Queen Elizabeth I: Not quite the Virgin Queen
Queen Elizabeth I lived her life “wedded” to her country and has long been known as the “Virgin Queen.” During a speech to parliament in 1559, the Queen declared that “this shall be for me sufficient that a marble stone shall declare that a Queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.”
It was an incredibly bold statement to make, considering Queens and Kings were expected to marry and produce an heir. Not to mention Elizabeth was only 26 at the time of her speech, having begun her reign a year earlier.
But when you take a look at the chaos Elizabeth had been exposed to, it’s easy to see why marriage was an institution she was desperate to avoid. And who can blame her?
Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, married six times, and her mother Anne Boleyn was beheaded in 1536, when Elizabeth was just two-years-old. Her stepmother, Catherine Howard was executed in 1542, when Elizabeth was eight, and she went on to witness the downfall of her other four stepmothers. The King divorce two of them, one died in childbirth and only one — Catherine Parr — outlived King Henry VIII, if only by a year.
