#i'll do a full summary of my opinion as a sep post

[period-dramallama]

Legacy review: part 3

Men Be Normal About Elizabeth I Challenge 

Lettice Knollys: *marries Robert Dudley*

Susan Kay:

Susan Kay really doesn’t like poor Lettice Knollys, does she? It’s giving very “how DARE she intrude upon my OTP” vibes. Nearly everything is wrong with Lettice- she’s horny, she’s vain, she’s disloyal yadayadayada.

“and for years he had dreamed of raping her”- Susan, ‘I love you so much I don’t want to rape you anymore’ is not nearly as romantic as you seem to think it is.

Usually the assumption in Robert/Elizabeth romance is that if they bang at all it’s in the 1560s when they’re young and hot so it’s nice to have Elizabeth have sex later in life for a change. It makes sense for Elizabeth to be ready once she’s coming up to menopause and doesn’t have to worry about conception.

WHAT.

Slapping Elizabeth for saying she’s going to marry Alencon?? He’s throttling her?? He’s calling her a stupid woman?! She’s OK with that?!

She plans to have his son and pass him off as Alencon’s?! Elizabeth would never do that!

I’m going to have to deduct points for this insanity. INSANITY, i say.

All that build up to show Elizabeth’s trauma and now she’s cool with her man throttling her out of anger??

Two pages ago everything was great....we had a good sex scene and now Susan is clubbing her book to death and i’m just...

“He put his hand gently beneath her chin and raised her face to his. ‘Your life’ he said slowly ‘the continuance of your reign is the only thing that matters now in England. And if it costs the death of Campion and a thousand like him it will be worth it.... In my arms all your enemies are defeated.”

Oh NOW we have Robert Dudley no no no it’s fine i’m cool i’m cool

Overall, I’d say this book has complex characterisation....most of the time. Elizabeth, Dudley, William Cecil, Mary (both of them), Henry, Edward & Thomas Seymour, Essex, they are 3 dimensional. Lettice, Anne Stanhope, Anne Boleyn, Walsingham- not so much. Walsingham is basically a caricature, “bloodless” “cold and sly and fanatical” . To say his work was “received without gratitude” is a little harsh. He was not a close friend of Elizabeth’s but she did stay at his house, Barn Elms, and she did judge him worthy of a nickname “Moor”. We do know that he was friends with Dudley and Cecil, Cecil consoled Walsingham when his daughter Mary died aged 7 in 1580, and lamented the passing of a good friend and colleague in 1590. Walsingham had a dry sense of humour, he bought Italian wine and plants and owned a clavichord. There’s no excuse for saying his “few emotional needs were satisfied by the fierce demands of his work” because we’ve known since at least the 1970s that that’s not true. Yes, he was more Protestant than Elizabeth and he had a providential view of history (like Dudley himself!) but that doesn’t mean he believed “he had been personally singled out by God”. Yeah he died broke, but a lot of that was just bad accounting lol. 

Also it’s Gilbert Gifford not John Gifford hoowwwwwww do you mess that up.

The matter of Dudley’s short-lived son is sad but in summary.

Elizabeth on drugs...sad or funny? I’ll go with sad. Elizabeth bordering on atheism...I’ll excuse it because she’s so jaded. 

Robert missing Elizabeth in the Netherlands is lovely but “home was always you” clashes with “for years I wanted to rape you because you were my obsession.” I’m not saying love has to be portrayed as healthy, but these two statements conflict. 

Cuddly supportive middle-aged Leicester 1586 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>young aggressive rapey Leicester 1560s-1580s

Susan Kay talking about Leicester’s podgy dad bod like it’s a minus and not a plus

“She never had one, did you know that? He gave her a coronation but not a decent burial” saddest line in the whole book. Elizabeth remembering that her mother’s executioner was paid £23 6s 8d...ahhhhhh. Dudley holding her tightly- that’s it! More of that please! That’s what we needed the whole time!  Weirdly heart warming in a dark way that he’s urging her to assassinate Mary. 

“January crawled into February on leaden feet” *chef’s kiss*. 

