13points · 2h ago

Who wrote Elizabeth I's most scathing letters?

smithsonianmag.com·by benbreen·2h ago

Discussion 8 comments

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K0balt·38m ago

Back in the day when a strongly worded letter actually carried some weight….

advisedwang·28m ago

I suspect the author having the authority to execute people on a whim may have contributed somewhat

dsjoerg·1h ago

The podcast "The Rest is History" did a series in the past year on Elizabeth I. Highly recommended, and their take is highly compatible with this research take -- Elizabeth seems to have been quite masterful and deliberate both in her choice of what she would communicate, and in composing and marshalling her team.

sherr·34m ago

Yes, that podcast series is excellent. Elizabeth was lucky in having an excellent team of people working for her. Their lives depended on keeping her alive of course. They were also lucky that she didn't inherit her father's habit of decapitating the most able ministers.

roughly·28m ago

Any time you see a female monarch who's in power for half a century, it's worth looking into, because you're gonna see a beautiful story about how to wield power. When you can't rely on being able to physically overpower your opponents directly - when "I'm the biggest guy in the room, so fuck you" isn't in your toolkit - anyone who gets and keeps power does so by some really, really sharp tactics.

(and yeah, napoleon, et al, but those are in the same vein - short guy runs the world, probably an interesting story there too.)

hnfong·11m ago

At the level of monarchs, personal physical strength rarely matters regardless of gender anyway. Occasionally it is useful to be able to overpower an adversary in a fight, but that's only either when you risk being assassinated, or you want to assassinate somebody else. Other than those situations, it's just political games all the way. (And like another commenter says, it's usually not "beautiful")

techjamie·10m ago

Napoleon was actually average height for the time period and locality. Claims he was especially short were English propaganda that got accepted and survived to the modern day. He was actually 5'6 (168cm).

sherr·20m ago

Her half-sister's story wasn't so beautiful ...