This is an edited version of a piece for Royals Monthly mag. Mary is reincarnated as Eliza’s treacherous cousin Mackenzie James in my novel Sister to Sister.
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Mary, Queen of Scots is probably Scotland’s best-known historical figure. The life of this 16th-century royal reads like a soap opera, bursting with scandal, tragedy and romance, with side helpings of murder and kidnapping. If ever the phrase ‘you couldn’t make it up’ applied to a royal, Mary would that person.
One historian recently named this queen one of the ‘Nine Most Useless Monarchs in History’, but that’s probably unfair. Although she made some disastrous choices, many of Mary’s problems were beyond her control. As the Catholic queen of a Protestant country, she trod a difficult path, and was constantly manipulated by power-hungry men. And she was outsmarted, time and again, by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, who lived in fear of Catholic rebellion and therefore viewed Mary with suspicion. With a strong claim to the English throne, she would be the natural figurehead for any revolt.
It all started well enough. Mary was born in 1542, the daughter of James V of Scotland and granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister. She was heir to the English throne after Henry’s three children. James V died only six days after Mary’s birth, and her mother, Mary of Guise, a French noblewoman, acted as regent while Mary was a child.
When she was six, Mary was betrothed to the French dauphin (the king’s eldest son) and sent to France, where she learned the skills expected of a future queen including music, poetry, horsemanship and falconry, as well as Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Greek.
Mary and Francis, c1574
Mary grew up to be tall, graceful, clever, and vivacious. Portraits show those Tudor features – auburn hair and pale skin – and hazel eyes. She was 15 when she married Francis, and by all accounts they were happy together. The French king died in 1559 and Francis and Mary became king and queen of France, but sadly Mary’s husband was soon dead too, after an ear infection that led to an abscess in his brain. She was heartbroken.
Mary had no choice other than to return to Scotland. After her time in France, the 19-year-old was far more Frenchwoman than Scot. Picture the difference – those fairytale French palaces, the sophisticated culture, exchanged for dark, foreboding Scottish castles and their dour lairds. To make things worse, Mary’s mother had died a year earlier. Mary must have felt very alone.
The Scots in general gave their queen a warm welcome, but the country was now officially Protestant, and the nobles were unimpressed with her ‘Papist’ ways. The firebrand reformer John Knox preached against Mary, lambasting her for, among other things, dancing, and dressing too elaborately.
Mary was unprepared for the complex, dangerous situation she faced. She had none of her English cousin’s political skill for treading a middle path. Nevertheless, she muddled through the first two years reasonably well.
But when Mary fell in love with Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the wheels started to come off. Darnley was tall (Elizabeth I called him ‘the long lad’), good-looking and athletic – quite the dashing lord. One witness to their romance wrote, ‘[Mary] said that he was the lustiest and best proportioned long man that she had seen,’ and the English ambassador reported ‘she is bewitched.’ Darnley was also Mary’s cousin, and had a claim to both the Scottish and English thrones himself.
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in his late teens, by an unknown artist
The couple married in 1565, and Mary was soon pregnant. But she quickly discovered the awful truth. Darnley had a violent streak that would appear when he’d been drinking, which was a lot, and often. Realising her colossal mistake, Mary refused to grant him the ‘crown matrimonial’ he was demanding, which would have made him co-sovereign, and heir to the Scottish throne if Mary died childless. The furious, petulant Darnley was now dangerous, and became a tool of her enemies.
As Mary’s relationship with her husband worsened, rumours swirled that she was having an affair with her private secretary, David Rizzio. Darnley was wildly jealous, and still angry about the crown matrimonial. One night in March 1566, he and a group of Protestant conspirators burst into Mary’s apartments at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Rizzio was stabbed 56 times in front of the queen, who was 6 months pregnant. Darnley claimed he wasn’t behind the murder, but Mary had lost trust in him by now.
‘The Murder of David Rizzio’, by Sir William Allan
Mary’s son, James, was born that June. He was baptised a Catholic, which alarmed those Protestant nobles.
In the next plot twist, Darnley was killed eight months later in an explosion at the house where he’d been recuperating from a bout of illness. Two barrels of gunpowder had been placed beneath his bedroom. Darnley’s body was discovered outside – he’d fled the explosion but had been suffocated.
Chief suspect for his murder was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, to whom Mary had become close. Bothwell was tried for Darnley’s murder but was acquitted. There are two versions of what happened next: one has Bothwell kidnapping the queen, taking her to his castle and raping her, the other has Mary complicit in the ‘abduction’. Whatever the truth, the Scots were losing patience with Mary’s dramas, and when she married Bothwell, just three months after Darnley’s death, there was an uprising against the couple. Mary was locked up in Lochleven Castle and forced to abdicate in favour of her baby son, while Bothwell fled to Scandinavia where he was arrested. He would die in a Danish prison ten years later.
In 1568 Mary escaped and threw herself on Elizabeth’s mercy. But the English queen had little sympathy – Mary was still a threat – and kept her imprisoned in various English castles and manors for nearly 19 years. Elizabeth’s spy network was super-efficient, and her advisors never trusted Mary. In 1586, she was found guilty of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth, and was beheaded a year later at Fotheringay Castle. She was 44.
Ever since, Mary, Queen of Scots has been a subject of fascination, often romanticised because of the tragic events of her chaotic life. The irony is that despite Elizabeth’s efforts to keep Mary off the throne, her son James grew up to be the first king of both England and Scotland.
