Things got so bad that the year of her mother’s death, Elizabeth’s governess pleaded for money, complaining the child “hath neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat.”Įlizabeth’s childhood was not totally devoid of comfort. “How haps it Governor,” she asked in 1537, “yesterday my Lady Princess, and today but my Lady Elizabeth?”Īnd so, the newly-styled Lady Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and coldly hidden out of her father’s sight, with a small household and little income. Although it is unknown whether three-year-old Elizabeth was aware of her mother’s execution in 1536, it appears the precocious, watchful girl was quick to notice the dramatic change in her station. This disappointment and her subsequent inability to produce a son, hastened the spectacular fall of Anne Boleyn. “The King’s mistress was delivered of a girl, to the great disappointment and sorrow of the King, and of the Lady herself,” Eustace Chapuys, the hostile ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire, wrote, “and to the great shame and confusion of physicians, astrologers, wizards, and witches, all of whom affirmed that it would be a boy.” But the turmoil would be justified if Henry’s “concubine” produced the male heir that the King and kingdom had long prayed for. He also broke with the Catholic Church when the Pope refused to validate his marriage to Anne. Henry VIII had cast aside his universally respected Catholic wife, Catherine of Aragon, and their daughter, Mary, for Anne. Her redheaded daughter was considered the “bastard child of a whore.”

Though Anne had bewitched the King, she was despised by most of the court and the public. Elizabeth I’s difficult childhoodĮlizabeth, daughter of the mercurial King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was born on September 7, 1533, at Greenwich Palace. But the two cousins’ tortured relationship was determined long before, during childhoods so dissimilar and defining that they would inform both Queens’ characters-and seal Mary’s tragic fate. Their decades’ long verbal boxing match over the English crown would end with Mary’s beheading at Fotheringhay Castle-with Elizabeth’s blessing-in 1587. In the other, Mary: feminine, charming, romantic and reckless.

In one castle was Elizabeth, the childless “virgin” queen: bawdy, brilliant, tactical and cynical. Queen Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots were two of the greatest, most legendary rivals in recorded history-although they never even met.

Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Mary queen of scots fraser