Elizabeth I

March is Women's History Month, and in honor of that, I'm going to try to write about a different woman I admire every day.
Today's woman owes partly to the fact that I went to see The Other Boleyn Girl last night.
Elizabeth I has long been one of my heroes. After her father, Henry VIII, executed her mother, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth went from being first in line for the throne (in front of her older sister, Mary) to not being in line at all. The people running things for her brother, Edward, during his brief reign did what they could to make England a Protestant nation. When Edward died and Mary became queen, she became known as Bloody Mary for the number of executions she ordered in her quest to bring the English church and people back to Rome.
Elizabeth came to the throne after her siblings had caused significant religious and political turmoil. She was a woman doing a man's job in a man's world. And she did it better than any man had done it before. She had an official policy of not caring precisely what a person's religious views were, as long as they were loyal to her throne. Her father had been a true Renaissance man who encouraged the growth of art, science and law in his court, and she did the same, reigning over the golden age of England. She refused to marry and let a husband take away her power, and styled herself as the Virgin Queen, but she almost certainly wasn't actually a virgin.
I think in many ways, the female leaders of today would do well to examine Queen Elizabeth's style, because she was respected as a queen without having to sacrifice her feminity, and women in power still struggle with that challenge.