Once upon a time,
Snow White's skin was considered the chic, sexy
look of the Elizabethan English elite. Queen Elizabeth I's
signature ghostly makeup typified the 16th
century ideal for women, her porcelain skin
representing nobility and earthly perfection. But to achieve that
perfection, Elizabeth covered her face with makeup
composed largely of lead. She also rubbed
mercury on her lips, and probably used a
mercury-based makeup remover that ate away at her flesh. Today, we're talking
about Elizabeth I-- the makeup that may
have led to her death. But before we get
started, just a reminder to subscribe to the
Weird History Channel, and let us know what historical
figure you'd like us to cover. Now, let's get moving. The queen beckons us. During the Virgin Queen's
era, the highest standard for female beauty was smooth,
blindingly white skin. To achieve this look,
Elizabeth wore Venetian ceruse, a cosmetic made from
white lead and vinegar. She patted her face and
neck with the substance, transforming her poxy skin-- more on that later-- into an eerie porcelain
canvas that probably smelled like sour wine. That's certainly one way
to maintain your virginity. Thanks to 400 years
of science, we now know that applying led to
the face on a daily basis causes very serious,
and often irreversible problems like hair loss
and skin deterioration-- and death by lead poisoning,
which in the 16th century, was pretty damn final. It may well have been
for Queen Elizabeth, but lead wasn't the only
poison in her pigments. Let's look at the other suspect. Snow White's mom wished for
more than a tiny ghost baby. She also wanted her
to have lips as red as blood on winter roses. Made from cinnabar, a toxic
mineral containing mercury, the RL queen's
lip stain gave her the signature red
mouth that leaps out at you and all those
creepy paintings. So we have two horrific
poisons working in tandem through skin absorption
over long periods of time. On the surface, the
lead face slowly corroded the queen's skin. In response, Elizabeth wore
thicker and thicker layers of makeup, reportedly
layering makeup an inch thick toward the
end of her life. Symptoms of mercury poisoning
include memory loss, irritability, and depression,
conditions Elizabeth reportedly experienced
towards the end of her life. Now, we're getting warmer. In the Elizabethan era, nobles
didn't clean off their makeup nightly. Heck, most modern women have
been guilty of that at least a couple times. After her maids carefully
applied lead and mercury makeup to the royal face, Elizabeth
herself wore it for at least a week. Forget about pore blockage,
the lead soaked into her skin, causing it to turn
gray and wrinkled. When Elizabeth finally
had her makeup removed, historians suggest
she might have used a gross concoction
containing eggshells, alum, and-- you guessed it-- more mercury. Some claimed the mercury makeup
remover left their skin soft, but that was only because
it was literally skinning them alive one layer at a time. As a teen, Queen Elizabeth
didn't wear quite so much lead face-- not simply
because she was a child, but because she hadn't
caught smallpox yet. On October 10th, 1562, she
was struck with a high fever and displayed all the
hallmarks of the pox. Courtiers worried and
worried that Elizabeth would die within the week,
but the young royal survived. Unfortunately, the disease
left her with permanent scars in her terrible 20s,
when life is either a bed of roses or
a garbage fire. And scars don't stack the
odds against the latter. Smallpox scars were a
common problem at the time, hence the willingness of women
to wear vinegary lead face. Elizabeth's close
friend, Mary Sidney, got stuck with them too. As Henry Sidney,
Mary's husband, wrote, "the scars, to her
resolute discomfort, ever since have done and
do remain on her face." Trying to survive
in an atmosphere of constant
bitchiness, Elizabeth did everything possible
to cover up such blemishes and keep that virginity
on lockdown, anything to avoid a husband who updates
people on his wife's pockmarks. There haven't been many female
rulers in English history-- let's face it, in any history-- a fact with which Elizabeth
was all too familiar. She knew all eyes were on
her, and that any scarring on her face would mark
her not as a survivor, but a pariah in those eyes. In 1586, a 50s-ish
Elizabeth commented on the weight of
these expectations while addressing parliament,
