The Royal Treatment

But the really juicy question about Elizabeth is always about sex. Was the Virgin Queen really a virgin? In Kapur's first "Elizabeth," she and nobleman Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes) made love behind gauzy bed curtains. During Elizabeth's reign, rumors of a real affair with Dudley abounded but not from sources in a position to know the truth. "I think she was a sexual creature," says Doran, "but if we're talking intercourse, the likelihood is extremely remote. She couldn't afford the scandal." But historians do agree that Dudley was the love of her life. When she died in 1603, courtiers found his last letter to her in the jewel box next to her bed.

Scholars continue to mine new details about Elizabeth's life. Antonia Fraser, whose landmark book on Marie Antoinette inspired Sofia Coppola's film, is working on a biography of Elizabeth I, to be published in 2010. "I regard Queen Elizabeth I as The Great Subject and I've wanted to do it for 40 years, since I wrote 'Mary Queen of Scots'," she said in an e-mail. "Now I've actually got around to it, it's even better than I thought. Politics, murder, sex—and an incomparable woman!" Elizabeth was a drama queen: the facts of her life are so tantalizing, you wonder why a moviemaker would bother to make anything up.

© 2007