Mary Queen of Scots Book

Susan Watkins' lavishly illustrated biography Mary Queen of Scots vividly brings to life one of the most tragic and romantic figures of the Elizabethan era. In many ways Mary's life was even more colourful than that of her English cousin Elizabeth. Crowned as Queen of Scotland in 1542 when she was just six-days-old, Mary found herself married to the heir to the French throne, the future Francis II, by the age of 14 and Queen of both Scotland and France by the age of 16. Watkins elegantly recaptures Mary's upbringing in the cultured French court, her relations with her formidable mother-in-law Catherine de' Medici and how her "education was to equip her with all the graces, learning and skills befitting a Queen of France, which meant removing every trace of the child's Scottish inheritance". The tragic death of Francis in 1560 led Mary to return to Scotland, where she became embroiled in an intense and ultimately doomed period of political infighting and romantic turmoil. Having experienced the murder of one husband, violence and abuse at the hands of a second, exile from her kingdom and separation from her son, the future King James I, "Mary was to spend the remaining 18 years and three months of her life in England as a prisoner", desperately attempting to hang onto both her crown and her life. Executed for the very real threat she posed to Elizabeth's crown, Mary "continued--as she still does--to hold a prominent position in the world's imagination. The martyr becomes a tragedienne, a heroine and later the subject of romance". Watkins tells her story with pace and verve and the book's 194 colour illustrations dazzlingly evoke the world that created but also finally killed Scotland's greatest queen. --Jerry BrottonRead More