10. MYTH: Elizabeth, like Catherine the Great, was promiscuous and took a number of her male court favorites into her bed
From middle-age onward, Elizabeth I actively encouraged the popular perception of herself as ‘the Virgin Queen’. However, not everyone was convinced the monarch was quite as chaste as she said she was. Both during her reign as well as in the years following her death, rumors circulated that, far from being a virgin, Elizabeth was a wildly promiscuous woman, with a voracious sexual appetite. Above all, it’s alleged that she took the Earl of Essex and the Earl of Leicester, as well as Robert Devereux and Sir Walter Raleigh to bed with her.
According to most scholars with deep knowledge of Tudor England, it’s highly unlikely that even the Queen would have been able to conceal an affair and keep it secret. It’s true that she did have male favorites, and while the accounts of the time do reveal that Elizabeth not only liked to surround herself with handsome young men, but she also gave them nicknames and openly flirted with them. What’s more, she was also a keen dancer and loved foreign, more risqué dances, such as jigs from Italy. However, there’s simply no evidence to suggest that the queen invited her favorites or dance partners into the royal bedchamber.