TO MY FRIEND ABOUT QUEEN ELIZABETH I and the movie Elizabeth (1999)
I forgot to tell you why this movie means so much to me........
Although it's historically poppycock for the most part, the thing that this movie focuses on that other Elizabeth films don't, is her transformation from a young happy and even winsome woman to the Virgin Mary.
The Holy Mother of the Catholics (the folks always conspiring to obliterate the protestant cause) is obviously the Virgin Mary, but also her decision not to marry is the thing which saved her life and enabled one of the longest reigns in English history, therefore she became the "Virgin Queen." She resolved both issues in a way that no woman before her ever thought to do.
One more thing the movie passed up which I think would have shown a PHENOMENAL parallel, is her cousin Queen Mary of Scots, who ended up dead (by Elizabeth's hand). She was practically the exact antithesis of Elizabeth: beautiful, too in love with love, emotional, a joy to everyone around her, and never was recumbent in her place as a hereditary monarch. Mary married in secret to a charismatic man, Lord Darnley, and had a healthy baby boy. Elizabeth was rife with jealousy of a woman who seemed to have everything Elizabeth didn't..... Then Darnley ended up being a psychopath louse and getting murdered. His murderers raped Mary, therefore forcing a marriage which caused the Scots to depose her because of her outrageous irresponsibility and put her child on the thrown. Well, to make a long story short, things didn't turn out well for Mary, the woman that seemed to have everything and more closely matched the expectations of the times. Elizabeth chose with reason the correct steps to take at each juncture. What is unbelievable is that she kept EVERYONE guessing all the time what these decisions were, even her advisers. In retrospect, it's apparent she knew all along. On this topic, her decision was to distance herself from marriage and reject the very core notion of the commission of a woman and a Queen (childbirth).
I forgot to tell you why this movie means so much to me........
Although it's historically poppycock for the most part, the thing that this movie focuses on that other Elizabeth films don't, is her transformation from a young happy and even winsome woman to the Virgin Mary.
The Holy Mother of the Catholics (the folks always conspiring to obliterate the protestant cause) is obviously the Virgin Mary, but also her decision not to marry is the thing which saved her life and enabled one of the longest reigns in English history, therefore she became the "Virgin Queen." She resolved both issues in a way that no woman before her ever thought to do.
One more thing the movie passed up which I think would have shown a PHENOMENAL parallel, is her cousin Queen Mary of Scots, who ended up dead (by Elizabeth's hand). She was practically the exact antithesis of Elizabeth: beautiful, too in love with love, emotional, a joy to everyone around her, and never was recumbent in her place as a hereditary monarch. Mary married in secret to a charismatic man, Lord Darnley, and had a healthy baby boy. Elizabeth was rife with jealousy of a woman who seemed to have everything Elizabeth didn't..... Then Darnley ended up being a psychopath louse and getting murdered. His murderers raped Mary, therefore forcing a marriage which caused the Scots to depose her because of her outrageous irresponsibility and put her child on the thrown. Well, to make a long story short, things didn't turn out well for Mary, the woman that seemed to have everything and more closely matched the expectations of the times. Elizabeth chose with reason the correct steps to take at each juncture. What is unbelievable is that she kept EVERYONE guessing all the time what these decisions were, even her advisers. In retrospect, it's apparent she knew all along. On this topic, her decision was to distance herself from marriage and reject the very core notion of the commission of a woman and a Queen (childbirth).
Today our mistakes are realitively benign, but in her days, one might be killed for making the wrong political decision. That's a lot of pressure to cope with and Elizabeth did so very well.
I am quite interested in psycology and some people, like Mary tend to base their decisions on the their feelings. Elizabeth seems more like a person who relied upon thinking rather than her emotions to make decisions. You can read more about this here.
If you have never taken a Myers Briggs personality test, its well worth doing so. If you compare how the different personality types think, feel and act, you can imagine how each type might have reacted if they were the Monach at the time of Elizabeth.