What happened in Queen Elizabeth I early years?

Question

The life changing things

--besides the execution of her mother

Answer 1

Her new stepmother, Jane Seymour, was kind to her, and she loved her new baby brother, Jane's son.  Her fortunes were up and down for the next twenty plus years, however.  At one point her governess wrote to the King to say that Elizabeth had outgrown all her clothes and needed new ones.  Her father's later wives were also kind to her, and Katherine Howard, who was Anne Boleyn's first cousin, especially made much of Elizabeth.  After Henry died, when Elizabeth was thirteen, his last wife, Katherine Parr, took her into her household.  Katherine soon married Jane Seymour's brother Thomas, who was rumored to have had his eye on Elizabeth first.  There were whispers of an affair between Thomas and Elizabeth, but soon after Katherine died in childbirth (her first pregnancy in four marriages), Thomas was executed for treason.  For about the next ten years, Elizabeth lived a perilous life, sometimes actually imprisoned in the Tower for nothing more than being in line for the throne and, in the reign of her sister Mary, for being younger and more popular and maybe less Catholic.  Various possible marriages for her were discussed during those years, but nothing came of any of the suggestions.  Finally, as Mary, abandoned by her husband (who later proposed to Elizabeth and still much later sent the Spanish Armada to teach her a lesson). lay on her deathbed, she heard her courtiers riding past her window on their way to ingratiate themselves with Elizabeth.  When the news was brought to Elizabeth that she was now Queen, she at once fell to her knees and quoted Scripture (like a good Protestant) in Latin (like a good Catholic).  Much later in her reign, Elizabeth gave orders that, after her death, Mary's body was also to be placed in her tomb, saying (I'm paraphrasing), "Mary wasn't very well liked, and after I'm gone, some people might think to desecrate her tomb.  But NO one will desecrate MINE."