Letter from Elizabeth Tudor to Minuette Wyatt
Whitehall Palace
My dearest friend,
Well, Minuette, it is not often that I am taken by surprise.
Before this summer, I would have hazarded that I knew you as perfectly as I know any person on earth.
It is only since I came across you and William at Hever the night of my mother’s death that I have begun to wonder what secrets you might be keeping.
But even my imagination could not have conjured the truth.
My brother came to see me tonight, after the victory banquet from which he so conspicuously disappeared with your hand in his.
When William appeared in my chambers he was at his most imperious, dismissing my attendants without pretending to wait for my orders.
And when we faced each other alone across my privy chamber, he told me that you and he are betrothed.
William was shining with joy and I took my cue from that, smothering the practical questions that came effortlessly to mind.
I hugged him and I congratulated him on having had the sense to fall in love with a woman worthy of everything he could offer and I let him ramble on about you for some time.
As well as I know you, it was a revelation to hear you spoken of by a man in love.
But I will not lie to you, Minuette. For one thing, I may never give you this letter.
I suspect I am writing solely for the solace of my own mind, to work out the tangle of hopes and emotions and ambitions within me.
And so I will be honest: with each praise William sang, my concern grew.
There was one moment when I thought that, if I closed my eyes, it would be my father I heard, singing my mother’s praises.
One would suppose that such a thought would have cheered me—for their love turned out well enough.
But all I could think was that lightning does not strike twice.
Though William’s obstacles appear less severe than my father’s—at least he has neither wife nor royal child to contend with—they are obstacles nonetheless.
I do you the credit of believing you are not unaware of them.
But Minuette, what most worries me is the change in William.
My ever-practical, hardheaded brother is prepared to dismiss every ambition and scrap of counsel to have you.
William, who has never had any illusions where women were concerned, who carelessly married off Eleanor in order to enjoy her without complication, has made of you an angel of worship, like a saint on a pedestal.
And yet, for all my concern, perhaps that is precisely where his future wife belongs.
For make no mistake, Minuette, to be a queen consort is to be a symbol more than an individual.
The primary task of a consort may be straightforward—to bear a royal son—but straightforward is not the same as simple.
You lived with my mother too long to believe that.
To be a king is to be born favoured of God and man and to live for one’s people as much, if not more so, than for oneself. To be a queen consort is to live for one’s husband and children. And until very recently, the only path to queenship has been to marry a king.
I remember the first time that point was brought home.
I was quite young—only four or five—when my father joined me in a pleasure barge on the Thames as we progressed from Greenwich to Richmond.
He was in a playful mood that day, and when I asked him why I had to study so many subjects, he told me about his sisters, Margaret and Mary, who had been queens of Scotland and France respectively.
(Though Mary, it is well noted, was a French queen for such a brief time as to be hardly worth mentioning.)
“You are a daughter and sister of kings as they were,” he noted.
“And someday you will likely be a queen yourself. Where would you like to be queen of when you are grown, my sweet? France? Spain?” (I know now he was being optimistic—neither country was likely to offer for the questionably legitimate daughter of a heretic king at the time. How circumstances have changed!)
I remember perfectly what I answered, as well as I recall the play of sunlight on the water, the green of trees and grass along the riverbanks, the scent of summer flowers and sun-warmed fields.
“I should like to be Queen of England,” I said, in the decisive way that only a young child can manage. “For no country is greater than ours.”
My father laughed, and in memory I can hear the irony in it. “I’m afraid England is out of even your reach,” he said. “As God has given you a brother, He has also given England a king. Your queenship must be elsewhere.”
And so, Minuette, I admit the uncomfortable truth that a part of me envies you, for you will hold the only title I covet: Queen of England.
Not that I envy you the position of a king’s wife.
I will tell you whom I truly envy: Mary Stuart, who has it in her reach to discover the difference between being a queen by right of her husband and queen in her own right.
For Mary has been Queen Regnant of Scotland since she was six days old—though all the world struggles to understand what that truly means.
For much of her life, the young queen has not even been in her kingdom but at the French court, being groomed to marry the future King of France.
