Elizabeth & Leicester

Rating:
Summary: Queen Liz and her favorite courtier.
Review: This book, writes Jenkins in the preface, is not a definitive biography of Lord Leicester. That much is certainly true. But is it the definitive biography of the romance of Leicester and Elizabeth? Not either. According to Jenkins, the romantic feelings of the couple were real, but Elizabeth was almost too much of a monarch, and too much the traumatized daughter of Anne Boleyn, to give into them on ANY level. Jenkins satisfyingly explains this with much attention to detail, saying what Dudley and other important courtiers gave to the Queen at New Year's for example, and then commenting on the spirit in which the gifts were given and received. And she maintains enough of a distance from her subjects, Elizabeth, and Leicester's relationship to her, to keep the mystery of their romance vivid. One feels a History book about this couple OUGHT to be this detached and reverent. One learns a great deal about the personal likes and dislikes of the great Queen (a very sensitive nose, a passion for flirting, a thirst for power) and reads the reported, but obviously public, dialogue between the couple. "You are like my dog," Elizabeth tells Robin, "whenever people see you they know I am coming." Snippets like this make it understandable that Dudley would have been a bit frustrated with his Queen and his love. On the other hand when Dudley becomes curious about the Queen's relationship to her much younger suitor, the Duc D'Alençon, he asks her if "she is a maid or a woman." The Queen laughs and replies "a maid." Jenkins concludes, to the disappointment of Historical novelists everywhere, that this 'shows he had never deflowered her'. Uhuh, or that he didn't want the entire court to know that he had. That could explain why she laughed before answering. Nonetheless, the book is a gift for its information and insight, particularly into the political world in which Leicester operated.

Rating:
Summary: Queen Liz and her favorite courtier.
Review: This book, writes Jenkins in the preface, is not a definitive biography of Lord Leicester. That much is certainly true. But is it the definitive biography of the romance of Leicester and Elizabeth? Not either. According to Jenkins, the romantic feelings of the couple were real, but Elizabeth was almost too much of a monarch, and too much the traumatized daughter of Anne Boleyn, to give into them on ANY level. Jenkins satisfyingly explains this with much attention to detail, saying what Dudley and other important courtiers gave to the Queen at New Year's for example, and then commenting on the spirit in which the gifts were given and received. And she maintains enough of a distance from her subjects, Elizabeth, and Leicester's relationship to her, to keep the mystery of their romance vivid. One feels a History book about this couple OUGHT to be this detached and reverent. One learns a great deal about the personal likes and dislikes of the great Queen (a very sensitive nose, a passion for flirting, a thirst for power) and reads the reported, but obviously public, dialogue between the couple. "You are like my dog," Elizabeth tells Robin, "whenever people see you they know I am coming." Snippets like this make it understandable that Dudley would have been a bit frustrated with his Queen and his love. On the other hand when Dudley becomes curious about the Queen's relationship to her much younger suitor, the Duc D'Alençon, he asks her if "she is a maid or a woman." The Queen laughs and replies "a maid." Jenkins concludes, to the disappointment of Historical novelists everywhere, that this 'shows he had never deflowered her'. Uhuh, or that he didn't want the entire court to know that he had. That could explain why she laughed before answering. Nonetheless, the book is a gift for its information and insight, particularly into the political world in which Leicester operated.