I often think of Elizabeth I and Abraham Lincoln as similar in a key regard -- both were complex mixes of strengths and weaknesses who arrived on the scene at a time of crisis when their particular strengths were desperately needed and their particular weaknesses were not fatal.
Both assumed power surrounded by considerable doubts about their rights and abilities to rule. Many Englishmen and most continental Europeans viewed Elizabeth as illegitimate. Lincoln took the presidency with less than 40% of the popular vote and amid widespread conviction that he had neither the experience nor the political capital to be effective.
Elizabeth played her initial hand brilliantly by defying expectations and holding off on forming a government until she had a clear read of the political lay of the land as the dust settled around Mary's death. When she finally did, it was an assemblage that did not tip observers off to her true views of contentious issues. Lincoln employed the equally-brilliant tactic of forming his first Cabinet largely of people who had run against him for the nomination. It gave him access to their talent and experience, it gave them a stake in the game he was about to play, and it allowed him to keep his eye on them.
In times when factional strife had reached extremes of violence, both Elizabeth and Lincoln displayed in heroic proportions what we today call "emotional intelligence". They were deeply anchored in their personal convictions, but they displayed clear understanding of the viewpoints of all adversaries. Consequently, they both avoided moral absolutes in choosing their positions. Elizabeth, while a committed Protestant, famously said that she did not desire a window into her subjects' souls and that the choice of religion should be a matter of personal conscience -- almost unheard of in an age of state religions. Lincoln, while something short of a racial egalitarian, personally abhorred slavery, but he was extremely flexible in his political handling of it. As with Elizabeth, his goal was to restore peace to a splintered nation, and he was willing to keep slavery intact, to abolish it altogether, or to land in between in order to keep his country intact.
Both were notoriously indecisive. Elizabeth drove her councillors to distraction by chronic delays on key matters, preferring instead that they first attempted to settle issues among themselves. In fact, she generally preferred not to make a decision until it became unavoidable. Lincoln likewise procrastinated on taking authority away from his designates, giving them all possible berth before stepping in. His procrastination in removing McClellan probably prolonged the Civil War considerably. But they both happened to live in times when passions were so overheated and issues so intractable that no one person -- even a monarch or a president -- had any chance of prevailing through his or her own will alone. Their instincts to "empower" their subordinates had the effect of encouraging talented people of different persuasions both to employ their talents and to develop personal loyalty to them, thereby extending their reach far beyond their own abilities.
Elizabeth was not a flawless monarch. But I cannot imagine one better suited to the throne for England's launch into the modern age.
