Maria Vetrano is the author of the new novel Queen Bess: A Tudor Comes to Save America. She is the founder of the PR and marketing firm Vetrano Communications.
Q: What inspired you to write Queen Bess: A Tudor Comes to Save America?
A: In 2018, a full two years after the 2016 presidential election, I still felt overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of distressing news about the Trump administration.
I tried different coping mechanisms, but boxing couldn’t fix it. Wine couldn’t fix it. Even mindfulness couldn’t fix it, though it helped. There wasn’t much that I could do other than fantasize about a different reality.
I asked myself at this point, what kind of woman could win the presidency in the United States? That’s when I remembered Queen Elizabeth I. I’ve been a fan of Elizabeth Tudor since I watched the late Glenda Jackson in Elizabeth R, the 1971 Masterpiece Theatre TV series, when I was a child.
If we could just bring someone as strong, brilliant, and politically savvy as Elizabeth Tudor to the present, we would have a woman candidate who could defeat Trump—and save the best of America before he burned it to a crisp.
Unlike an actual political candidate, however, Elizabeth Tudor would have no past to target because she isn’t from the modern era. That’s an attribute that no other living presidential candidate, male or female, can match.
Q: How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I toured some Elizabethan sites in England on more than one occasion, from the Tower of London—where Elizabeth was imprisoned upon suspicion of treason for two months when she was in her early 20s—to Hampton Court, one of King Henry VIII’s favorite palaces.
I’ve also seen some of Elizabeth’s portraits at the National Gallery of London and have toured the British Museum to view some artefacts from the time of her reign.
More recently, I also visited Elizabeth’s tomb at Westminster Abbey and the site of the home where she spent most of her childhood until the age of 25 when she ascended the throne in 1558: that site is Hatfield Palace, and it is absolutely splendid.
In December 2023, I also saw one of the most famous Armada portraits of Elizabeth at the Queen’s House museum at Greenwich.
I also did research on paper. I read numerous biographies of Elizabeth, including biographies by Tracy Borman (one of my favorite Tudor-era historians and writers), Alison Weir, and Susan Doran. See: https://www.whatwereading.com/elizabeth-i-books/ .
And one of the most invaluable books I’ve read is Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England.
There are wonderful resources online as well, including an Early Modern English to Modern English translator, and lists of Shakespearean curse words.
Q: How did you create your character Dakota Wynfred?
A: I wanted Dakota Wynfred to be a different kind of tech billionaire, a billionaire with a strong social conscience. And she is. She comes from humble roots. Her parents were social activists who taught her that it was her responsibility to help correct societal wrong-doings. This ethos was formative to Dakota’s personality.
I also based Dakota’s technical expertise in part on a friend of mine, Professor Latanya Sweeney, who is the first Black woman to have earned her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT.
While Dakota isn’t Black, her BFF from her undergraduate days, Dr. CeCe Gibbons, is a Black woman, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Boston University. As Dakota says in the book, CeCe is her most emotionally astute friend because most of Dakota’s friends are nerds like she is.
I built a few biographical elements into Dakota as well. My favorite store is REI and I wear lots of Smart Wool sweaters (as well as cashmere) and Ecco lace-up shoes. Also, my mother was named Camille and she died of breast cancer when she was 42 years old.
Q: What parallels do you see to today’s actual political world in your creation of President Robert Vlakas?
A: Vlakas is loosely inspired by Donald Trump. He isn’t identical nor do I want readers to view him as such. Vlakas represents the potential dangers that an autocratic, narcissistic leader could affect in the US: chief among these are the loss of civil rights that were hard-won over decades as well as the loss of access to healthcare, reproductive freedom, secular education, and more.
Vlakas is like other authoritarian rulers with no apparent moral compass, including Vladimir Putin.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on the second book in the Queen Bess trilogy.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes. My hope is that readers of Queen Bess will enjoy the political-fantasy aspect of the book. Our presidential campaigns are long, expensive, and exhausting. And our two-party system—as realized today—is deeply partisan.
That’s not good for democracy because members of Congress rarely reach across the aisle to collaborate. They are tasked with scoring political points and are also, in some cases, beholden to special interest groups, some of which, like the NRA, are nefarious in nature.
Elizabeth Rex, the name Elizabeth Tudor takes in the modern era, represents a different kind of politician. She thinks and runs like an Independent. She cares deeply about her people and the environment.
While she does want to be admired—as she was widely in most regions of 16th-century England—she understands that this isn’t always possible. She is committed to dealing with political enemies, whether at home or abroad, to the degree that this is possible.
Above all else, Elizabeth Rex wants her legacy to be that she left the world a better place than she found it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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