—Elizabeth I, c.1582

If your legitimacy in this world descends through your father, and your father declares it illegal to speak of your mother (he had her beheaded), it’s possible you won’t shake the habit after he’s long gone. Instead, you never marry. You delay, prevaricate. You take to keeping a small sword under your pillow. Because you were two years and eight months when your mother died, you have never spoken her name. But you listened carefully to her old chaplain, who broke the news when you were six, telling you what really happened. After that for a long time, you thought you might die. Later, you relented, letting poets write of summer and roses, but refused to talk about God. Now, you find great joy elsewhere: the salt-soaked shorelines, where your fleet breaks the Armada again and again. After all, you’re only a woman, mistress of half an island. You put on the ring with your mother’s portrait in its secret locket. You never take it off.