It seems Scotland is so eager to escape the indignities of a female ruler that they will submit to a foreign king rather than endure it.
I wonder if they will ever come to regret that bargain.
Only once in English history has a woman come near to holding power as Queen Regnant, rather than a consort.
Four hundred years ago lived Matilda, granddaughter of the Conqueror and herself Holy Roman Empress (through one of those advantageous marriages expected of royal daughters).
She was the only surviving child of King Henry I, and that wily king brought his own feudal lords together in order to swear fealty to his daughter before his death.
Do you know it is said that there was a tussle between two men over their precedence in swearing said fealty?
Robert of Gloucester (bastard son of the king and thus ineligible for the throne) vied against his cousin, Stephen (nephew to the king through his mother), in order to be the first to proclaim their loyalty to Matilda’s royal rights.
Ironic, for—despite his sworn vow—Stephen made a dash for the crown just after Henry’s death and had himself anointed king before Matilda could cross the Channel and take her place as queen.
Many years of bloody civil war ensued as Matilda and her supporters—her half brother, Robert, foremost among them—fought to force Stephen from the throne he had ungraciously and perhaps illegally seized.
In the end, the matter was only settled when the aging Stephen agreed to make Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou, his heir.
And thus ended the first inglorious attempt of an English queen to rule in her own right.
Closer to home, I confess it is an issue I have been forced by my position—and yes, perhaps my temperament as well—to consider.
After all, I would never have been born if my father had been content to allow his throne to pass to a daughter.
Instead, Mary would hold power today and there would never have been a reformation of English religion.
But the great Henry VIII could not endure the thought of his carefully crafted power being passed into a woman’s hands, and so he upset popes and emperors and his own marriage in order to secure a male heir.
Though it is worth noting that, in the end, my father’s will dictated that should William die before leaving a royal heir of his own, the crown was to pass to me. Henry Tudor’s pride in his blood, it seems, was only slightly less than his need for a son.
And so, God forbid, if William were to die before leaving a marriage-born child of his own, I would succeed to England’s throne.
You know me too well for me to waste time asserting that it is an honour I dream not of.
For I have dreams, Minuette, though none of them center on the loss of a brother who has been dear to me since the moment he first curled his infant hand around my finger.
But life is uncertain, and to study the history of kings is to know that preparation is never to be scoffed at.
And so two words wind through my dreams and occasionally into my waking hours: What if? What if I am called upon to rule England?
I do not think it arrogance to believe that I am as qualified as William. Have we not had the same education, shared the same tutors and lessons? And we all know I am by nature more suited to the intellectual demands of the position. Where does my brother outshine me?
The answer to that is stark: on the battlefield.
For though I ride and hunt as well as any man, I do not wield weapons and I may not ride to war.
The Great Seal of England depicts the ruler in two states: dispensing justice on one side, on the other mounted on horseback with sword unsheathed to defend the kingdom.
Though an extraordinary woman may find her way to fulfill the first, how is she to perform the second?
A role, by the way, that William has shown himself so perfectly fitted for on the fields of France this summer.
But his prowess in battle does not mean my brother is a perfect ruler. I feel quite certain now that I shall never send this letter, Minuette, for I am treading on dangerous ground. But I must give voice, even if only once, to my overriding concern about William’s choice of bride.
Dare I write what I will not say to his face? William is thinking of himself alone when he should be thinking of his kingdom.
Were I queen, I cannot envision a circumstance in which I would sacrifice my people’s good for my own happiness, as William is so lightly doing.
I love you, Minuette, as I have never loved another friend, but you are not the queen England needs.
If my brother persists in his romantic obsession, I fear he will split the kingdom in two, and the rifts his birth was meant to heal will never be mended.
With that, I close this rebellious letter and will consign it to the fire.
If only I could as easily wipe away my doubts and fears.
For you, as well as for William, for you are nearly my sister, and I do not want you hurt as I believe you will be one way or another.
And in the coming weeks I will watch my words and my expressions.
It is not my place to undermine the king’s will.
And perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps you are precisely what William needs.
But I fear you are not. And I fear England will pay the price.
Your loving sister in all but blood,
Elizabeth