What would a battlecruiser contemporary derived from the Queen Elizabeth design have looked like?
Short answerIt would likely sacrifice one twin turret for substantially more machinery, producing a six-gun ship above 30 knots and broadly resembling the Renown class.
NotesThe conversion was a weight-and-volume exchange rather than a simple reduction in armor. A Queen Elizabeth hull needed much more boiler capacity to move from fast-battleship speed to more than 30 knots. Removing one turret and its supporting spaces would free the machinery volume needed for that gain. The likely result was close to Renown: six heavy guns, many more boilers, and battlecruiser performance. The tradeoff shows how propulsion demands separated battleships from battlecruisers.