Characters
As in Spenser's allegory, certain of Moorcock's characters resemble real personages. Gloriana's Lord Chancellor, Perion Montfallcon, brings to mind Elizabeth's chief minister, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley; and Gloriana's swashbuckling privateer Sir Thomasin Ffyne takes after Elizabeth's maritime explorer and favorite, Sir Walter Raleigh. The only character drawn from actual history is Gloriana's philosopher, Doctor Dee, who shares his royal position with Elizabeth I's court astrologer, also called John Dee.
At the center of attention is the 6-foot, 6-inch, flame-haired Empress Gloriana I. She is daughter to the tyrannical and syphilitic King Hern VI—an echo and darker version of Elizabeth I's father, King Henry VIII. Hern VI even raped his own daughter. She is the antithesis of the "Virgin Queen" Elizabeth I. Where Elizabeth was cool, self-controlled, and pragmatic, kind-hearted Gloriana is often overwhelmed by loneliness and despair, a slave to passions she can neither renounce or satisfy. By day a serene and benevolent monarch, by night the lonely queen is a bisexual adventurer who seeks release in all manner of debauchery but is always anorgasmic, perhaps due to Hern's aforementioned sexual abuse. She is the mother of nine bastard daughters fathered by nine different paramours. Behind the veneer of a new Golden Age, she suffocates under the burden of her duty and her enormous private distress.
The queen's best friend and confidante is Countess Una of Scaith. Described as "intelligent and warm" Una is a cheerful, adventurous noblewoman from the far north who bears at least a passing resemblance to Mary Queen of Scots. But unlike the real Elizabeth and her Scottish rival, Gloriana and Una are inseparable friends who do everything together. Una is also the queen's lover, though unlike her other lovers, she has a close place by Gloriana's side in the daytime as well.
Gloriana's downfall comes in the form of a bisexual assassin and spy, antihero Captain Arturo Quire. Elizabethan England certainly had its own Quires, but he is a character drawn not from history but from Moorcock's imagination.
Read more about this topic: Gloriana (novel)
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