A couple of times Dench's Queen Elizabeth says that she, or a woman to another woman, could see if a woman had had sex and other sex stuffs. Now, I thought she was the virgin queen so how could she manage to see those who had had sex?
shareIt could have been a bluff. But I think she noticed something was different in Viola's behavior, her eyes…
Also, we don't know for sure whether Elizabeth was a real virgin or not. I think it was probably a title of honor. If she had given birth to illegitimate children, like Catherine the Great, nobody would have called her the Virgin Queen, but since there were no offspring, and no official lover either, historians decided to give her that title. However, I find it hard to believe that a beautiful and powerful woman like Queen Elizabeth never had a lover.
I think I've read somewhere that Elizabeth had a man, Earl of Leicester (?), that she was in love with but that no one's for sure that they had sex.
shareIf the film, Elizabeth, is to be believed, Queen Elizabeth I was most decidedly NOT a virgin. The Joseph Fiennes character was shagging her right and left at the start of the film. I believe she was called "The Virgin Queen" because refused to marry and because she took on that role because it would be a greater inspiration to her people. That is how the film portrays it - what the reality was I could not say.
shareThe film Elizabeth is definitely not to be believed, on this point or any other. It just took some real characters and incidents from different periods in Elizabeth's life (many of these were 20 or 30 years adrift of when they really happened), stirred them up together and changed them at random. The people best placed to know whether Elizabeth ever had sex with Leicester or anyone else concluded - reluctantly in some cases, because they really wanted to smear her with scandal - that she hadn't.
share