Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I is recast in the novel’s fabricated history as a ruler who wants the Templar secret for the Crown alone, not as a reward for rescuing the knights. In the episode narrated by Edward Kelley, her demand for exclusive possession collides with John Dee’s ambition to obtain the secret and remove its other holders. Her appearance exposes how the supposed Plan’s history is assembled from invention, political desire, and borrowed legends.

Appearance in the Invented History

Elizabeth appears behind a curtain as the Haughty Virgin, addressing Dee and William Shakespeare after they have knelt before her. She insists that her ancestors did not save the knights in order to give them dominion over the world; the secret, she declares, must belong only to the Crown. The scene gives her authority over the conspirators’ imagined history, but it does not establish that the exchange is historical fact: it belongs to Kelley’s elaborate, unreliable narrative.

The Crown and the Secret

Dee tells Elizabeth that he wants the secret for the Crown and must first locate its other possessors. He proposes that they disclose what they know before he eliminates them, whether by dagger or poison. Elizabeth responds by demanding total power and offering rewards if Dee succeeds: the garter for him, and another garter and a golden fleece for William. The exchange makes the Plan’s alleged inheritance a political prize. The queen’s authority does not dissolve the conspiracy; it becomes one more force competing to possess it.

Kelley’s Retrospective Account

Kelley’s later account, written from imprisonment, extends the imagined history beyond the audience scene. He claims that Francis Bacon seduced Elizabeth over a period of years, exploited her declining condition by impersonating William, and sought control of the Plan rather than the throne. Kelley further alleges that Bacon strengthened his position, eliminated Dee, and had him killed. These claims belong to the imprisoned narrator’s story, not to an independently verified account of Elizabeth’s life; the novel presents them within a chain of fabricated authorships and secret motives.

Narrative Function

Elizabeth’s role shows how the Plan recruits even royal power into its retrospective explanation of history. A real monarch becomes a character in Kelley’s invented account, where courtly rewards and the demand for exclusive possession are made to serve the conspiracy’s imagined continuity. Elsewhere, the novel identifies the Templar escape-to-Scotland story as a repeatedly copied legend without foundation, and ultimately confirms that the Provins message was merely a laundry list: there was no Plan. Elizabeth’s episode thus belongs to the same machinery of interpretation that turns disconnected material into a secret history, while the novel’s framing warns against mistaking that history for evidence.