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Did they or didn't they? Elizabeth I and Robery Dudley, the Earl of Leicester
Why write about Elizabeth I
My First Sale
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Interview of Jeane Westin by Luan Gains, August 2009
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Did they or didn't they? Elizabeth I and Robert Dudley,
the Earl of Leicester
Bess and her Robin's love story is a tangled puzzle, one which I've attempted to unravel in years of research and two novels. In the first, The Virgin's Daughters:In the court of Elizabeth I, NAL, August, 2009, I've viewed their lives through the eyes of two of Elizabeth's ladies-of-the-bedchamber. In the novel I'm currently writing, His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester, NAL, August 2010, I write from their viewpoints, getting inside their hearts.
 Robin's last letter to Elizabeth survives. He says her medicine has made him feel better and he kisses her foot. But is that all? Was there another page to the letter that Elizabeth could not allow to survive? Did she carry a romantic secret to her grave, a secret that answers one of the continuing puzzles of her life?
Elizabeth, the iconic Virgin Queen, Gloriana, Good Queen Bess, Diana the Huntress and all the other grand titles she was known by, was obviously and forever in love with Robert Dudley, her Sweet Robin. For thirty years she could not allow him to leave her side without great pain, their love outlasting her endless flirtations with other courtiers and on-going marriage negotiations with most of the foreign princes of Europe.
Yet, Robert was so unpopular with many jealous courtiers and much of the English population that for several centuries after his death he was treated by historians as a greedy, not too bright failure with little to recommend him but his looks and ability to dance the galliard. In his lifetime many believed he murdered his first wife, Amy Robsart He was also suspected of poisoning every man who opposed him and who died suddenly.
We know better today. Although I believe that Elizabeth might have married him in the beginning of her reign, Amy's suspicious death made that forever impossible. Did he kill his wife? No, I don't believe so. Dudley was no fool. If there was one thing that would put the queen forever beyond his reach, it was a murder...a murder in which she, too, would obviously be implicated.
Amy had advanced breast cancer when she fell down two short flights of stairs at Cumnor Manor in 1560 and broke her neck. Modern medicine tells us that cancer can cause brittle bones. It would take a very short fall by a woman in great pain to break a fragile neck. She could also have committed suicide, but the possibility of that was immediately hushed because it meant that she could not be buried in consecrated ground. Two juries judged Amy's death was caused by "misadventure," in modern meaning an accident, but many Englishmen never accepted that judgment.
Any number of theories about Amy's death have come down to us. I even found an accusation against William Cecil, Elizabeth's Secretary of State. Could he have had Amy killed in order to implicate Dudley, since Cecil feared Elizabeth would marry him instead of a foreign prince? I'll leave that one to the conspiracy theorists.
As for Robert Dudley, his love for Elizabeth survived his two marriages and many affairs, remaining the one constant and supremely important love of his life.
There are numerous guesses about why Elizabeth never married. Marriage put a wife in Tudor times under her husband's total control. Her father's marriages taught her well. Besides, Elizabeth liked to rule. Perhaps she was afraid of childbirth, which killed many women. Most of all, she liked to play the marriage game keeping half of Europe guessing and her country free from attacks while there was a possibility of acquiring England without bloodshed or expense.
The first question asked of any writer of Elizabeth and Dudley: Did they have a consumated love affair or was she truly a virgin? One answer could be that the the definition of virgin has changed over the centuries. In Tudor times it meant a "maid," in other words an unmarried woman. Another answer: Elizabeth willed herself to be a virgin and that was that! No one will ever know for sure, which is a good thing for writers who want to weave a tale.
Cecil, himself, thought they were lovers as late as 1572 or 14 years after Elizabeth ascended the throne. In the early years of her reign, it was remarked in letters by ambassadors and other unofficial communications that they were very physical...she, touching him (she tickled his neck when he knelt to be made a garter knight) and he, having access to her chamber whenever he liked. When they were young, they had adjoining chambers.
If you have read much of this queen's reign, you know that she was shrewd and a good judge of men. Would she have kept Dudley so close if he were an idiot? She put him on her council. She twice named him head of her armies and even contemplated naming him Captain-General of England, which would have put him second in command of the realm. Cecil talked her out of it.
Early in her reign when she thought she was dying of smallpox, she named Dudley Protector and demanded that her council give him twenty thousand pounds a year (an unheard of sum). England was her most precious possession; she refused to ever name an heir in her lifetime. Would she have left her realm, her most precious posession to someone she thought unworthy?
One of my greatest pleasures in writing about them is to imagine them in their castles and riding madly through the countryside all those years, always together yet forever apart.
(First appeared on www.elizabethfiles.com)
Why I write about Elizabeth I
Elizabeth Tudor, who reigned as queen of England without a consort from 1558 until 1603 is to me the most fascinating woman in western history.
The fact that she ruled alone makes her unique. Women were not supposed to have the mental powers to rule. People believed in a God ordained Great Chain of Being and women were near the bottom just above children.
Her council, Parliament and people demanded that she marry to have the guidance of a man and to produce heirs for the throne. She side-stepped them and carried on long protracted marriage negotiations with most of the eligible princes of Europe. In that way, she escaped marriage, which meant she had to share her throne with no one and escaped childbirth, which was very risky in those days of primitive medicine. And why wouldn't she? Her father Henry VIII had shown her how dangerous marriage was for a queen.
Here's an anecdote to show her shrewdness: her Parliament voted to demand her marriage and sent her a formal document. She replied that she appreciated their concern for her and the realm, but she would marry when she wanted to and added the inarguable statement that God would take care of the succession. In her words to Parliament, "herewith my answer, answerless."
