The most charitable thing that can be said about the historical accuracy of Elizabeth is that it plays fast
and loose with the detail and order of events to better convey their essence. In other words, if you
want to know the events as they really happened, youÕve no choice but to read a history book.
However, what the movie will give you is a keener sense of why they happened.
Here are the major liberties the writer has taken with historical record.
1) Although Phillip of Spain did send an ambassador to congratulate Elizabeth while Mary
was dying, he did not propose marriage until a year later.
2) The Duke of Anjou did not become ElizabethÕs suitor until 1571, long after her accession
to the throne, when relations with France had improved greatly. He was not the nephew of Mary
of Guise (as in the film) but the son of Catherine de Medici. The film is correct in portraying him as a promiscuous bisexual transvestite but he never met Elizabeth in person. A different Duke of Anjou did, though - his brother, who acceeded to the title when the Duke became Henri III of France,
3) Queen Mother Mary of Guise did garrison Scotland with troops, but Elizabeth sent a fleet, not an army. And this fleet was not an invasion force but was sent to back up the Protestant landlords in their battle against the Catholic Mary of Guise.
4) The scene where Walsingham kills a young assassin in France does not seem to be based on any actual event. Nor did Walsingham assassinate Mary of Guise Ð she died of dropsy in June 1560.
5) The Bill to establish the Anglican Church was forced through the first session of Parliament by Cecil (again, not Walsingham), using more complex means than that portrayed in the film. He effectively became the first government whip, using many techniques, the most important being a procedural device that limited debate to that which was justified by scripture alone. The Catholic MPs walked out in protest. The two ringleaders of the protest were taken to the Tower.
6) The scene where Elizabeth asks the Spanish ambassador to marry her to Dudley at a firework party did take place, but the assassination attempt that followed is fictional (although it is true that many attempts were made on her life.)
7) Whether Elizabeth actually did have sex with Dudley, as in the film, is impossible to know for sure. She was rumoured to at the time (many believed he carried his child) and they certainly behaved like lovers. But historians are very dubious that she did. The Queen was never allowed to be alone in private and even her greatest enemies admitted they had found no evidence of sexual sins, despite extensive investigations.
8) The death of Isabelle Knollys Ð who seems to be a fictional character Ð after wearing a poisoned dress meant for Elizabeth Ð seems to be entirely fictional.
9) The position of DudleyÕs married status is a little confused in the film. This is what actually happened: Throughout the early years of ElizabethÕs reign he was married Ð and despite her blatant flirting, she was fully aware of this fact. Then the wife died, and Dudley was free to remarry. But years later, he married Lettice Knollys in secret. When Elizabeth found out, she was furious.
10) The film rolls two conspiracies against Elizabeth into one. The first was the Ridolfi plot of 1571, in which Norfolk was executed and Arundel arrested. The second culminated in 1586 when the priest John Ballard was sent by the Pope to co-ordinate an English Catholic rebellion that would clear the way for an Italian invasion. As far as we know, Sussex and Dudley were not involved in any treachery as alleged in the film. Importantly, the film makes scarce mention of ElizabethÕs cousin Mary, Queen of Scots (as a Catholic it was she who the rebels wished on the English throne and she played a central role in all the conspiracies).
11) The film seems to suggest that Elizabeth's white-faced 'Gloriana' image began while she was still young and was a piece of political spin-doctoring, aimed at associating her in the public eye with being a virgin 'married to England'. However, this makeover actually came about quite late in her reign, and the thick make-up had more to do with covering up the elderly monarch's smallpox scars.
11) Bishop Stephan Gardiner is named as one of the traitors and is mysteriously murdered near the end of the film. In fact, he died from natural causes in 1555 during the reign of Mary I.
Educational value
Elizabeth is a useful introduction to the early, unstable years of Elizabeth the FirstÕs reign Ð a period often ignored by documentarists and dramatists in favour of her later years of romanticised triumph.
Although it kaleidoscopes several years of plots and conspiracies into a seemingly short period and alters many details in the cause of drama, the film contains much insight into the relationship between political power, religious division, foreign interference and personal rivalries at the birth of modern England.
The film also delves beyond official recorded events to probe the personal life of Queen Elizabeth. While it blantantly disregards historical consensus by putting the Queen in bed with Dudley, more generally its interest in the person behind the monarch awards us a new, more empathy-driven perspective on events.
The filmÕs most important moral lesson is that religious division and extremism is the path to Hell, but that compromise can be reached Ð a lesson as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 16th.