I think it's fair to say that Elizabeth's self-representation here is right. Inheriting a broke, disspirited, and fractious country on the verge of armed conflict with pretty much everybody, she maintained a balance, running circles around the diplomats of other nations, and developing the resources of England while watching Europe grind itself to pieces on its own internal jags. This was undoubtedly frustrating as hell to anybody working with her.

Drake, to take one example, was alternately a criminal, a hero, or a ghost, all depending on which game Elizabeth happened to be playing at the moment. Elizabeth would let him build up his forces to go and rob Spaniards to intimidate the Spanish and please the French, then just as suddenly let rumors float that he was going to be arrested to please the Spanish and confuse the French. This bought England decades of stability and prosperity, but to her ministers and tools who were time and again to see their pet policies dashed, built up, and dashed again, it seemed like the aimless waffling of a flighty female, and they wrote their histories accordingly.

There are some parallels with Bismarck here - he was another man so much more deft at the political game than anyone around him that he was often considered either mad or plainly evil. Yesterday's bitter enemies became today's bosom allies before either they, or indeed his own king, knew what he was up to, and so Germany became a force after its Napoleonic thrashing much as Elizabeth rebuilt England. In Bismarck's case, his absolute grip on diplomacy worked to the disadvantage of the state, as he left behind nobody remotely trained to succeed him, so jealous was he of anybody resembling a competent rival, and thus into World War I with Germany. In Elizabeth's, she also played such a subtle game and took so few into confidence that there was no real successor to push her agenda adroitly forward, but then, there didn't need to be. Spain had broken its back on the Netherlands, France had its own problems, and in a couple of decades the Thirty Years War would ensure that nothing in Europe could touch Britain for A While.

- Count Dolby von Luckner