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The death of Amy Robsart in 1560 in childbirth was the end of the infamous love-triangle between the Queen of England, her Master of the Horse and his wife. For a time, directly after she had risen to the Throne, it seemed that Elizabeth Tudor would hold Robert Dudley’s heart, after he had not seen his bride for a full 5 years. But a chance meeting in July of 1560, after gaining permission from his Queen to overlook his estates, led to a passionate 2 week love affair between husband and wife, ending in the Lady Amy’s pregnancy.

The wife of a royal official, Amy was sent many congratulatory notes, although Elizabeth’s came late, was very short, and had little points of malice throughout. Whatever she wrote, however, it was Amy and not her who would give Robert a child at that time. Thus, on the 12th of April, 1561, Amy Robsart, also known as Lady Dudley, gave birth to Lord Henry Dudley and died the next day. As Robert went into mourning, the court went into overdrive.

Rumours swirled that the young woman had been poisoned, but Elizabeth’s seeming rejection of Lord Dudley after the death of his bride and her gift to pay for the funeral seems to have been taken as kindness in wake of their connection, even if it had been one filled with malice. And, to make matters much more complicated, Elizabeth’s current talks to marry an Austrian Archduke. In addition, with her Master of the Horse’s “betrayal”, it seems the relationship had turned frosty and there was even talk of her having him replaced with a relative, possibly Henry Carey, son of her aunt Mary Boleyn.

These rumours took a sharp turn as, in May of 1562, after returning to court earlier that year, the Master of the Horse drunkenly asserted to fellow courtiers that he and the Queen were not only on good terms, but already married. With that revelation, William Cecil confronted the Queen and demanded answers, causing a row between the two that ended in him leaving the court for a full 3 months, until giving in and returning to her side after the rumours were officially validated.

The Queen and Robert Dudley had married in late February of 1562, a mere few weeks after his return. After allowing his son to become Elizabeth’s ward, the two had rekindled their relationship and, in a sea of emotions, had married in secret one night, with 3 of Elizabeth’s most discreet and favourite ladies as witness. Thus, having been forced into this position, Elizabeth announced to the court she had officially wedded, but only after breaking off talks with ambassadors for her hand. To this humiliation, the Austrian Archduke Charles von Hapsburg was said to have had the portrait of Elizabeth he had received burnt.

The couple seemed well suited to each other, as Elizabeth raised him to the Dukedom of Northumberland as his father had been, in an effort to equalize them somewhat. Despite Lord Dudley’s requests to be coronated as King to her Queen, she refused his requests, although he did enjoy a large amount of influence on the privy council. And, in preparation in December of 1562 for what would be their first child, Elizabeth officially put down that, in the event she died while the child survived, the regency was to be led by her widower. However, she also stipulated that, while she did leave Robert the ward of his son, Lord Henry Dudley was not an heir to the throne in any capacity.

Thus, as she entered her lying in late April, Elizabeth left her husband with quite a bit of power, although he was continually checked by William Cecil, who held almost equal power to him by Elizabeth’s design. Despite her current position, the Queen did attempt to keep her hold on the council and sent and received many documents so that it ran to her wishes. However, all of this stopped on June 1st, when the Queen went into labour, an event that she claimed to be ‘…painful but altogether shorter than what she had been led to believe…”, due to the quickness she seems to have been through this particular labour. Thus, the next week, the Princess Margaret Dudley was baptised within full view of the court.

With this heir, Elizabeth moved to control the politics up North in Scotland, where her position seemed to have actually weakened after child. She dangled a cousin in the form of Henry Stuart, as a possible second husband in front of the recently widowed Queen of Scots. However, without the promise of England, Mary Stuart instead looked to make a great continental match and began talks to marry the heir to Spain, Don Carlos. This match was eventually thrown out and by the end of the ear she actually was in serious talks to marry Elizabeth’s former potential husband, Charles von Hapsburg, Archduke of Austria.

After an illness threatened her child, Mary seems to have attempted to gain a position as heiress to England after the Queen’s children, an honour Elizabeth was slow to give her. However, the marriage to Charles von Hapsburg in January 1563, shortly after he had been made ruler of Inner Austria, led to Elizabeth making her own retaliation match between Henry Stuart and Catherine Grey, proclaiming them as the heirs after her own. This hasty match, her second in the past few years, would be the one to lead to disaster in the coming years, although Elizabeth did not know this at this point in time.

A miscarriage in 1564 was unfortunate and seemed to coincide with the announcement that her rival Queen, Mary Stuart, was expecting her first child. With another pregnancy announced in the form of Lord and Lady Stuart’s first child, Elizabeth looked to her husband to comfort her with the loss of their child, which he gladly did. The Princess Margaret, who Elizabeth seems to have had a strong maternal attachment to, was brought to court from Hatfield soon after to both be doted on by her mother and to show that despite the other pregnancies, she was the one with a healthy child. That the Princess Margaret was also darkly pretty as a baby and had managed to gain a light complexion (a miracle with two parents renowned for their swarthy skins) was also lucky.

