“The expectations that the queen would marry were strong, but there was also the conflict and contradiction that the queen was ruler while a wife was to be ruled by her husband.”
This quote pretty perfectly sums up Elizabeth’s conundrum. She knows that marrying will certainly introduce a lot of difficulty and complexity into her reign as a queen. A man that is so close to her in such a position of power would be an issue in maintaining the look and outward appear of a true sovereign. On the other hand, Elizabeth is still a human like anyone else. While she may have outwardly proclaimed that marriage is not something she wants or would ever consider she certainly went deep into courtships and at least played with the idea of being wed at some points in her life.
I agree that the issue of marriage did seem to take up a lot of queen Elizabeth’s free time. Even though she had many courtships, I think that she understood from a very young age that if she were to marry she would lose all of the power she had. She would have been tied to her husband and have even more outside pressure to have children.