Knighting Drake on the Golden Hind was four-dimensional political theater designed to boost Elizabeth's brand and signal support for France.

14:11>> I think it would make I Cate Blanchett I think missed a trick by not losing her garter on the Golden Hind as the ship. I think it would also make a tremendous patriotic stirring epic. Anyway, so the the question is why has the inveterately cautious Elizabeth taken such a bold and flamboyant step? As we've said, she is clearly very impressed with Drake. She thinks he's he's tremendous.

14:32>> Mhm. >> You know, she's always inviting him in for chats. But I think she is also playing four-dimensional chess. And she is very good at playing four-dimensional chess. And her move works on a kind of couple of levels. So first of all, it obviously plays well with her subjects. Drake is the great national hero. And Elizabeth knows that by having him knighted, um it gilds her

14:53own brand. >> Mhm. >> And this is really important because she has to worry that war is threatening. England does remain riven by sectarian divisions. And its future as a Protestant kingdom hangs by the single thread that is Elizabeth's own life. And so, you know, she's always getting intelligence briefings from Walsingham saying that there are assassins out there. So she wants to she wants to woo her subjects. You know,

15:18she wants to make herself the great beloved of the English people. And so therefore it is desperately important to her to project a sense of her rule as something glamorous and golden and self-confident to kind of portray herself as Gloriana. And to that end, having Drake knighted works superbly because to this day, I think, the image of Elizabeth personally dubbing Drake a knight on the deck of

15:48the Golden Hind remains one of the great iconic scenes of English history. >> Overseas listeners won't get this, but when we were growing up in the sort of '70s and '80s, there were these books called Ladybird books that everybody in England read. They were the guides to history, and this is your classic Ladybird book illustration, isn't it? You know, people cheering with great ruffs, huzzahs from the crowd. They

16:09didn't have the people falling in the mud. Yeah, good Queen Bess who looks gorgeous knighting a very handsome swashbuckling Sir Francis Drake. Makes you proud to be English. >> Uh and unfortunately it didn't actually happen. Elizabeth didn't dub Drake herself, but she got a Frenchman >> Oh my god. This is literally the worst moment in the history of the podcast. [laughter] >> a guy called Monsieur de Marchaumont to

16:31do it. Um but obviously Elizabeth wouldn't have asked Marchaumont to knight Drake had she not been confident that Marchaumont would do it. Um and it was also Marchaumont who picks up Elizabeth's fallen garter, which she did um coyly let slip. And it's all very flirty. So it's you know, it's a proper entente cordiale between England and France. And so here I think is another reason for all these

16:53tremendous theatrics aboard the Golden Hind. Elizabeth is sending a public message to Spain about the strength of her relationship with France. >> [snorts] >> And listeners who heard our second episode, which was all about the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, may find this odd. Why is a Protestant queen flirting with the ambassador of a Catholic country in which only a decade before thousands of Protestants had been massacred