Nothing Proved, Guest post by Janet Wertman

Danger lined her path, but destiny led her to glory…

Elizabeth Tudor learned resilience young. Declared illegitimate after the execution of her mother Anne Boleyn, she bore her precarious position with unshakable grace. But upon the death of her father, King Henry VIII, the vulnerable fourteen-year-old must learn to navigate a world of shifting loyalties, power plays, and betrayal.

After narrowly escaping entanglement in Thomas Seymour’s treason, Elizabeth rebuilds her reputation as the perfect Protestant princess – which puts her in mortal danger when her half-sister Mary becomes Queen and imposes Catholicism on a reluctant land. Elizabeth escapes execution, clawing her way from a Tower cell to exoneration. But even a semblance of favor comes with attempts to exclude her from the throne or steal her rights to it through a forced marriage.

Elizabeth must outwit her enemies time and again to prove herself worthy of power. The making of one of history’s most iconic monarchs is a gripping tale of survival, fortune, and triumph.

Elizabeth’s actions during Wyatt’s rebellion

There was so much circumstantial evidence linking Elizabeth to Wyatt’s Rebellion, but however much the government suspected her, they could prove nothing. Those were actually Elizabeth’s words: the final two lines of an amazing poem she wrote that made them confiscate her pen and paper. In a show of defiance, Elizabeth took a diamond from her finger to carve its final two lines into the glass of her window. Much suspected by me, nothing proved can be, quoth Elizabeth prisoner. (I had a ton of fun with that scene in the book, as you can imagine).

Essentially, they could prove nothing because Elizabeth had been careful not to actually cross the line. We know she had some dealings with the French ambassador – who knew about the rebellion – and retired from court early. We know Thomas Wyatt wrote to her, we know that the head of her security, William Saintlow, knew how to relay her noncommittal verbal reply. We know she considered removing an armed stronghold to wait out the unrest, and that one of her ladies was married to one of the suspected rebels. We can guess Elizabeth secretly approved of their actions and likely prayed for their success – but we have no instances of her actually taking an action that could get her convicted of treason.

I absolutely believe she kept to this line. Had she not, there would have been someone to come forward and testify against her, if only to save their own skin. After all, even the ringleader Thomas Wyatt was promised clemency to implicate her – an admission he recanted on the scaffold when it was clear he had been duped. Still, my main reason for believing in her innocence is not so much because of the lack of hard proof we have of her activities during this time, but rather because of how she later treated Mary Stuart.

Elizabeth refused to impute guilt to Mary despite her advisors’ pressure to do so –insisting that treason required actual action, not just general glee that rebellion was brewing. Elizabeth would have assumed that her cousin, a queen herself (Elizabeth did have a thing for royal blood), was smart enough to allow any plots to unfold on their own. Elizabeth was wrong. Or perhaps, Elizabeth never counted on the extent to which frustration might build over eighteen years – Elizabeth was frustrated after eighteen months! But I’m getting ahead of myself…that is for book three!

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Meet Janet Wertman

By day, Janet Wertman is a freelance grantwriter for impactful nonprofits. By night, she writes critically acclaimed, character-driven historical fiction – indulging a passion for the Tudor era she had harbored since she was eight years old and her parents let her stay up late to watch The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R.

Her Seymour Saga trilogy (Jane the Quene, The Path to Somerset, The Boy King) took her deep into one of the era’s central families – and now her follow-up Regina series explores Elizabeth’s journey from bastard to icon.

Janet also runs a blog (www.janetwertman.com) where she posts interesting takes on the Tudors and what it’s like to write about them.