Elizabeth i of england lovers

Elizabeth I was barely a teenager when she experienced the political headache that men – specifically men who were potential suitors – could create for her. After being left in a precarious political situation by her father’s own complicated love life (Henry VIII declared Elizabeth illegitimate after her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed, yet still put her in the line of succession), she kept her head down in her books.

That is apart from the extraordinaryperiod in which she became entangled with her brother‘s uncle Thomas Seymour.

Seymour married the Queen Dowager, Catherine Parr, very soon after Henry VIII’s death, and thus more or less became Elizabeth’s step-father shockingly quickly.

And Elizabeth was living with Catherine, her step-mother, when Seymour came to join his new wife’s household. At the time, Seymour was in his 30s, while Elizabeth was 14 going on 15.

This article is an edited transcript of Elizabeth I with Helen Castor, available on History Hit.