I’m in the home stretch of a book about Queen Elizabeth I, a woman who because of her accomplishments was once one of my heroes. Heroes, however, rarely stand up to the floodlight of scrutiny. Ronald Reagan—celebrated so intensely these days for such laudable exploits as lowering taxes and dying in bed—was as President a barely mitigated disaster who subverted the rule of law, obliterated the social safety net, reduced the level of political discourse to that of children squabbling on the playground, overthrew legitimate governments, and of course, caused the deaths of dozens of thousands of people in Latin America and all over the world. None of this is apparent from recent coverage depicting him as the lone scourge Communism whose face should grace mountains and money. My hero!

And so it was with Elizabeth Regina, the much beloved Virgin Queen who encouraged religious tolerance despite Catholic plots on her life and who defeated the Spanish Armada with one dainty hand tied behind her back. In reality, far from being a player on the world stage, fortuitous things just seemed to happen around her, which she seized upon despite her legendary indecision, pettiness, and insecurity. Take away the crown and the dresses voluminous enough to reach the stratosphere in a gale, and you’ve got a day in my life.

Her courtiers were worse: bickering endlessly, gossiping cruelly, lying for political and personal gain, feigning illnesses and throwing tantrums to get their way, secretly knocking each other up and getting married, wasting millions of pounds on vain indulgences. These were not heroes or giants among men; they were the Renaissance version of the Bush Administration.

We create legends to make distant figures accessible. We project ourselves and our circumstances onto them and convince ourselves that, were it not for accidents of time and space, we would be with them or perhaps even be them. And this fantasy is so desirable that no one bothers to read the history books to discover the cruel truth that we already are.