Queen to Queen at Check: Grace O’Malley, Elizabeth Tudor, and the Discourse of Majesty in the State Papers of Ireland

Maps, like chessboards, were meant to illustrate the parameters of sovereignty. In 1599, Baptista Boazio presented the Queen with the map of Ireland he had been commissioned to draw. As topographical and navigational charts go, the print is unusual in that Boazio has drawn the map counter intuitively, clearly meaning to disrupt a viewer’s expectations. Rather than placing the points of the compass such that north would be located at the top of the page, south at the bottom, as was customary with such maps, this cartographer chose to locate the west coast of Ireland at the top of the page, the east at the bottom, and so on. Given the wealth of detail and the exceedingly fine script used to mark bays, mountains, lakes, etc., it is almost impossible to read the map any other way.