maximumphilosopheranchor: “It is very difficult to uncover Elizabeth’s private feelings
maximumphilosopheranchor: “It is very difficult to uncover Elizabeth’s private feelings towards her father. Certainly, she paraded her filial descent with pride. A decade after Henry’s death, the Venetian ambassador noted that she “prides herself on her father and glories in him”. Later still, during her own coronation procession in January 1559, Elizabeth smiled on hearing one of the spectators refer to King Henry, and she claimed it was because “she rejoysed at his name whom this realme doth hold of so woorthy memorie: so in all her doinges she will resemble the same”. On the strength of such observations, biographers have commented on Elizabeth’s adulation of the king. However, given the allegations that she was not Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth had every motive for flaunting her affection and admiration for her royal father. Moreover, in view of Henry’s treatment of his wives and daughters, she had every reason to fear – rather than to love – the irascible, volatile, and merciless monarch. And, indeed, her calm reaction to the news of his death suggests that she experienced no great grief at his passing. Furthermore, her New Year’s gifts for both him and Queen Katherine in 1544 betray an unsettling ambivalence in her inward feeling towards the king.On New Year’s Eve 1544, Elizabeth probably gave her father a handwritten French translation of Erasmus’ Dialogus fidei, though we cannot be certain, as the work is no longer extant. A matching gift to her stepmother has survived in the form of a handwritten twenty-seven-page English translation of a volume of meditations that had been composed by Margaret of Navarre, sister of King Francis I of France. Every aspect of this gift to Katherine was carefully thought out and redolent in meaning. Its title, The glasse of the synnefull soule, drew attention to Elizabeth’s royal lineage, as it alluded to her paternal great-grandmother Margaret Beaufort’s volume of translations entitled Miroure of golde for the sinful soul. The pages were bound together within a blue cover on which Elizabeth had embroidered pansies in each corner and knotwork pattern in silver thread surrounding Katherine’s initials in the centre. Pansies both punned with the French word for meditations, pensées, and, in the language of flowers, sent out the message “think of me” to Katherine, from whom she had just parted. The embroidered forget-me-nots on the spine of the book signified the “love” or “affection” she held for her stepmother. This was a gift, then, that not only displayed the young girl’s intellectual precociousness and feminine skills but also drew attention to her royal ancestry and signalled her devotion to the queen-consort and, by extension, the king. It can be read as a bid to retain their affections and receive in return a more permanent place at court. Possibly too, although this is necessarily more speculative, Elizabeth’s gift reveals a deeper and darker psychological side to her feelings towards her father. Margaret’s original poem was a set of meditations on family relationships through which humans may understand God’s love. In fact, the work touched on adultery, bastardy, and incest, all sensitive subjects for the 11-year-old daughter of Anne Boleyn to handle. What is more, its presentation of God as a great king and judge who is kind to daughters and merciful to adulterous wives might have touched a raw nerve in Elizabeth. For this reason, some scholars have argued that her mistranslations and departures from the original text stem, not from a young girl’s carelessness, but from a deep-rooted, perhaps, subconscious, anxiety and anger about her own father’s lack of mercy towards his adulterous wife.”Elizabeth I and Her Circle by Susan Doran -- source link