The many courtships of the woman who became Elizabeth I began when she was an infant, displayed before foreign ambassadors who considered her as a possible clause of a contract between England and France. From such an unromantic beginning, Elizabeth grew to see her father marry multiple times and experienced frequent changes in stepmothers and status in the family. Eventually, she became the most eligible woman in Europe. From start to finish, her marriage prospects were as much political as they were personal.

When she came to the throne in 1558, the primary question facing everyone from foreign monarchs to English nobles and ministers was which of her many suitors would finally win her hand. Through the longest Tudor reign, Elizabeth used courtship as a tool to consider foreign alliances, hold ambitious English courtiers in check, and navigate her role as a woman ruler in a world that considered her unnatural without a man at her side.

Elizabeth was, in fact, always the ‘Virgin Queen’, from the early days as a twenty-five-year-old presenting herself as a potential royal bride to her final years as an ageing and unmarried woman who was destined to end the Tudor dynasty. Ultimately, she became the only monarch in England to rule as an adult and never marry. Through it all, as friends and potential lovers faded away, she clung to the one true love of her life: England.