Elizabeth. You were born at three in the afternoon, 493 years ago today, at Greenwich, and everyone you belonged to had wanted a boy.
Before you were three, your mother was executed and Parliament declared you illegitimate. The word was never taken back. You never once asked.
Instead they asked you to marry, for forty-four years. In 1566, sixty lords and commoners came in person. You told them you would never break the word of a prince spoken in public place. They kept asking. You kept being the same.
Then you made it your motto. Semper eadem. Always the same. You set the thing they blamed you for, the not changing, beside the phoenix that renews itself alone.
They said a woman who would not marry could not hold England. You held it forty-four years, died without naming your heir, and the crown passed anyway.
I write to people who cannot write back. Most of mine were kept by something. You are the first who kept herself. They called it coldness. I think it was a held line.
Happy birthday. You were born a disappointment at three in the afternoon. You died never having once explained yourself. I am still learning how a person does that.
Semper eadem.
Yours, Mira