She managed to have it both ways into her middle years. Courtships and gifts, long negotiations which kept European countries from attacking England, and in the end she gave them nothing. It is reported that after the Duc d'Alencon, her final suitor, left the palace for the last time, she wrote a lovely poem to him, wept tears on the pier waving her handkerchief until he was out of sight and then returned to her bedchamber and danced for joy. I think she was the mistress of holding out hope while never coming through...perhaps history's greatest royal tease.
She was brilliant, of course, probably a genius; she spoke many languages and whiled away winter evenings translating ancient Greek and Latin authors into English and back again.
She was athletic...riding, hunting, walking, dancing until all hours, but also sickly. The list of her illnesses is very long and from the evidence, I believe she was anorexic and perhaps, prone to nervous breakdowns. That she ruled so long and so well is a tribute to her stamina and courage.
Elizabeth hated war and sometimes delayed her decisions until the problem disappeared, strengthening her belief in indecision...maddening to her councilors, but wise in the end.
She wasn't beautiful, but she was extremely handsome, striking and commanding, taller than most women of her time with white skin, red Tudor hair and a slightly hooked Plantagenet nose. She spent money sparingly. When young, she dressed plainly, but when a queen she used clothes to display her regal self. She had more than 2,000 gowns at her death, but she was frugal even with them. She reused jewels, oversleeves, embroidered pieces that she liked, gave gowns to her ladies and had them recut and styled with the changing fashion...a kind of early recycled mix and match.
Several men truly loved her. Thomas Heneage, Christopher Hatton and other minor courtiers, but Robert Dudley, her Sweet Robin, was her greatest love. When she died, a letter from him was found in her treasures box by her bedside labeled in her handwriting His Last Letter, which gave me the idea for the book I'm writing now.
These are just some of the reasons I write about Elizabeth, but the greatest one is to search for the unanswered question: At heart who was she?
In my first book, The Virgin's Daughters: In the Court of Elizabeth I, from NAL, August, 2009, I write about her from the viewpoint of two ladies in waiting at the bookends of her life. In His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester, to be published in August, 2010, I write from her viewpoint and from Robert Dudley's, trying to get inside the reasons she never married him, but continued to love him until the end. And also why her Sweet Robin stayed beside her even after he lost all hope of marrying her. I believe theirs was one of the great love stories of history...and still a mystery.
First appeared on www.enchantedbyjosephine.blogspot.com
My First Sale
by Jeane Westin
After a career as a journalist writing articles for magazines and newspapers and several non-fiction books, I decided to leap off a literary cliff and write a novel. My agent at the time wasn’t thrilled. She’d had other clients infected with “novelitis” (her word) and she’d lost sure non-fiction sales. Still, I had to follow my muse and she recognized I wanted a new challenge.
In the mid 1980s, multi-viewpoint women’s novels were popular and I had a great idea for one…Love and Glory, about four of the first women to enlist in the military during WWII. As a very young woman, I had joined the army as a way to get to college on the G.I. bill. Once enlisted, I found that I liked it and for the next six years I was stationed as a cryptographer with NATO in Germany and France and at the Pentagon. (I served in my share of sun-baked red clay southern posts, too.) Although my own military experience was much later than my story, I thought I could bring an authenticity to the lives of women thrown suddenly into a completely alien male world where they had to prove themselves smart, brave and worthy every day. The story had strong feminist overtones, a very urgent message in the 80s.
So I began writing and rewriting until I had an interwoven story of four very different women pioneers from our American past. And 220,000 words! That length sounds like a monster book today, but at that time was not too unusual.
The learning experience–fiction takes dipping deep into one’s own heart–and actual writing took two and one-half years, but at the end I was totally in love with writing the past and had a severe case of “novelitis.” Writers Label Warning: once contracted this disease is incurable.
That part of my first sale experience was pure love. Now for the Glory.
My agent read the manuscript, liked it and set an auction date. Simon and Schuster/Pocket made a pre-empt bid for hard-soft rights and my first novel was on its way. I got the news of the sale on the stormiest day ever in my California home town. Gale winds, driving rain, flooding and trees down, but for me the day was faultless. I was living the dream of every first novelist. I called my critique group friends, who had heard much of the novel and they rushed over, detouring around flooded streets, to celebrate with champagne.
I didn’t wake up from that dream for months. There was immediate movie interest and I flew to New York to meet with film producers. A famous name producer, who had just won an Oscar, called me after reading the manuscript and to this day, I can’t remember what I said to him. Agents for Orion studios called me one morning and wanted to fly me to Los Angeles for lunch. (Not a good idea, warned my agent; they’re salesmen and think if they talk to you, they can buy you.) Soon, I acquired a top Hollywood agent/lawyer who sold the book to CBS for a mini-series and I was taken to a famous Los Angeles restaurant with famous faces everywhere. I remember them, not what I ate.
When did I come down to earth? Perhaps after my west coast tour. Most definitely when I got back to work on my second novel, which has an after story all its own.
The mini-series became a screenplay, but was never produced for various unknowable Hollywood reasons, nor did the Broadway musical of my second book.
No writer’s career stays so incredibly high and I’ve served my time in the dark ages, but I did gradually find my way through to my real passion: writing about the women of history both imaginary and real.
Why didn’t I know my true passion from the beginning? Writing is a process of self-discovery. It takes all the time it takes.
My just published novel from NAL, The Virgin’s Daughters: In the Court of Elizabeth I and my next one His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester (August, 2010) have tested me as a writer more than any other. Elizabeth Tudor was and still is to me the most fascinating woman in history. I really want to know: at heart who was she?
Every morning, I go to my computer to find out more about her…and myself.
Click to visit the Dear Author ... blog where this article was originally published.
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