means, yet she has been remembered as one of our most powerful queens even hundreds of years on. In terms of how far she resisted the notions attempting to trap her into a more subservient role, in my opinion Elizabeth pushed against them more than any other monarch to date.
By Scarlett Oram