Re: Elizabeth and Mary, I think it very much would depend when the swap happens, because so much of Elizabeth's and Mary's personalities and their different approach to queenship (queendom?) was due to their very different upbringings. Mary literally became a queen as a baby. There was never a moment in her life when she didn't know she was Queen and always would be. And given she was a small child when she was brought to France, she also grew up with the certainty she would be Queen (Consort) of another realm, no question about it, where she would spend her most of her life. (Maybe she thought she'd return to Scotland now and then as Queen of France, and maybe she thought she'd always rule via regents as an adult, but she did think her life would be spend as Queen of France, a Catholic Queen in a Catholic country, married to the King of France. That wasn't a question, it was a certainty. The one open question for Mary when growing up would be the possibility she would also end up as Queen of England, but that depended on first Edward and then Mary and then Elizabeth being childless, and the first two were even for the Catholics around her the rightful rulers, so until Elizabeth was Queen and showed no signs of marrying, she couldn't have seriously counted on it.
All of which mmakes inevitably for a different personality than if she'd have lived like young Elizabeth did in an environment where her status entirely depended on the whim of her father - legitimate? bastard? still bastard but reinstalled into the succession? -, and where she kept getting graphic illustrations of how being a Queen consort didn't mean you couldn't end up beheaded. And even the worst case scenario aside - Elizabeth's stepmothers are such an illustration of what life can hold in store for a married to a king woman - if you play by the rules and are a model queen but your male babies don't survive, you can be discarded. If you do your consort queenly duty and provide a male baby, you can still die in childbirth. If you marry into a foreign country to seal an alliance, you can be discarded like unwanted goods if the next hot young thing shows up. And even if you manage to end up alive and a royal widow while it's your spouse who dies, and you marry the man you love, you can still die of childbirth after having found out he hit on your stepdaughter while you're pregnant.
(I mean, Mary was exposed to Catherine de' Medici being humiliated none stop by Henri II treating her as a birthing machine and Diane as his true love, which was hardly an illustration of marital happiness for royal women, but I do suspect Mary blamed this one on Catherine being not noble enough - the "merchant's daughter" quip -, and not pretty enough, as opposed to herself, and didn't see it as something she could possibly have to fear.)
Basically: Elizabeth didn't just have to learn survival skills and flexibility early on, she was constantly presented with worst case scenarios and warning signs. If Elizabeth had grown up like Mary, would she have developed the same attitudes and ways to be a Queen? Who knows...
no subject
Re: Elizabeth and Mary, I think it very much would depend when the swap happens, because so much of Elizabeth's and Mary's personalities and their different approach to queenship (queendom?) was due to their very different upbringings. Mary literally became a queen as a baby. There was never a moment in her life when she didn't know she was Queen and always would be. And given she was a small child when she was brought to France, she also grew up with the certainty she would be Queen (Consort) of another realm, no question about it, where she would spend her most of her life. (Maybe she thought she'd return to Scotland now and then as Queen of France, and maybe she thought she'd always rule via regents as an adult, but she did think her life would be spend as Queen of France, a Catholic Queen in a Catholic country, married to the King of France. That wasn't a question, it was a certainty. The one open question for Mary when growing up would be the possibility she would also end up as Queen of England, but that depended on first Edward and then Mary and then Elizabeth being childless, and the first two were even for the Catholics around her the rightful rulers, so until Elizabeth was Queen and showed no signs of marrying, she couldn't have seriously counted on it.
All of which mmakes inevitably for a different personality than if she'd have lived like young Elizabeth did in an environment where her status entirely depended on the whim of her father - legitimate? bastard? still bastard but reinstalled into the succession? -, and where she kept getting graphic illustrations of how being a Queen consort didn't mean you couldn't end up beheaded. And even the worst case scenario aside - Elizabeth's stepmothers are such an illustration of what life can hold in store for a married to a king woman - if you play by the rules and are a model queen but your male babies don't survive, you can be discarded. If you do your consort queenly duty and provide a male baby, you can still die in childbirth. If you marry into a foreign country to seal an alliance, you can be discarded like unwanted goods if the next hot young thing shows up. And even if you manage to end up alive and a royal widow while it's your spouse who dies, and you marry the man you love, you can still die of childbirth after having found out he hit on your stepdaughter while you're pregnant.
(I mean, Mary was exposed to Catherine de' Medici being humiliated none stop by Henri II treating her as a birthing machine and Diane as his true love, which was hardly an illustration of marital happiness for royal women, but I do suspect Mary blamed this one on Catherine being not noble enough - the "merchant's daughter" quip -, and not pretty enough, as opposed to herself, and didn't see it as something she could possibly have to fear.)
Basically: Elizabeth didn't just have to learn survival skills and flexibility early on, she was constantly presented with worst case scenarios and warning signs. If Elizabeth had grown up like Mary, would she have developed the same attitudes and ways to be a Queen? Who knows...