193: Mary Stuart
And It All Had to do With Religion
Born: 8 December 1542, Linlithgow, Scotland (Present-day United Kingdom)
Died: 8 February 1587, Fotheringhay, England (Present-day United Kingdom)
Also Known As: Mary Queen of Scots
(And before you ask—the 2018 Film depicting the rivalry and dynamic between her and Elizabeth I is about 99.8% inaccurate).
She was the Queen of Scotland and Queen Consort of France during her first husband’s lifetime.
Despite being queen of the Scots, her primary language was French since she was raised in France from the age of five until she was nineteen.
Mary’s first husband died when she was eighteen and the marriage was most likely never consummated.
When her cousin Elizabeth I came to the English throne the people of England who believed her illegitimate wanted Mary to be their queen (she had Tudor blood through her grandmother and was next in line to the throne anyway).
By the time the Roman Catholic Mary returned to Scotland her people resented her for being French and a Catholic ruling the now forcibly Protestant Scotland.
Her first few years were largely uneventful until she married her cousin Henry Earl of Darnley (the aforementioned movie got a lot of things wrong but from the sounds of it the depictions of him were mostly accurate).
After their son James was born Mary wasn’t all that shocked when Darnley wound up dead (though no one can agree on whether she planned his death or not).
Three months after Darnley’s death she married again to an even worse a******. Mary would miscarry his twins during the time they were separated and imprisoned with her one-year old son James being raised up as the King—forcing Mary to abdicate.
Mary fled to England and spent the last eighteen years of her life imprisoned by Elizabeth before being executed. She was killed after being found guilty of trying to usurp Elizabeth’s throne.
After Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Mary’s son James (who until then had been James VI of Scotland) became James I of England and Scotland. In 1612, he had his mother’s body reinterred in Westminster Abbey, only feet from where Elizabeth herself is buried.
As I’ve said, the movie is inaccurate, but I’ll link the trailer to it in any case because if you watch it for purely entertainment it isn’t horrible. Watch it to the left.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Located In My Personal Library:
Bad Days in History by Michael Farquhar
Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses by Sarah Gristwood
Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots by Nancy Goldstone
History of Scotland: A Captivating Guide to Scottish History, the Wars of Scottish Independence, and William Wallace by Captivating History
The Other Tudors by Philippa Jones
The Royal Wardrobe: Peek Into the Wardrobes of History's Most Fashionable Royals by Rosie Harte
Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser
The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Wier
Kings & Queens of England and Scotland by Plantagenet Somerset Fry
Mary Queen of Scots: An Accidental Tragedy by Roderick Graham
Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser
Sex With the Queen: 900 Years of Vile Kings, Virile Lovers, and Passionate Politics by Eleanor Herman
Scottish Queens 1034-1714 by Rosalind K Marshall
Sources:
https://englishhistory.net/tudor/relative/mary-queen-of-scots/