At the time, Queen Elizabeth was the only female de jure monarch who dared to rule without a husband. She perpetuated her status as the "Virgin Queen," claiming to marry England instead. While this was a blatant threat to the status quo, as all of her contemporaries had husbands, this persona ultimately worked in her favor, as she did not have to compromise England's sovereignty with a marriage to a foreign king or subject it to a deep power struggle by marrying an English noble.

There was a fair amount of rumor going around about Elizabeth during her time living with Catherine Parr after her father's death, with some alleging that Elizabeth and Parr's new husband Thomas Seymour engaging in relations. These are historically debated upon but ultimately not substantiated enough to discredit her virginity. However, her famous affair with Robert Dudley almost certainly does.

If "Gloriana" ever was to give her independence to another man, it certainly would have been Dudley. She spent the better part of her young adulthood absolutely besotted with her, and he reciprocated her affection (as most men did, even as she grew older and pockmarked). However, she was ultimately stricken by two fears that prevented the marriage. One, she continually viewed her mother's demise (the famously beheaded Anne Boleyn) as a symbol of a strong woman suffering at the whims of a man because she gave up her independence for him. Second, and perhaps more saliently, she feared compromising England, for even though she legally ruled as a monarch as powerful as any other king would be, she would concede some of that power to a husband.

Ultimately, her virginity was accepted by the general public, as unmarried women of status were always supposed to maintain their "virtue," but given Elizabeth's open flirtation with princes and kings and dukes and earls, she remained a source of hush-hush court gossip. Not that she minded. She lived to be the center of attention.