“’We’re all in this together,’ Burghley insisted steadily. 

Elizabeth’s life versus Elizabeth’s sanity- excellent.

Part 4 of the book ends with Dudley’s death- predictable. but predictable because competent. Will I miss Dudley when he’s gone? Jury’s out. Probably I’ll miss him because he is replaced with Robert “we have Dudley at home” Devereux. “crimes against humanity” stop with the anachronisms Susan!

The realism of trying to distract Elizabeth from her depression: good. 

Philip would consider the anti Christ a man, and i think it does both him and Elizabeth a disservice to make the vendetta almost completely personal. Philip was not an incel. Elizabeth had cost him millions of ducats in military expenses, persecuted Catholics, intervened in the Netherlands, helped herself to some of his treasure ships- and she had reasons to do that, obviously. Also Phil seems to have forgotten that Elizabeth’s preservation was in his own best interests too- but I get why time and spite would make him forget that. Philip did have presence of his own though- Elizabeth’s eyes were unnerving, but so were his! He wasn’t just a bureaucrat. He was a commanding presence, partly because he was so quiet. And yeah, “Gloriana” is a cooler nickname than “El Prudente” but Phil did not entirely lack reputation. 

“My eyes are closed forever and I am blind” I see what you did there.

“How dare you desert your people in their hour of triumph to mope over a dead rat who was never worth a tinker’s curse alive?”

Cecil absolutely deserved to get shredded for that. Absolute idiocy on his part. What you doing boi.

There is an anachronism when Essex thinks of Elizabeth as an ice queen with a splinter of ice in her heart- unless there’s a sixteenth century source for that, the Snow Queen was written by Hans Christian Anderson centuries later.

Elizabeth: I’m haunted by Mary Stuart’s ghost

also Elizabeth: anyway time to wear Mary Stuart’s looted black pearls.

Cecil complains about having no salary...that’s not how Tudor government worked. Susan you really ought to have read Penry Williams’ The Tudor Regime (1979). 

Essex “was not troubled by its unnatural overtones, for he never even noticed them”. This boi I swear would be in a horror movie, hear a weird spooky noise, and go “hello? is anyone there?”. 

What is this jealousy bullshit? Elizabeth always punished courtiers for marrying without permission. It’s the done thing. Phil did the same thing and nobody is calling HIM jealous.

Cecil’s veiled insult with the psalms was great, especially as the real guy regularly reread his psalter. I think once a month? But regularly. So that’s 100% something he would do.

A little hiccup with the timeline: Elizabeth’s 40th anniversary on the throne would be November 1598- AFTER the deaths of Phil and Cecil. 

 Cecil and Phil as “my best friend and my best enemy.” Yes. Thank you. That’s the truth right there.

“A bitter old maid- everything she said and did supported that image.” I disagree. Also Essex is one of those men who see make up as cheating. But I think Essex’s characterisation is very good: he genuinely admires and cares about the queen he just misunderstands their relationship. Because he’s an idiot. 

I think too much blame in this novel is given to Elizabeth for Essex’s mistakes. He IS an idiot. His prefrontal cortex is woefully underdeveloped. His immaturity would always be a problem. 

“he had not lost his manhood in the Queen’s service- he had simply never attained it; she had warped and stunted his natural growth.” C’mon now, he wasn’t a child. When Leicester died he was 22-23. When Essex was beheaded he was 35-36. To put that in perspective, Catherine Parr died at 36 and Elizabeth of York at 37. He had plenty of time to become as mature as those women- he didn’t.

This novel suffers from a bit too much predestination. No, Essex’s execution was not inevitable because of Elizabeth’s trauma. he had free will. she had free will. Essex’s story is so much more interesting if it’s his choices that matter. Making it inevitable because of *spins wheel* Anne’s execution in 1536 undermines that. 

I like it when Elizabeth has a touch of the supernatural about her, at least in the eyes of other people (Dudley, Phil, Mary) but it can go too far. It takes agency from her and her skills and gives all the power to luck/fortune/god/the devil. 

The ending is also well-written.