Elizabeth I was born September 7, 1533, the child of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Before Elizabeth's third birthday, her father had her mother beheaded.

Though she was a child of royalty, Elizabeth's future was uncertain. She was third in the line of succession, and came to the throne at age 25 only after her half-brother, Edward VI, and then her half-sister, Mary Tudor, had both been crowned and subsequently died. At the time of her accession, England was in a state of unrest due to economic problems and religious strife between Catholic and Protestant factions. She presided over a compromise between the Catholic and Protestant religious leaders, in the Acts of Supremacy and Conformity, that left England as a Protestant nation with a few Catholic traditions governing Church worship.

Elizabeth was a shrewd ruler in many respects. When she was young and of marriageable age, she used the succession question to England's advantage. By constantly refusing to commit to one suitor or another, she managed to balance alliances between nations who were waiting in line for a place on the English throne. At the same time, she secured her own position as Queen by keeping her Council hopeful of a suitable match to secure the English succession. As she grew old and it became obvious that there would be no marriage to provide an heir to the throne, her Council, particularly Sir Robert Cecil, began to look to Scotland's King James for a possible heir to the English throne. But until the last moments of her life, Queen Elizabeth would never commit to naming King James as her heir.

Though her reign was generally marked by peace and prosperity, in 1585, her intervention in the Protestant revolt in the Netherlands drew England into war with Spain. In 1588 Spain attacked England, and the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English navy. Toward the end of her reign, she also had to quell a rebellion in Ireland. Her first sally against the rebel leader, Tyrone, was under the command of the dashing Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's court favorite. The Essex campaign proved to be a disaster both militarily and for Essex personally. After the rebellion, because of his failure to follow her commands, Essex's relationship with Elizabeth deteriorated to a point that culminated in the Essex rebellion and Essex's execution for treason. The two years of Elizabeth's life after Essex's death were marked by private grief and physical decline, though Elizabeth retained her mental acuity until the day of her death.

Elizabeth's reign was one of the richest periods in English history. Exploration, the arts, and the English Reformation all thrived during her reign. Some of the greatest drama and poetry of all time were written by William Shakespeare while Elizabeth was Queen, and her part in helping England attain such a level of achievement was recognized by naming an era after her--the Elizabethan age.