Elizabeth I will be portrayed as transgender in a forthcoming ITV drama in a move critics have branded a “sexist” attempt to write strong women out of history. The Telegraph has more.

The Tudor queen, who never married and established England as a rising imperial power, will be shown as a biological man in the six-part series next year.

The independence of the ‘Virgin Queen’, who ruled from 1558 to 1603 and defeated the Spanish Armada, has given rise to improbable conspiracies that she was a man masquerading as a woman.

Claims of her being a trans woman will be a central focus of the new series, titled Majesty, in which the monarch will be played by a transgender ‘woman’, according to reports.

ITV said the drama was “far from being a historical account” and was an “intriguing reimagining of her life based upon conspiracy theories”.

Elizabeth I’s strength as ruler and decision not to marry have prompted speculation about her sexuality and gender identity. Some claim she had male pseudohermaphroditism, a condition in which an individual has testicles and female genitalia.

A 19th century theory, included by Bram Stoker in a 1910 book about “famous impostors”, held that the queen died from a fever in Bisley, Gloucestershire, at the age of nine and was replaced by a local boy who looked similar to her.

Sir Robert Cecil, her chief minister, is recorded as having said she was “more than a man, and, in truth, sometimes less than a woman”.

In 1588, as the Spanish fleet approached England, Elizabeth I told troops in Tilbury, Essex: “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and of a king of England, too.”

In 2022, academics working for Shakespeare’s Globe in central London said she could have been non-binary, when people believe they are neither male nor female.

Elizabeth I was presented as such in an essay published by the theatre which referred to the female monarch with the gender-neutral they/them pronouns.

Feminist thinkers have raised concerns that casting doubts on the womanhood of prominent women because they defied gender norms and did supposedly ‘manly’ things will effectively write them out of history. …

Maya Forstater, Chief Executive of Sex Matters, said the series “sounds like an April Fool’s joke”.

“The news that Queen Elizabeth I is to be portrayed as transgender in a new ITV drama sounds like an April Fool’s joke, not the basis for a six part show that people will keep watching,” she told the Telegraph.

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