Dear Queen Bess

You know what I love? Cameras. It's exhilarating to be able to take a glance at history through the lens of a camera. Sadly they weren't invented until sometime during the first half of the nineteenth century, so for the majority of our history we only have paintings and what artifacts we can find to go on. Think about it, no one knows what King Henry VIII or Elizabeth I really look like. We only have their paintings to go off of, and let's face it, they aren't always as lifelike as artists are today. Doesn't that just make you want to jump in a time machine? Well, maybe not, but it makes me want to.

Luckily cameras are not the only way to document history. We may not have photographs of any of the Tudors, but we've got a bunch of other things. I think you're figuring out what this post is about now. Yup, it's about the Tudors. Now, I generalize, but usually when I say the tutors it's referring to Elizabeth I and the people she knew during her life.

Now the 1500's were a long time ago, but luckily quite a bit has survived from the era. For instance, the dress pictured in the right. It was Elizabeth's christening gown, sewn and embroidered by her mother Anne Boleyn. Or so it's thought to be. Recent findings say it might actually have been made in the seventeenth century.

Here's a fun one. Elizabeth I's coronation dress. Here's the problem though; there was a movie in which they remade the coronation dress pictured below. Yet I read (from a completely unreliable source mind you) that her dress survived, and that the other photo below is the actual dress. So I can neither confirm nor deny if it's real, though I'm leaning towards it being fake.



You know, this post just couldn't be complete without my favorite picture of Elizabeth that I've discovered so far. Now in my mind their fashion was a bit odd, but I think that her dress in the painting is very pretty. Well, except maybe the sleeves. The inside is a bit poofy, which isn't really my thing, but of course I'm not the one wearing the dress. You know, if I went back in time, no matter how I would try to prepare myself, I'd probably still be shocked by how skinny people would be. I mean they used corsets to make themselves insanely thin, which is just bizarre to think about since people these days don't use them. Thank goodness for that too. Corsets actually deformed their chests after a time (I mean, they started wearing them around the age of ten or twelve I'm pretty sure).


I wonder why exactly Elizabeth chose not to marry. Granted, after living with a father who had six wives (two of which were beheaded) why would she? But I've always kind of wondered if that was the exact, or only, reason for her staying single.

Once I read this completely nutty theory that Elizabeth Tudor was in fact, a boy! They claimed that the real Elizabeth died, and the house staff got a scrawny boy from the village nearby, dressed him up in women's clothes, and they passed him off as Elizabeth. Crazy, I know. Though they did have a few interesting bits of "proof." Like Elizabeth's famous quote, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too." They claimed that the fake Elizabeth was referring to his disguise as a woman, but that he did in fact have a mans heart. They also claimed this is why Elizabeth remained a virgin. I think it's complete poppy cock.

You know, when it comes to Henry VIII's wives, I remember I used to always have the hardest time remembering what order he married them in. For some reason I always mixed up Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. But on the cover of a book about Catherine Parr (his last wife) it had this nice little trick. If you can at least remember the fate of each wife, then you'll be good. It read: Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. That sticks in my head really well for some reason, so now I never seem to mix them up.