The Scottish Queen gave birth herself in December of that year to a son, named Charles after his father, who grew unpopular in Scotland due to his strong levels of Catholicism. Elizabeth, hoping to capitalize on thus, secretly funded a Protestant uprising in March of the next year while also offering refuge to Prince Charles with the engagement between him and the Princess Margaret. Meanwhile, the Lady Stuart in England gave birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth after the Queen.

The next year Elizabeth enjoyed her third pregnancy, entering her confinement in November. However, events during these two months were cause for much stress. In late November, a Protestant uprising in Scotland caused the Archduke to be beset by a mob and actually seriously injured, with several wounds. Unfortunately, these wounds grew infected and by early December he had died as a result of blood poisoning. Meanwhile, during his Queen’s confinement, an attempt was made to begin a revolt under her own reign and place the Lord and Lady Stuart of the throne. While immensely unsuccessful, it did succeed in capturing Lord Dudley at one point and, in Henry Stuart’s desperation to control the situation, he was beheaded as a traitor due to his marriage to “King Henry and Queen Catherine’s bastard cousin the Lady Elizabeth”. Meanwhile, Lady Catherine Grey stayed at court and pleaded for leniency on her and her daughter, throwing her husband away for their safety.

Finally going into labour on January 2nd, and giving birth to a second daughter, Elizabeth only became aware of the situation on January 9th, after a fever that had broken out after the Princess’ birth had died off, leading to immense grief. Her daughter, who had been named Joan as had been her husband’s preferred name for a daughter and one within the royal family, was baptised and sent to Hatfield with her elder sister, while Elizabeth emerged from confinement in full mourning. In black from head to toe. She required her ladies to dress that way also, including a very uncomfortable Catherine Grey, who had her daughter removed from her care and made a ward of the court, as the heiress of Earl of Lennox in all but his title.

Her first action was to sign the papers of execution for Henry Stuart, who was hung and drawn as a common criminal. Elizabeth received her cousin, the Lady Margaret Douglas, in court after the notice of his death and it’s method were made public. Furious that not only had her son been killed but in a way a common criminal was to be, she berated the Queen in full view of the court. Still deeply upset by her own husband’s death at the orders of the man she was hearing a defence of, she had her husband’s favourite coat brought out and laid at the Lady Lennox’s feet, demanding her to tread on the Duke of Northumberland’s coat as she was now his memory. Thoroughly embarrassed, the Lady Margaret would never return to Elizabeth’s court but instead joined her niece in Scotland, where she found the situation just as touchy.

In Scotland, Mary found her nobles quite unyielding. Two kidnapping attempts had been made on her and her son since the death of Charles von Hapsburg and Mary herself wanted out of the place that had taken her kindness and soft hand to religion and systematically abused it. Thus, after also sending the Lady Lennox away from the court, claiming it overcrowded already and attempting in her way to let the older woman out with grace and dignity, Mary made her third marriage, this time back to France. While her attempts for a fully royal match were unsuccessful, she did find her Guise relations quite acceptable and in September left Scotland under a regency council and married her cousin, Henry, Duke of Guise. She left her uncle, Claude, Duke of Aumale, as regent for her son and, from that point in her life, turned from Scotland for good.

With two Princesses and now a widow, Elizabeth was besieged by offers of marriage. Managing to balance them out for a time, she looked to find happiness in an atmosphere pervaded by unhappiness after her husband’s death. She envied her sister-Queen Mary Stuart’s ability to simply leave the country that had wronged her in the hands of a man she trusted and return to a place she found comforting, but Elizabeth had no such privileges. She was the only person she could trust at the court and that was the way it would stay for some time.

Her first course of action in 1566 was to formally grant the title of Princess of Wales to the Princess Margaret, after arguments had broken out at the Hatfield nursery over the correct title of the Princess as heir. To go with this decision, the Queen of England sent her elder daughter to Ludlow with a large personal court, to her own sadness. While she would not give up mourning colours for another year, she granted the household the ability to move out early as a way to make the transition more agreeable to Margaret, who seems to be the more headstrong of the Dudley Princesses.

With herself and two eligible daughters, Elizabeth began serious negotiations for all of their hands. While her own game was stalled by her continued mourning (a devise many believe to have been played purposely by the Queen), her daughters were not bound by the same restraints and Elizabeth played her hand for Margaret quickly. Sending word to the Regency in Scotland, Elizabeth again proposed a match between her daughter and Prince Charles, offering to house him with the Princess Margaret at Ludlow. However, terms for the match were difficult to get down and thus negotiations dragged.

Her second match choice was Navarre, in the form of a match between the Princess Joan Dudley and Henry, Prince of Navarre. To combat the rival match between the Prince and Margaret de Valois that was being discussed, Elizabeth threw her total support behind the marriage between Sebastian I of Portugal and Margaret de Valois, which came to fruition in 1571 with their marriage. Thus, the stage was set for the Anglo-Navarrese match to go forth.

