The reputation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has swung wildly over the centuries, from adulteress and murderer to romantic tragic royalty, from manipulator to puppet. Little survives in the historical record of what she had to say for herself. Anna Legat, author of The Queen’s Avenger, argues that she was a ‘smart’ politician, diplomat and warrior — but too trusting.
Mary Stewart, Queen of Scots, is one of the most controversial historical figures. Her story, just as history in general, has been written by victors. By no means was Mary one of them. She was a big-time loser – beautiful and charming, 24-carat royalty, but a loser nonetheless.
Little survives of what she had to say for herself, in her own words. The notorious Casket Letters attributed to her are almost certainly forgeries by her contemporaries eager to destroy her reputation. They are difficult to verify as historians are dealing with translations of originals which no longer exist (or never existed in the first place).
Last year, Mary’s coded letters written in captivity were discovered in the National Library of France. Ever since cryptographers, assisted by modern AI, have been working on deciphering them. At long last, Mary can speak her truth without risking falsification or biased interpretation. Unfortunately, she is too late to save herself.
Mary Stewart lived in the turbulent era of the Reformation and the religious wars that engulfed not only Scotland but the whole of Europe. Her defeat by the Protestant English Queen, Elizabeth I, is symbolic of the suppression of Catholicism in the British Isles and the ultimate triumph of Protestantism.
The Catholic Mary’s image and her legacy are tarnished by the undignified nature of her demise. Accused of murdering her husband King Henry (Darnley) and entrapped in a plot to assassinate her cousin Queen Elizabeth, she died without a voice – gagged and unable to defend herself. It was game over.
Mary’s reputation had been savagely damaged long before she lost her head on Elizabeth’s orders. Her own nobles, led by her half-brother, James, Earl of Moray, had repeatedly rebelled against her. They besmirched her good name, murdered her loyal supporters (her secretary David Rizzio was butchered before her very eyes), assassinated her husband and framed her for his death, imprisoned her and forced her to abdicate at sword point.
In the strongly patriarchal feudal society where each laird was king of his castle and loyalties depended on whichever way the wind blew, Mary stood little chance. If we throw into the mix the fundamentalist version of Calvinism prevalent in Scotland at the time, Catholic Mary was doomed.
She was relentlessly hounded by John Knox, Scotland’s leading Protestant preacher, who took a particular dislike to women in power (see his pamphlet, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women) and to Mary in particular. It was on his spiritual authority that her lords felt free to defy and destroy her.
Mary’s hostile contemporaries painted a portrait of a foolish woman with loose morals – a puppet manipulated by her French relations, an incompetent monarch, a Catholic rotten to the core, an adulteress and a regicide. Not a pretty picture! The Victorians tried to beautify it by adding a sprinkle of romanticism. Mary became a romantic heroine, ‘a queen who ruled with her heart, not her head’.
But where does the truth really lie?
The idea of The Queen’s Avenger first came to me some years ago when, upon visiting Edinburgh where Mary Stewart still weaves her magic, I developed a fascination with the tragic queen. The first book I read about her was Mary Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure by Jenny Wormald. The title is self-explanatory. I was riled by the unsympathetic judgment. I decided to dig deeper and, several other illuminating if less stinging biographies later, I had a clear concept for my book. I would tell Mary’s story from the perspective of her devoted confessor, Ninian Winzet.
Looking at Mary through the eyes of her supporter brought to the surface her qualities as a politician, diplomat and warrior. Contrary to popular belief, Mary Stewart wasn’t just a pretty face.
Her marriage to the young and dashing Lord Darnley was dismissed as the folly of a naïve lass who allowed herself to fall in love. Perhaps she did, but at the same time, she made a smart tactical move as a monarch with her eyes on the English crown.
Darnley was descended from Henry VII, as was Mary. Their union strengthened her claim. She was of pure royal blood and, in the eyes of English and European Catholics, the only true Queen of England since Elizabeth was considered illegitimate.
Mary was a queen, not a pawn. She refused to be subjugated without a fight. When her Lords rebelled against her following her ‘inconvenient’ marriage, she donned a steel cap, a mail shirt and a gilt breastplate, and went after them. Commanding a considerable force, she pursued the traitors in the so-called Chaseabout Raid until they fled to Newcastle, and then, with tails between their legs, into Elizabeth’s reluctant patronage.
Even after Darnley’s assassination, when Mary stood accused of his death and her popularity was waning, she didn’t lose her fighting spirit. She faced her detractors on the battlefield at Carberry Hill ready for combat, but yielded to them relying on their solemn vows to obey and protect her as their sovereign. She could not have known that they did not intend to keep their word.
Her marriage to Lord Bothwell, almost certainly Darnley’s murderer, was given in evidence against her to show that she had committed adultery and regicide. However, her accusers were the very people who spurred Bothwell on by way of a bond signed at Ainsley wherein they granted their blessing to the union and promised their allegiance to the couple.
It was a trap. Bothwell’s subsequent ‘ravishing’ of the Queen with her nobles’ implicit approval left her with no choice but to submit and accept their choice of her husband. By that time, she was exhausted both physically and emotionally. Her life was in danger.
The only rational course of action to ensure her survival was to marry her rapist. Paradoxically, he was her only ally. She was also hoping to prevent civil war and to protect the legitimacy of her unborn twins, most probably conceived during the rape.
In the end, Mary’s greatest error of judgment was seeking safe haven in England in the belief that Elizabeth, a fellow monarch and blood relation, would support her. Checkmate…
Mary Stewart was the victim of circumstances beyond her control. She was the victim of powerful enemies hell-bent on destroying her. Had Queen Elizabeth been in her shoes, I doubt she would have fared any better.
The Queen’s Avenger by Anna Legat was published on 8 May, 2024.
Anna Legat is a Wiltshire-based author, best known for her crime thrillers and murder mysteries, though she writes in a wide variety of genres from historical fiction, through magic realism, to dystopian.
Also in Historia:
In Escaping the Tudors, Linda Porter mentions how her TV comments on Mary were edited out
And coming soon, a feature about one of Mary’s gaolers, Bess of Hardwick, by Sharon Bennett Connolly
Images:
- Mary, Queen of Scots in white mourning by François Clouet, 1559–60: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024
- Coded letter from Mary to Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissière, c1580–87: Bibliothèque nationale de France BnF Français 20506 fol 153r
- Mary, Queen of Scots by François Clouet, c1558: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2024
- Mary, Queen of Scots, and Darnley, 16th century: Wikimedia (public domain)
- James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, 1566: National Galleries of Scotland (CC BY NC)
