The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Interpretation: When Elizabeth Tudor became queen, she
understood her supremely fragile position. Unlike her father or almost
any other English monarch, she had zero credibility as a ruler, and no
respect or authority to draw upon. The country was in a weakened
state. She was too young, with no political experience or prior
proximity to power to learn from. Yes, by merely occupying the throne
she could expect some obedience, but such loyalty was thin and could
change with the slightest mistake or crisis. And within months or years
she would be forced to marry, and as she knew, being married could
lead to all sorts of problems if she did not quickly produce a male heir.
What made this even more troubling was that Elizabeth was
ambitious and highly intelligent; she felt more than capable of ruling
England. She had a vision of how she could solve its many problems
and transform it into a European power. Marriage would not only be
bad for her but for the country as well. Most likely she would have to
marry a foreign prince, whose allegiance would be to his country of
origin. He would use England as a pawn in the Continent’s power
games and drain its resources even further. But given all the odds
against her, how could she hope to rule England on her own? She
decided the only way forward was to turn her weak position into an
advantage, forging her own type of credibility and authority, one that
in the end would give her powers far greater than any previous king.
Her plan was based on the following logic: Kings and queens of her
time ruled with a tremendous sense of entitlement due to their
bloodline and semidivine status. They expected complete obedience
and loyalty. They did not have to do anything to earn this; it came with

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the position. But this sense of entitlement had its consequences. Their
subjects would pay homage, but the emotional connection to such
rulers was in most cases not very deep. The English people could feel
the distance separating themselves from the monarch, and how little
their rulers really considered them.
This feeling of entitlement also blunted their political effectiveness.
The government ministers were cowed and intimidated by someone
like Henry VIII, and so their energy went into appeasing the king
rather than using their own intelligence and creative powers. With this
sense of entitlement, rulers paid less attention to the details of
governing, which were too boring; wars of conquest became their chief
means of getting glory and providing riches for the aristocracy, even
though such wars drained a country’s resources. These rulers could be
incredibly selfish—Henry VIII had Elizabeth’s mother executed so he
could marry his latest mistress, not caring how tyrannical this made
him seem to the English. Mary, Queen of Scots, had her husband
murdered so she could marry her lover.
It would be easy for Elizabeth to delude herself and simply expect
the loyalty that came with her august position. But she was too smart
to fall into that trap. She would deliberately go in the opposite
direction. She would feel no sense of entitlement. She would keep in
mind the weakness of her actual position. She would not passively
expect loyalty; she would turn active. She would earn the trust and
credibility she required through her actions over time. She would
demonstrate that she was not selfish, that everything she did was
motivated by what was for the greater good of the country. She would
be alert and relentless in this task. She would alter the way people (her
subjects, her ministers, her foreign rivals) perceived her—from an
inexperienced and weak woman to a figure of authority and great
power. By forging much deeper ties with her ministers and the
commoners, she would overcome people’s natural fickleness and
channel their energies for the purpose of rebuilding England.
Her first appearances before the English people were cleverly
crafted to set the stage for a new type of leadership. Surrounded by all
the usual royal pomp, she mixed in a common touch, making her seem
both comforting and regal. She was not faking this. Having felt
powerless in her youth, she could identify with the poorest charwoman
of England. She indicated through her attitude that she was on their
side, sensitive to their opinions of her. She wanted to earn their

