Elizabeth I Died the Virgin Queen — But Her Secret Ring Revealed a Shocking Secret

In March 1603, Elizabeth I lay dying and refused to go to bed. Her coronation ring had to be cut from her flesh, and a hidden ring may have carried the face of the mother her father beheaded.

This is the dark story behind England's Virgin Queen: a two-year-old declared a bastard days after Anne Boleyn's execution, a teenage girl preyed on in Thomas Seymour's household and interrogated for her own face, the mysterious death of Amy Robsart, the smallpox that nearly killed her, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Armada, the fall of Essex, and the secret inside the Chequers Ring.

00:00 The queen who would not lie down
00:44 Anne Boleyn's daughter
01:58 "Neither gown nor kirtle"
03:02 "I shall never marry"
04:14 Thomas Seymour
06:13 "I see it in her face"
07:27 Prisoner in the Tower
09:17 The Virgin Queen
10:00 Death on the stairs: Amy Robsart
11:50 Smallpox and the mask
13:04 Was she really a virgin?
14:32 Mary, Queen of Scots
15:20 The dark side of the Golden Age
16:42 The death warrant
17:52 The Armada and Tilbury
19:11 The painted face
20:21 Essex
21:30 Her achievement or her advisers'?
22:06 The final days
23:21 The secret ring

Sources include The National Archives, Historic Royal Palaces, Royal Museums Greenwich, English Heritage, the History of Parliament and contemporary accounts.

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