Queen Gloriana I of England was the literal faerie-queen of England, ruling from 1558 to her death in 1603.
History[]
Gloriana was the daughter of Nan Boleyn, a half-breed faerie and second cousin of King Oberon, and King Henry VIII. Despite Gloriana's birth from a union of human and faerie being controversial at best, it was to England's great benefit, as this alabaster-complexioned monarch had a remarkable reign beginning in 1558, during which time the magical and otherworldly came to play a much greater role in the English worldview.[1] In the year of her coronation Queen Gloriana appointed Prospero, Duke of Milan, as her Court Astrologer, and also secretly charged him and his assistant Orlando with forming a "mighty league" after her death (hereafter referred to as Prospero's Men) and bid he avail himself of the advice and experience of her spymaster, Sir Jack Wilton.[2]
In 1564 Gloriana and Sir Wilton visited Greyfriars School, likely to scout out special talent among its students. This likely began a tradition, as the School ever after remained a recruiting ground for spies and Agents of the Crown, even up to the 20th century, when it was closed down as part of the restructuring, destruction of tradition, and general misery of the rule of Big Brother.[2]
Gloriana's reign lasted til her death from illness in 1603, after which she was succeeded by her fiercely anti-faerie nephew King Jacob I, who devised bloodthirsty purges of the faerie race and other supernatural creatures, with the result that, by 1616, Oberon's Fairyland had severed all contact with the human world, rendering England quite literally disenchanted as a direct result.[3]
Source material[]
Gloriana is from the incomplete English epic poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. Gloriana is based on Queen Elizabeth I and The Faerie Queene was written in praise of Elizabeth I. Gloriana is also a Michael Moorcock novel that satirizes The Faerie Queene.
In The Life of Orlando Gloriana is depicted with six fingers per hand. In real life Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, was rumored to have six fingers on her left hand.