elizabeth 1998 movie

In 1558, the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke) dies of a cancerous tumour in her uterus, leaving her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) as queen. Elizabeth had previously been jailed for a supposed conspiracy to murder Mary but has now been freed for her coronation. The film shows Elizabeth being courted by suitors, including Henry, Duc d'Anjou (Vincent Cassel), the future King Henry III of France, whom she rejects, and urged by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (Richard Attenborough) to marry, which, as he states, would secure her throne. Instead, she has a secret affair with her childhood sweetheart, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (Joseph Fiennes). The affair is, however, no secret from Cecil, who makes it clear that a monarch has no private life. Elizabeth deals with various threats to her reign, including the Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston); her Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton), who conspires to have her murdered; Mary's mother, Mary of Guise (Fanny Ardant), who brings French troops into Scotland to attack Elizabeth's forces when they invade.
Elizabeth permanently banishes Dudley from her private presence when she finds out that he is married. Elizabeth feels that such relations could give a man too much power over her. Moreover, cutting off her relations with Dudley is part of the process by which she becomes increasingly tough and assertive, in one scene she carefully prepares and rehearses the speech she would deliver to a recalcitrant Parliament and force through her religious reforms, the Act of Uniformity. She also becomes capable of occasional ruthless behaviour as in unflinchingly ordering the execution of those who she considers dangerous to her rule. After Elizabeth's advisor Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) discovers Norfolk and De La Quadra plotting with King Philip, she orders their arrest and execution. Mary of Guise is assassinated by Walsingham, who acted on unofficial