When the Earl of Essex succeeded his stepfather, the Earl of Leicester, as Queen Elizabeth's favorite, he was 21 and the Queen was in her mid-fifties. She was imperious and demanding; he was spoiled and ambitious, but shrewd and with an eye toward the main chance.

Their relationship is an ideal subject for Lytton Strachey's sardonic but not unsympathetic analysis.

"Elizabeth and Essex shared common traits of ego and vanity, and they exercised a fascination for each other. Their relationship, a struggle for dominance with all the overtones of repressed sexuality, is all the more fascinating for the difference in their ages." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)