King Elizabeth?

 Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen

An interesting article from the Daily Mail:
There are centuries old rumors that Queen Elizabeth was a dude. The rumors allege that Elizabeth, the favorite daughter of King Henry VIII, died from illness at the age of 13. Her caretakers, afraid of being executed for allowing the princess to die (construed as an act of treason), dressed up a friend of hers, a local village boy, and passed him off as Elizabeth.

But there was a boy, from a local family called Neville. He was a gawky, angular youth a year or so younger than Elizabeth, who had been the princess’s companion and fellow pupil for the past few weeks. And with no time to look further afield for a stand-in, Parry and Lady Ashley took the desperate measure of forcing the boy to don his dead friend’s clothes.

Remarkably, the deception worked. Henry saw his daughter rarely, and was used to hearing her say nothing. The last time she had been presented in court, meeting the new Queen Catherine Parr, she had been trembling with terror.

The princess was known as a gentle, studious child, and painfully shy — not a girl to speak up in front of the king who had beheaded her mother.

Henry, who rarely ever saw her and was quite ill himself, bought the deception.

So when ‘she’ stood at Bisley manor, in the dimness of an oak-beamed hall lit by latticed windows, it was not so surprising that the king failed to realise he was being duped. He had no reason to suspect his daughter had been ill, after all, and he himself was tired and in pain.

The rest is history.

While this could be utter rubbish, it does make the  issue of her refusing to marry more understandable. She also refused to wear a bikini. Case closed....

More here.