ious man. The movie portrays him as a homosexual who murders a young boy, which is entirely inaccurate, but again incorporates heightened drama into the film. Historians believe that Mary of Guise died of natural causes. The movie is mostly inaccurate in its portrayal of the assassination attempts on Elizabeth, the conspiracies against her, and her handling of these conspiracies. In the film, during the Duke of Anjou’s (fictional) visit, an assassination attempt is made on Elizabeth. This event “did not take place until 1578, and then in very different circumstances. It was not an assassination attempt at all, but a salute to the Queen that went wrong. No one was killed” (Thomas). Also in the film, a great conspiracy to kill Elizabeth and restore Catholicism is started with the Pope. He issues a proclamation stating that Elizabeth’s subjects need not be loyal to her, while she is a heretic because she does not support Catholicism, nonetheless a bastard. A priest named Lord Aaron carries letters from Rome to Elizabeth’s enemies, including Norfolk and Dudley. These letters are intercepted, and Elizabeth has the recipients of the letters eliminated “in a power play that might have been lifted from the Godfather” (Hartl). This sequence of events is actually a combination of several plots against Elizabeth during her reign, one of them being the Ridolfi Plot, in which Norfolk was involved. Essentially, Ridolfi was a “freelance contact-man, working for money, whose object was to coordinate the activities of those anxious to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary Queen of Scots. He thus had dealings with Mary herself, Norfolk, the Pope, Alva, and Philip II” (Johnson). Lord Burghley revealed the plot and Norfolk’s involvement when he found letters from Mary to Norfolk. He was tried in 1572, and sentenced to death. Ironically, Elizabeth was alone in favor of his ...
