Meeting the Queen: Documentary Accounts

Abstract

The lines quoted above concern Lady Elizabeth Tudor, sister of Queen Mary, who just entered the second year of her reign at the time this report was penned by the Venetian Ambassador Giacomo Soranzo.¹ Married to Philip of Spain for less than a month, Mary had every expectation of bearing an heir to the throne and, therefore, thwarting Elizabeth’s hopes for succession. Yet even inher precarious position, the young Elizabeth’s demeanor projected the same “dignified majesty” that would astound the onlookers in her advanced age. Instead of listing Elizabeth’s physical characteristics, this account outlines a handsome presence, dignity, and charisma that allow the young woman who was envied and harassed by her royal sister to carry herself in a way that may convince the observers that it is Elizabeth who is queen, and not Mary. The physical details in Soranzo’s description are hardly vivid, and yet the essential image of her person-hood comes across in it. It becomes the earliest in what will be an ensuing paradigm of describing the Queen in a manner that transcended physicality.

She was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and was born on the 7th September 1533, so she is now about twenty-one years old; her figure and face are very handsome, and such an air of dignified majesty pervades all her actions that no one can fail to suppose she is a queen.