Mary's heir presumptive and 25-year-old half sister, Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Henry and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was under house arrest for suspected involvement in Thomas Wyatt the Younger's rebellion, is now freed from her imprisonment and crowned as Queen of England.

As briefed by her adviser, Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth inherits a distressed England besieged by debts, crumbling infrastructure, hostile neighbors, and treasonous nobles within her administration, chief among them, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk.

Realising the depth of the conspiracy against her and her dwindling options, Elizabeth accepts Mary of Guise's conditions to consider marrying her nephew Henry, Duke of Anjou.

In response to the Act's passage, the Vatican sends a priest to England to aid Norfolk and his cohorts in their growing plot to overthrow Elizabeth.

Elizabeth rejects Henry's marriage proposal when she discovers he is a cross-dresser and confronts Lord Dudley about his secret, fracturing their affair and banishing him from her private rooms.

Under Elizabeth's orders, he apprehends the priest, who divulges the names of the conspirators and a Vatican agreement to elevate Norfolk to the English crown if he weds Mary, Queen of Scots.

[5] According to the director's commentary, Kapur mentioned that the role of the Pope (played by Sir John Gielgud) was originally offered to, and accepted by, Marlon Brando.

A large proportion of the indoor filming, representing the royal palace, was conducted in various corners of Durham Cathedral; its unique lozenge-carved nave pillars are clearly identifiable.

The site's consensus reads: "No mere historical drama, Elizabeth is a rich, suspenseful journey into the heart of British Royal politics, and features a typically outstanding performance from Cate Blanchett.

[14][15] In his entry for Elizabeth I in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Patrick Collinson described the film "as if the known facts of the reign, plus many hitherto unknown, were shaken up like pieces of a jigsaw and scattered on the table at random.

"[15][16] Carole Levin, reviewing the film in 1999 for Perspectives on History, criticised the movie for portraying Elizabeth as "a very weak and flighty character who often showed terrible judgment", in contrast to historical descriptions of her as a strong, decisive, and intelligent ruler.