How many golden sovereigns did you manage to amass?
"I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman. But I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant."
Queenie (Elizabeth I) in Blackadder II
by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson
by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson
BBC TV 1986
Pictured: Miranda Richardson
Pictured: Miranda Richardson
"The important thing is not what they think of me,
but what I think of them."
Queen Victoria (1819-1901)
but what I think of them."
Queen Victoria (1819-1901)
Portrait: Tobo
"I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare
Illustration: Arthur Rackham
"Where do you come from and where are you going? Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time."
The Red Queen in
Through the Looking-glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, 1872
Illustration: John Tenniel
"For six years, this year, and this, and this, and this, I did not love him. And then I did. Then I was his. I can count the days I was his in hundreds... The days we bedded. Married. Were Happy. Bore Elizabeth. Hated. Lusted. Bore a dead child... which condemned me... to death."
Anne Boleyn in the play
Anne of the Thousand Days
Anne of the Thousand Days
by Maxwell Anderson, 1948
Pictured: Genevieve Bujold in the 1969 film
"You must learn, child, that what would be wrong for you or for any of
the common people is not wrong in a great Queen such as I. The weight of
the world is on our shoulders. We must be freed from all rules. Ours is
a high and lonely destiny."
Jadis, Queen of Charn in
The Magician's Nephew by C S Lewis, 1955
Illustration: Pauline Baynes
"The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,
Death and despair flame about me!
If Sarastro does not through you feel
The pain of death,
Then you will be my daughter nevermore."
Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1791
Illustration: Maurice Sendak, 1981
"I've got the stuff that you want
I've got the thing that you need
I've got more than enough
to make you drop to your knee..."
'Queen of the Night', song by Whitney Houston , performed in the film, The Bodyguard, 1992
"You are a member of the British royal family.
We are never tired, and we all love hospitals."
Queen Mary of Teck (1867-1953)
with the Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth
with the Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth
"The shaft's twisted like a corkscrew and there's a blade gone off the prop."
The African Queen, film (1951) starring
Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart,
caricature by Al Hirschfeld
"Come on, smile and wave. That's what you get paid for. Smile and wave."
Queen Charlotte in the play
The Madness of George III
by Alan Bennett, 1991
Pictured: Nigel Hawthrone and Helen Mirren in the 1993 film, The Madness of King George
"I was a queen, and you took away my crown;
a wife, and you killed my husband;
a mother, and you deprived me of my children.
My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long."
a wife, and you killed my husband;
a mother, and you deprived me of my children.
My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long."
Marie Antoinettte (1755-1793)
Painting: William Hamilton, c. 1794
"I'm sure I'll take you with pleasure! Twopence a week, and jam every other day."
The White Queen in
Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll, 1872
Illustration: Helen Oxenbury, 2005
"How small and selfish is sorrow. But it bangs one about until one is senseless."
in a letter to Edith Sitwell following the death of KIng George VI
Caricature: Nicky Taylor
"And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of
spices very great store, and precious stones: there came no more such
abundance of spices as these which –––––––– gave to –––––––."
The Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon
in The Holy Bible ('The First Book of Kings')
Painting: Giovanni Demin
in The Holy Bible ('The First Book of Kings')
Painting: Giovanni Demin
"She was so beautiful and delicate, but she was of ice, of dazzling,
sparkling ice; yet she lived; her eyes gazed fixedly, like two stars;
but there was neither quiet nor repose in them."
but there was neither quiet nor repose in them."
The Snow Queen in the fairy-tale, Snedronninge,
by Hans Christian Andersen, 1845
Illustration: P J Lynch
"I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married."
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603)
Portrait: Artist Unknown
"On fire that glows
With heat intense
I turn the hose
Of common sense
And out it goes
At small expense!"
Queen of the Fairies in the operetta,
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri
by W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1882
Pictured: Marti Berg (left) as Iolanthe and Jean Ziaja as the Queen
"For you and for your heirs... on one condition.
Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old."
Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old."
Queen Elizabeth I in the 1992 film version of Virginia Woolf's novel, Orlando: A Biography
Pictured: Quentin Crisp (a Queen in his own right!) as Elizabeth
"She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman..."
Queen Mab as described by Mercutio in
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Painting: Queen Mab in the Ruins by James C Christensen
"There are never enough hours in the days of a queen, and her nights have too many."
Cleopatra in the 1963 film of the same name
Pictured: Elizabeth Taylor as the Queen of Egypt
"The silence at last was broken!
We flung wide our prison door.
Ev'ry joyous word of love was spoken.
And now there's twice as much grief,
Twice the strain for us;
Twice the despair,
Twice the pain for us
As we had known before."
Guinevere in Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe's 1960 musical, Camelot, based on the novel, The Once and Future King by T H White
Pictured: Julie Andrews in the first Broadway production
"What family doesn't have its ups and downs?"
Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1966 play,
The Lion in Winter by James Goldman
Pictured: Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole (as King Henry II) in the 1968 film
"Now,
a formula to transform my beauty into ugliness. Change my queenly
raiment to a peddler's cloak... Mummy dust, to make me old. To shroud my
clothes, the black of night. To age my voice, an old hag's cackle. To
whiten my hair, a scream of fright. A blast of wind to fan my hate. A
thunderbolt to mix it well. Now, begin thy magic spell."
The Wicked Queen in Walt Disney's 1937 film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
"No, no! Sentence first – verdict afterwards."
The Queen of Hearts in
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll, 1864Illustration: Ralph Streadman, 1972
"It is not as a woman descended from noble
ancestry, but as one of the people that I am avenging lost freedom, my
scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters. If you weigh well the strength of the armies, and
the causes of the war, you will see that in this battle you must conquer
or die. This is a woman's resolve; as for men, they may live and be
slaves."
Boadicea as described in Tacitus' Annals
Photo: Bronze statue of Boadicea by
Thomas Thornycroft near Westminster Pier, London
"I forgive you with all my heart. I thank you even. I hope this death
shall put an end to all my troubles. For in my end is my beginning."
Mary Stuart I of Scotland in the 1971 film,
Mary, Queen of Scots
"Behold me, lovely as no woman was or is, undying and half-divine;
memory haunts me from age to age, and passion leads me by the hand –
evil I have done, and from age to age evil shall I do, and sorrow shall I know till my redemption comes."
Ayesha ("She-who-must-be-obeyed") in
She: A History of Adventure
by H Rider Haggard, 1887
Illustration: Mark Thomas 2007by H Rider Haggard, 1887
"Many people
Think that
Marmalade
Is nicer.
Would you like to try a little
Marmalade
Instead?"
The Queen in the poem 'The King's Breakfast' from When We Were Very Young
by A A Milne, 1924
Illustrations: Ernest H Shepardby A A Milne, 1924
"The British Constitution has always been puzzling and always will be."
Queen Elizabeth II
Caricature: Trog
