The Virgin Queen
Queen Elizabeth I never married, but whether she was actually the virgin Queen has long been in dispute. Elizabeth never married or had children; she seemed to have no interest in sharing power with a spouse. Over time, she cultivated her image as a queen married to her job and her people, earning her the nickname the “Virgin Queen.” From the moment she ascended the throne in 1558, rumors circulated of the Queen’s “secret” lovers. The most notable was Robert Dudley. Although in 1560, Dudley’s wife turned up deceased at the bottom of a staircase with her neck broken, and the question became not so much whether the Queen was a virgin as whether the Queen was a murderess. Of course, it seemed that the expectations of a woman always came around to haunt her.
Elizabeth was by then a skilled enough politician to know that her people would revolt if she married Dudley. The Queen’s relations with men were often couched in romantic terms. She maintained likely romantic friendships with Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor from 1587 to 1591, Sir Walter Raleigh, and, in her old age, with the much younger Robert Devereux (the Earl of Essex). Parliament’s desire for Elizabeth’s marriage was originally motivated by the members’ hopes for international alliance; by 1566, however, they simply wanted an heir, and issued a statement in that year encouraging Elizabeth to marry anyone she wanted. She continued to thwart their attempts to lock her into marriage and ended up naming Mary, Queen of Scots son, James as her heir.