Elizabeth Regina

I remember learning that England's victory over the Spanish Armada was a triumph which cemented the island as a world power and laid the seeds for its global empire of the 19th Century. What I didn't realize (and I don't remember being in my textbooks) was that it was the demarcation between Elizabeth I's Gloriana years and her time as an aging monarch without a recognized heir. The last installment in Alison Plowden's Elizabeth quartet has a somber feel. Her not-quite-lover Robert Dudley is dead, and most of her original advisers have died or retired. England has achieved the sort of peace and prosperity her father could never have achieved, but Elizabeth finds herself surrounded by lesser advisors and for practical reasons unable to officially name James VI of Scotland as her heir until shortly before her death. Elizabeth remained fascinating until the end, but Elizabeth Regina feels subdued, as if the Queen was going quietly to her death.