grossly inaccurate

Rating: 5/10 (12 April 2009)

Grossly inaccurate. Her dealings with Anjou were from 1577 onwards after she had reigned for 20 years and was 20 years older than the Frenchman. Thus Mary of Guise, "aunt of Anjou", mother of Mary Queen of Scots, was long dead (1560) before it happened and the courtship was thus not a condition of an anglo scots armistice. William Cecil was not a much older man, he was also a loyal servant, her "spirit" (she was fond of nicknames)who served her until the 1590's. Norfolk rebelled circa 1572, not in the first 5 years of her reign. The pope excommunicated her in 1570 after she had reigned 12 years, not within months of her coronation. Thus events in the movie did not happen in the first five years of her reign. And as for the claim that the Queen invented her virginity as an image, a false one, only a generation as sex crazed as ours could find lifetime chastity unthinkable. This is projection on a past age of modern sensibilities. Moreover Kat Ashley was her nurse, a grown woman when Elizabeth was a baby, and therefore not one of her young ladies
I am incensed with the laziness and arrogance of script writers who will NOT do some research AND GET IT RIGHT. This work is a historical fantasy, and little more