Queen Elizabeth I may have realized that any man that she would wed would expect to become King of England. He might take all authority away from her as Queen.   
When Princess Elizabeth was seventeen, preliminary negotiations were taking place for her to marry Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark.     

Yes, our Lizzy understood what was going on all right, FrederickLouis. Not a romantic idiot like her cousin from up north.

PS Your somewhat injudicious use of the emoticom facility is interesting - and not a little unexpected...

But I am probably imagining things...

The problem, when considering the romantic (or otherwise) suitors of Elizabeth, is trying to fathom the Queen's true mind and motive.

As with the Duke of Alençon ... she was certainly happy with him, she flirted, she called the Duke her “Frog”, and they exchanged love tokens (despite him being no great beauty: he was short, hunched and had a pitted face from smallpox - and though witty he could also be somewhat petulant). But fundamentally their possible union was being considered for reasons of state (to secure a legitimate heir) and for international diplomacy (to secure concessions from France and to isolate Spain). Although he was sympathetic to the Huguenot cause, as heir to the French throne it would have been difficult for the Duke to renounce his Catholicism, while in England memories of Elizabeth’s Catholic sister Mary and her marriage to Philip of Spain would doubtless have caused difficulties. Also in 1579 (when Elizabeth and Alençon finally met) she was probably past childbearing age and had no clear successor. If she died while married to the French heir, her realms could fall under French control, and Walsingham raised the spectre of religious riots in England in the event of the marriage proceeding.

At last, considering the overwhelming opposition of her advisors, Elizabeth pragmatically judged the union not a wise one, although she continued to play the engagement game, if only to warn Philip II of Spain what she might do, if it became necessary. But finally, the game played itself out and the marriage proposal was finally dropped in 1581. From Elizabeth's point of view the long drawn out dalliance also served to put Robert Dudley in his place and allowed her to castigate her councillors as it was they who had originally sought a marriage, almost any marriage. But then they had been forced to retract their advice, and so she could claim to be absolved of any double dealing.

But the question still remains: was Elizabeth ever in love or was it all just a clever act? And who I wonder was privy to this play-acting: just Elizabeth or were perhaps Walsingham and other senior councillors also in on the charade, if indeed it was a charade?

We discussed Elizabeth's attitude to marriage in this thread, FrederickLouis:

https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t388-elizabeth-i-and-heirs


Elizabeth's policy was surely summed up in  her famous declaration: "I will have but one mistress here, and no master!"

That said, I believe she did love Robert Dudley, but she had no illusions about him or, for that matter, about any man: she had had learnt all about "romance" from her father and from her step-step-father, Thomas Seymour. I was very struck by something I read years ago in Margaret Irwin's superb novel Young Bess - a comment the author put into the mouth of Kat Ashley, whom we have mentioned over on the Tutors and Governesses thread. It is just after the Admiral's execution and Elizabeth's calm and carefully prepared reaction to his death - "This day died a man of great wit, but little judgement" - has astonished all about her. Talking to Thomas Parry, Elizabeth's "treasurer" who had been imprisoned and interrogated in the Tower with her during the Seymour scandal, Mrs. Ashley says this:

"No, she'll never forget...Love someone else? Why, yes, I should hope so, and she all but a child still. But mark my words, she'll only love men who remind her of the Admiral."

Wherein Mistress Ashley showed that, although she was occasionally lacking in prudence, she had her own wisdom. Elizabeth's later taste in men was always for the witty, the flamboyant - and the untrustworthy. But, unlike her cousin Mary, she was not so daft as to marry any of them. Oddly enough for such a clever woman, she did not go for men with too much "book-learning" (perhaps because they were all far too religious and boring).

I love this clip:







PS For a minute I thought you were a revenant, Frederick - the ghost of a poster from ages ago - apologies for my odd remark above re your multiple use of the defecating horse emoticom. The poster I had in mind was very fond of emoticoms, and that was a particular favourite of his.

Temperance wrote:

somewhat injudicious use of the emoticom facility is interesting - and not a little unexpected...

But I am probably imagining things...

As in:

'The CATte, the Ratte and Lovell our dogge
Rulyth all Englande under an hogge.' ?

The 'hogge', of course, being the occupant of the throne before Elizabeth's grandfather.

FrederickLouis wrote:

Queen Elizabeth I may have realized that any man that she would wed would expect to become King of England. He might take all authority away from her as Queen.  When Princess Elizabeth was seventeen, preliminary negotiations were taking place for her to marry Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark.

Yes indeed ... although when Elizabeth was seventeen (1550) her brother Edward VI, although ailing, was still King. Even though they shared the same Protestant faith, Elizabeth's position was far from secure .... and it would get a lot more insecure when her Catholic sister Mary came to the throne. But in 1550, at just seventeen but already recently (1547/48) involved in a sexual scandal with her ward Thomas Seymour, I suspect Elizabeth was largely seen as 'tainted goods'. She was a royal half-sister of the King, but she was also still seen by many as an embarrassing, bastard daughter of the treasonous and executed Anne Boleyn. Any possible marriage to Frederick of Denmark - over which Elizabeth would have had precious little choice or control -  should really be seen as her just being "sold off" by the 'Establishment' (essentially the old nobility), to a diplomatically suitable Prince of the Protestant church ... with the advantage (to them) of getting her out of the way so she couldn't be the cause of any trouble in England itself.

In 1550 Princess Elizabeth may have had serious doubts over her proposed marriage, but I doubt she had any real say ..... though I grant the experience may well have influenced her future romantic decisions once she had become Queen in her own right.

MM wrote:

Any possible marriage to Frederick of Denmark - over which Elizabeth would have had precious little choice or control -  should really be seen as her just being "sold off" by the 'Establishment' (essentially the old nobility), to a diplomatically suitable Prince of the Protestant church ... with the advantage (to them) of getting her out of the way so she couldn't be the cause of any trouble in England itself.

And five years later Mary Tudor and her new husband, Prince Philip of Spain, seriously considered marrying her off to a suitable Catholic prince: Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy. This would have got the tiresome Protestant redhead out of England and tied her to a Spanish dependency. EP's mother was Charles V's sister-in-law.

On paper, Emmanuel didn't look too bad: he was young, not bad-looking, an excellent soldier and pretty intelligent. He was said to be very fond of mathematics. However, his nickname was Testa di Ferro (Ironhead) and he seems to have been a bit obsessive about fighting everybody. He apparently would sit up all night studying, not Plato or Cicero, but treatises on the arts of battlefield engineering and mechanical warfare. It was said that he lived and slept in his armour, sometimes for as long as a month at a stretch. It would have been a bit like being married to a belligerent lobster.