Elizabeth’s mastery of time was ultimately only an illusion.

Evidence

For years Elizabeth had been the prima ballerina in a spectacle of her own designing. As long as she could call the tune she felt confident of leading the measure. … But no dance, however charged with magic, achieves more than the illusion of escaping time. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 72

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the fate-of-events theme across the book. — connects to: Elizabeth’s changefulness functioned as a deliberate strategy against time. — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 70
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 72