I feel awful. So dreadfully guilty. Here it is, the 400th year since your passing from our world - and it has taken me until almost the last days of the year to acknowledge it at Tudor England. But I think you understand. Life for you has ended on Earth - your work all so gloriously done. I suspect you never stop watching down on England, now probably trembling that terror again threatens your English.
But I'm still in the midst of my work - so much to do and so much still unfinished. I think God blessed you by letting you go when he did. You could see you time had come to let go. You never wanted to stay beyond your time's need of you.
Sometimes I wondered what you'd do in my shoes. Being a wife, mother, writer and teacher (Again! My writing never pay the bills!) can be more than just simply a hard juggling act. I believe you came to England's throne understanding that ruling well meant keeping single focus. Queenship gave you a big enough ball without attempting to adding to it marriage and family. Your sister's reign presented a perfect lesson about this.
You said you were married to your Kingdom, but meant it more sincerely than your sister in her speech to calm the anger of the Londoners when they realized she planned to marry Philip of Spain and make him her consort. Mary's heart always craved a family to call her own - and on a smaller scale than your desire.
But I believe there was a part of you that too desired marriage and children. Reading history books about your final courtship with Monsieur, the last French prince to court you, has brought me close to tears. I see those days marked by your desperate desire to seize this last opportunity for a 'normal' woman's life. I think you then passionately wanted a child to call your own, a man to hold you tight when you woke from nightmares often plaguing you in the loneliness of your bed. Your poem you wrote marking your French prince's departure speaks from your heart and tells us so much:
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
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