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approval. She would build on this empathy throughout her reign, and
the bonds between her and subjects became much more intense than
with any previous ruler.
With her ministers, the task was more delicate and difficult. It was a
group of power-hungry men, with their egos and need to feel smarter
than and superior to a woman. She depended on their help and
goodwill to run the country, but if she revealed too much dependence
on them, they would walk all over her. And so, from the first days of
her rule, she made the following clear: she was all business; she would
work harder than all of them; she would reduce expenditures for the
court, sacrificing her own income in the process; and all activity was to
be directed toward lifting England out of the hole it had fallen into. She
showed early on her superior knowledge of the finances of the country
and the tough side of herself in any negotiation. Upon occasion, she
would flash her anger if a minister seemed to be furthering a personal
agenda, and such outbursts could be quite intimidating.
Mostly, though, she was warm and empathetic, attuned to the
various moods of these men. Soon they wanted to please her and win
her approval. To not work hard or smart enough could mean isolation
and some coldness, and unconsciously they wanted to avoid this. They
respected the fact that she lived up to her own high standards. In this
way, she slowly placed these ministers into the same position that she
had found herself in: needing to gain her trust and respect through
their actions. Now, instead of a cabal of conspiring, selfish ministers,
the queen had a team working to further her agenda, and the results
soon spoke for themselves.
By these methods, Elizabeth acquired the credibility she needed,
but she made one major mistake—her handling of Mary, Queen of
Scots. Elizabeth had become somewhat entitled herself, feeling in this
case that she knew better than her ministers and that her personal
qualms about executing a fellow queen trumped everything else. She
paid a price for this policy, as she felt the people’s respect for her
draining away, and it pained her. Her sense of the greater good was
what guided her, but in this case the greater good would be served by
having Mary executed. She was violating her own principles.
It took some time, but she realized her mistake. She tasked the head
of her secret service to lure Mary into her most far-reaching conspiracy
to get rid of Elizabeth. Now with solid evidence of Mary’s complicity,

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Elizabeth could take the dreaded step. In the end, going against her
own feelings for the sake of the country, in essence admitting her
mistake, gained her even more trust from the English. It was the kind
of response to public opinion that almost no rulers of the time were
capable of.
When it came to her foreign rivals, particularly Philip II, Elizabeth
was not naive and understood the situation: Nothing she had done had
earned her any respect or respite from their endless conspiracies to get
rid of her. They disrespected her as an unmarried queen and as a
woman who seemed to fear conflict and warfare. She largely ignored
all of this and kept to her mission of securing England’s finances. But
when the invasion of England seemed imminent, she knew it was time
to finally prove herself as the great strategist that she was. She would
play on Philip’s underestimating of her craftiness and her toughness as
a leader.
If war was necessary, she would do it as economically and efficiently
as possible. She invested large sums in creating the most elaborate spy
system in Europe, which allowed her to know in advance Spain’s plans
for the invasion, including the date of the launch. With such
knowledge, she could commission and pay for an army at the last
minute, saving huge sums of money. She financed Sir Frances Drake’s
raids on the coast of Spain and its galleons at sea. This allowed her to
enrich England’s coffers and delay the launching of the armada, which
made it all the more expensive for Philip.
When it seemed certain the launch would occur within a few
months, she quickly built up the English navy, commissioning smaller
and faster ships, cheaper to build in bulk and well suited to the English
seas. Unlike Philip, she left battle strategy in the hands of her admirals,
but she overruled them on one score—she wanted them to fight the
armada as close to England as possible. This would play into English
hands, as the Spanish galleons were not suited for the stormy northern
seas, and the English soldiers, fighting with their backs to their
country, would fight all the harder. In the end, Spain was bankrupted
and never to return to her former glory, while England under Elizabeth
was now the rising power. But after this great victory, she resisted the
calls to take the battle to Spain and deal the country a fatal blow. She
was not interested in war for glory or conquest but only to safeguard
the country’s interests.

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After the defeat of the armada, her authority and credibility seemed
invulnerable, but Elizabeth would never let her guard down. She knew
that with age and success would naturally come that dreaded sense of
entitlement and the insensitivity that went with it. As a woman ruling
the country by herself, she could not afford such a letdown. She
retained her receptiveness to the moods of those around her, and she
could sense that the younger men now filling the court had a much
different attitude toward her. Their respect was for her position as
queen, but it did not run much deeper than that. Once again she would
have to struggle against masculine egos, but this time without her own
youthful charms and coquetry to fall back on.
Her goal with Essex was to tame and channel his spirit for the good
of the country, as she had done with her ministers. She indulged him
in his endless desires for money and perks, trying to calm his
insecurities, but when it came to giving him any political power, she set
limits. He had to prove himself, to rise to her level, before she would
grant him such powers. When he threw tantrums, she remained calm
and steady, unconsciously proving to him her superiority and the need
for self-control. When it became clear he could not be tamed, she let
him go far enough with his conspiring to ruin his reputation and allow
her to get rid of this cancer. And when he faced death for his crime, it
was not simply the image of God that terrified him but that of the
queen, whose aura of authority finally overwhelmed this most insolent
and self-entitled of men.