Two absolute icons.

Back in 2019, Jane Dunn‘s Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens (2004) got me thinking about one of history’s great ‘what ifs’:

What if Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots had actually met?

It felt a little like the anticipation surrounding Robert De Niro and Al Pacino finally sharing the screen in Heat (1995). Two extraordinary figures whose stories seemed destined to collide.

Despite a track record for manufacturing such confrontations (example: Prince Hal and Harry Hotspur in 1 Henry IV), Shakespeare never really tackled such a meeting. It would have been theatrical gold, but politically impossible.

Reading my post again in 2026, I find myself drawn to something different.

Over the past year I’ve spent months immersed in Antony and Cleopatra with a student, and one scene returned to me. In Act III, scene iii, Cleopatra demands to know everything about her rival Octavia: not simply who she is, but how tall she is, how she walks, how she speaks. 

The messenger knows his life depends on giving answers that satisfy the volatile queen.

Suddenly, the idea that

The queens both asked for detailed descriptions, of each others’ appearances and skills.

seems less like historical curiosity and more like something profoundly human.

How do we imagine people we’ve never met?

How do we construct an identity from fragments, rumours and second-hand accounts?

Seven years on, that’s the question I find most interesting.

Join the conversation: which literary characters do you wish had met? Why?

(QotW) #83: 22 July 2019