A health scare in 1572 led to riots in Northern England and talks of placing the young Elizabeth Stuart on the Throne, hopefully bringing England back into Catholicism. In this climate, the Queen began to take the young, intelligent girl into suspicion, somewhat unfairly. Elizabeth Stuart’s biggest and only crime at this point was a traitorous father and a salacious mother, who later that year secretly married a cousin of the Queen’s, Edward Stafford. Not a man to be taken seriously, he was the only surviving child of a dubious second marriage that had left Mary Boleyn in bad graces with her sister prior to her death. However, with a marriage to a potential rival of the Queen’s already tainted by one husband’s treason, Edmund found himself thrown into the Tower away from his wife, who suffered for wanting happiness after so much misery. Their one child, Eleanor Stafford, seems to have died at birth, although it is possible the young woman is a certain Lady Eleanor who in 1589 was married as a “young girl” to a courtier named William Smith who was in favour. Whatever the fate of their child, the couple never reunited. Edward, who had enjoyed several cushy jobs and was on track to gain a title, was instead exiled. Catherine, meanwhile, wasted away in the Tower for 6 months before being sent to serve at Ludlow, who she died in 1573 after a fever turned fatal.

Elizabeth continued to balance the decreasing marriage proposals for her hand as preparations were made for her younger daughter to leave for Navarre in 1580. She advertised to the world she was still menstruating and thus able to have children, but was obviously just toying with people at this point. It was in 1579 that she married her stepson, the Duke of Northumberland, to Penelope Devereux, the daughter of a favoured Lady in Waiting, Lettice Knollys. This match was highly successful and produced 8 surviving children, of which 6 were boys.

Elizabeth Stuart left England in 1580 after her grandmother arranged for her son to join Elizabeth’s court under the orders to make a good match under the Queen’s instructions. He was wedded to Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of noblewoman Bess of Hardwick, who managed to convince Elizabeth a match that weakened the royal bloodline was the best bet for the Stuarts. The union produced a daughter named Arabella in 1587 and a son in 1590 named Matthew Stuart. Elizabeth would stand as godmother for both children.

Her long negotiations fell apart in 1583 when, at the plotting of the Lady Lennox in her dying days, the Prince of Scotland (for his mother still lived and “reigned” in France, with her other son and 3 daughters) married not the Princess of Wales, but Elizabeth Stuart. Furious her daughter had been set aside for some pretty girl with a treasonous lineage, Elizabeth seemed tempted to declare war on Scotland. However, it was none other than her own daughter who talked her down, declaring she would be happier without the Scottish husband. Instead, she hoped for a certain young man who had visited England earlier that year and paid her a visit, John Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Eisenach.

This match took place in 1586, after negotiations towards what John Ernest would be titled as within the English aristocracy. Their union was happy at this time and Margaret became pregnant almost immediately. Satisfied in the future, Elizabeth was also happy to receive news her other daughter had given birth to a son in November, named Henri Antoine de Navarre. However, sadness would again follow Elizabeth with the birth of her granddaughter, Elizabeth von Wettin. Weak after the birth, the Princess of Wales pushed to move out of her bed too early and died of an infection exacerbated by stress. Thus the heir to the Throne was an infant girl yet again, and Elizabeth heard of unrest, particularly after news that twin boys had been born in Scotland to the royal couple.

The death of Sebastian I of Portugal in 1578 had left Margaret de Valois a childless widow and thus her return to France had been one of muted mourning. Finding herself somewhat unwanted by her brothers, who fought for Catholicism in France, she found comfort in her former potential husband, Henri of Navarre. The arrangement continued past his marriage and, while it did not produce children, she was quite secure in the knowledge he found her irresistible. She resisted her mother’s attempts to marry her off again and eventually settled into the position as the scandalous Queen Dowager of Portugal.

Mary, Queen of Scots found herself, in 1592, quite happy in the life she had fled to in 1566. Her son, named James, Duc de Guise, was a star of the French court and had would marry Catherine de Bourbon in 1589, having 2 sons by her. Her daughters, named Marie, Charlotte and Henriette de Guise. The three Scottish Princess, as they were known at the French Court, were all beautiful and talented. However, her arthritis had quite strongly kicked in at this point and she sometimes missed her third husband by her side. Seeing her elder two daughters safely married, it came time to marry off the third. However, at her own death in 1592, Henriette de Guise announced her intentions to become a nun, entering a convent after her mother’s funeral.

In England, Elizabeth I of England found herself growing slower with age. Her son-in-law had left England in 1589 after ensuring his daughter was safe, to never return and only rarely to write. Setting aside her anger towards Scotland, she arranged her granddaughter’s marriage to James, Duke of Rothesay. The King of Scotland, forever apologetic over his failure to marry Elizabeth’s daughter, agreed, and thus at least earnt his fellow monarch’s approval in that.

The marriage took place in 1601, when the couple were 13 years old each. Elizabeth von Wettin was already a tall girl, if not a bit thin. Her groom was a fidgety little blonde boy, anxious to finish the ceremony so that he might go riding with his twin. His 4 other brothers stood watching and his mother was pregnant with what would be her last child, yet another son. The next year, Elizabeth I of England died after a fever came on quickly and left her dead in the middle of the night.
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