Elizabeth + Robert Dudley's bear and ragged staff emblem chain ELIZABETH (1998) dir. SHEKHAR KAPUR

ELIZABETH (1998) dir. SHEKHAR KAPUR

Cate Blanchett in Oscar and Lucinda (1997) dir. Gillian Armstrong

period drama meme [1/4 couples]: Elizabeth Tudor and Robert Dudley

I like to feel his eyes on me when i look away. Before Sunrise (1995) dir. Richard Linklater

Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes as Elizabeth Tudor and Robert Dudley in Elizabeth (1998)

On a night such as this, could a Queen say no? Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes as Elizabeth Tudor & Robert Dudley in Elizabeth (1998)

Elizabeth (1998) dir. Shekhar Kapur

Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes as Elizabeth Tudor & Robert Dudley in Elizabeth (1998)

“She was twenty-five years old, vibrant and lively, with an ability to spin from imperiousness to intimacy that would keep a man guessing, pleasurably. If she was not beautiful then she had, like her mother, the ability to project the idea of it. Later in life, she told an ambassador that she had never in fact been a beauty, but had had the reputation of it in her day. ‘Comely rather than handsome, ’ the Venetian envoy had reported her a year or two before; ‘tall and well-formed, with a good skin, although swarthy, she has fine eyes.’ Robert too was ‘of a tall personage’, said the Venetian, who praised his ‘manly countenance’ though regretting his ‘somewhat brown’ complexion. He had hair and beard shading dark to auburn; the legs to stand up to the trying fashion for short breeches, with their padding and pinking, and their prominent codpieces; and the physique, when they danced together the daring Volta, to twirl Elizabeth high.” ⎯ Elizabeth and Leicester, Sarah Gristwood

Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth Tudor in Elizabeth (1998)

Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth Tudor in Elizabeth (1998)