Characters & Actors
Lettice Knollys
The Queen's lady-in-waiting who eventually betrays her by marrying Elizabeth's great love, Dudley.
"I think the Queen's jealousy of Lettice's looks and her subsequent bullying was what drove Lettice to feel justified in her relationship with Dudley," Sienna muses. "Originally they were incredibly close; they went through so much together, the Tower and everything. She is also the Queen's cousin - the grand-daughter of Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister and also Anne's predecessor in Henry VIII's bed. And her father is in Elizabeth's Privy Counsel, so Lettice was very much a great lady of the land herself at that point.
"And the history books describe Lettice as the great beauty of the Court which was something I think Elizabeth, in her increasingly ravenous vanity - especially after the smallpox - found absolutely intolerable. She was so incensed with Lettice's flair for fashion that she is said to have given her a ton of black velvet as a gift to give herself a reason to feel personally affronted if Lettice dared wear anything pretty!"
Suffering this kind of constant belittlement from Elizabeth, Sienna feels, means Lettice appreciated better than anyone the agonies that Dudley was forced to endure as Elizabeth's plaything, making their relationship entirely understandable.
"Although it was a betrayal, because she knew how Elizabeth felt about Dudley, they went to such great lengths, Leicester and Lettice, to make their marriage a secret that I believe she genuinely didn't want to publicly humiliate her cousin, otherwise it would have been a more public thing. I think it was very much an affair of the heart."
Unfortunately Elizabeth couldn't see it in this light and in a fury banned the pair from Court - an action that would come back to haunt her later.
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