If only Queen Elizabeth II had the intellectual, political and linguistic skills of Queen Elizabeth I, many people would support giving her some of the powers of an elected president.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Elizabeth I was my favourite monarch though, what an inspiration, she did great things for women.
There's only one Elizabeth like me and that's the Queen.
I think that the benefit of playing someone like Queen Elizabeth is that so much has been written about her, and there's so much speculation about her - was she a hermaphrodite? She's so mythologised, and there are a lot of images of her.
In her religious role, the Queen is head of the Church of England, but in her civic role she cares for all her subjects, and no one is better at making everyone she meets feel valued.
Of course we have Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but in many ways we are a kind of republic. We don't have royals in Australia, so it was kind of unusual to run into those kind of people. But aside from that it was quite ordinary.
Many have observed that Elizabeth Edwards could be a political figure in her own right. She has never had an interest in that.
I quite like the Queen. Now, this must come as a fairly amazing statement for someone who is avowedly left wing, pro-independence and anti-monarchy, but there you go.
Like the Elizabeth I play, Queen Elizabeth is a monarch who actually moves with the times. She gets new information, assimilates it, and changes in order the fit in with the way the world is moving. I admire that.
Sure, I'd take the responsibility of queen any day.
If pushed to say what I like about Elizabeth, who, as I'm sure most of you know, overtook Queen Victoria this week to become our longest-serving monarch, it would be her uncomplaining, getting-on-with-it ethic.