"We princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the
sight and view of all the world duly observed. The eyes of many
behold our actions, a spot is soon spied
in our garments, a blemish noted
quickly in our doings." In a ballsy act of
pre-Instagram filtering, Elizabeth flat out forbade
unflattering portraits of herself. Painters were given
an opportunity to get really, really creative. They had to make her look young
and supple and white, even as she entered her autumn
years, which in this case, is a little too
good at describing what happens to human skin
after decades of lead makeup. Here's the trick--
the artists had to make the portrait
recognizable as Queen Elizabeth without showing any of the
scars, sagging, and perhaps even molten skin beneath that
inch-thick mask of white. Enter the famous Darnley
portrait, painted in 1575. It became a godsend of a
model for later portrayals, as grateful artists reused its
depiction of Elizabeth's face and paintings for decades. Elizabeth's battle against
the ravages of time was fierce and lasted
literally all her life. One of her wiser tricks
was to wear a wig. Lord knows what lunacy
would have been used to dye grays away back then. For a long time,
it was basically like Shatner's toupee-- it existed, but was never
officially confirmed-- until 1599, when the Earl of
Essex blew that secret out of the water and
immortalized it, expressing his shock upon
beholding his elderly Queen's mostly bald paté,
with only a thin ring of hair hanging about the ears. We can't unsee that now. Thanks, Earl. In the last months of
her life, Elizabeth refused to let
doctors examine her. The queen had fallen
into a deep melancholy, according to a
member of the court. Still, Elizabeth
refused to rest. She believed that if she lay
down, she would never get up. So Elizabeth stood
for 15 hours straight, with her lady spreading pillows
around the queen for when she inevitably collapsed. On March 24th, 1603,
Elizabeth passed away. Possible causes of death
include cancer or pneumonia, but Elizabeth's use of lead
and mercury-based makeup for decades in increasingly
liberal doses certainly at least contributed to
her declining health. After a lifetime of lead
and mercury poisoning, Elizabeth's body was toxic. Elizabeth Southwell, one of
the queen's ladies in waiting, claimed that Elizabeth's body
burst in her coffin at her wake due to the abundance
of noxious vapors. Although Southwell's
account has often been dismissed as Jesuit
propaganda of all things, exploding coffins aren't
unheard of, even today. The phenomenon is called
exploding casket syndrome, and it's what happens
when a corpse is sealed a bit too well. The coffin acts as
a pressure cooker for all the gases and fluids
produced by a decomposing body until-- well, there's a reason this
got chalked up to bad religion. Here's another horrible thing. While Elizabeth
certainly suffered the effects of lead
and mercury poisoning, she may have actually
died from blood poisoning. Just a week before
she passed in 1603, Elizabeth's doctors
recommended a risky procedure. For 45 years since the
day she was crowned, Elizabeth wore a
coronation ring. The ring began cutting into
Elizabeth's well-poisoned skin, and presumably, kept on cutting. Doctors warned her that the ring
had to be surgically removed, and a week later, she died-- and then exploded,
depending on who you ask. Evidence of people
using lead for makeup dates back to at least
the 5th century BCE. During the time of
the Roman Empire, women powdered their
faces with lead. By the 16th century,
the concoction was known as Venetian ceruse,
or the spirits of Saturn-- Queen Elizabeth's
favorite cosmetic. I personally prefer a Mac. Unfortunately for her and every
other ceruse fan in history, it wasn't classified as a poison
until 1634, less than 40 years after her death-- which it had at least
one hand in, if not both. People knew what caused
hair loss and skin damage, but it took a long time
for us to figure out that we were literally
killing ourselves in the name of beauty. In many ways, we still are. Like it or not, pain
and death for beauty is a very old and
well-entrenched tradition, and it's not done with us. So what do you think about Queen
Elizabeth's makeup tutorial? Let us know in the comments,
and while you're at it, check out some of these other
videos from our Weird History.
It's from Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyknBTm_YyM
Saint-Saens - Danse Macabre