History UsefulNotes / MaryOfScotland

* Kathyrn Lasky is the author of a book in Scholastic Books' juvenile''TheRoyalDiaries'' series, ''Mary Queen of Scots: Queen Without A Country, France, 1553'' (1999), set during her years in France.

Mary I (1542 - 1587) of UsefulNotes/TheHouseOfStuart, popularly known as '''Mary, Queen of Scots''', Queen of Scotland from 1542 to her forced abdication in 1567. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King James V. Because Mary was only six days old when her father, King James V, died, her mother, Mary of Guise, assumed the Regency of the kingdom and arranged her marriage to Francis, heir to the throne of France, who was crowned as Francis II in 1559, only to die the next year.

* Creator/GiuseppeVerdi's opera, ''Maria Stuarda''.

* A ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' sketch entitled 'The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots', in which two pepperpots listen to a radio show which mainly consists of Mary and her would-be murderer scuffling.

''[scuffling resumes]''

--> '''Murderer''': I think she's dead.
--> '''Mary''': No, I'm not.
--> ''[scuffling resumes]''

* She meets [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethI Elizabeth I]] in the Elizabeth mini-series, starring Creator/HelenMirren. She is portrayed by Barbara Flynn with a French accent.

-->''Don't you know you're never going to get to France.''
-->''Mary, Queen of Chance, will they find you?''
-->''Never going to get to France.''
-->''Could a new romance ever bind you?''

* Samantha Morton plays her in ''Film/{{Elizabeth}}: The Golden Age'' Morton uses a Scottish accent (in reality Mary wouldn't have had one due to being raised in France).

* The 1940 German film ''Das Herz der Königin'' ("The Heart of the Queen"), viewed by many critics as an anti-British propaganda movie, portrays Mary (Zarah Leander) as a beautiful saintly martyr (she sings, too) full of love and desire to free her people, while Queen Elizabeth is portrayed as a bitter malicious dried up spinster who will stop at nothing to make her cousin miserable and eventually murder her.

* The 1972 film, ''Film/MaryQueenOfScots''
* John Ford's 1936 film, ''Film/MaryOfScotland''.
* She was in ''Film/{{Elizabeth}}: The Golden Age''. She had a Scottish accent (in reality she wouldn't have had one due to being raised in France).

[[/folder]]
----

After Francis's death, Mary returned to Scotland, where her Roman Catholicism made her unpopular in a country that had adopted the Calvinist form of Protestantism. Mostly among the nobility. Mary was successful at first, due in no small part to the advice and support of her illegitimate half brother the Earl of Moray. She was also very charismatic and capable of winning the common subjects to her side when need be. Unfortunately she became infatuated with her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a fellow Catholic from [[OopNorth Leeds]] and, like her, a claimant to the throne of England, and married him in 1564 against the wishes of Elizabeth I and more importantly against the advice of every responsible member of the Scottish government. The marriage was a bitter failure -- by nearly all accounts, Darnley was both vicious and effeminate, while Mary was widely accused of luxury and adultery, supposedly with her Italian secretary and court musician, David Rizzio, whom Darnley (in league with the Protestant Scots lords) murdered in the Queen's presence in 1566. The couple separated after the birth of James I and Darnley took refuge from his numerous enemies with his father -- until his wife suddenly offered a reconciliation and carried Darnley off to the semi-ruinous Kirk-a-Fields which blew up in February 1567, though Darnley himself apparently escaped the explosion, as he was subsequently found strangled in the garden.

Popular opinion blamed Mary, who made matters worse by immediately taking up with the chief suspect James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Mary's 'kidnapping' by Bothwell fooled practically no one and their marriage in April 1567 destroyed Mary's credibility as a ruler and her standing abroad.

--->''"Princes at all times have not their wills, but my heart being my own is immutable."''

!!Tropes:

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: You might call Mary Stuart the queen of this trope.
* ArrangedMarriage: Henry VIII wanted to arrange a marriage between his son and Mary, but Mary's mother was French and arranged a marriage to the Dauphin of France instead.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory: A lot of films and novels try at least one scene where Elizabeth and Mary confront each other, even in a secret gathering place. There is no documented evidence they ever met in person: Elizabeth's advisors indeed feared such a possibility because Elizabeth sympathized in her own way with Mary's plight (having suffered it herself during her siblings' reigns) and if met in person might forgive her cousin.
* AssholeVictim: Darnley. Nearly everyone in Scotland (and England) got to loathe him. His horrid and sometimes violent mistreatment of Mary was upsetting even back then. It had to have been some relief when Darnley was strangled to death during an attempted bombing of his castle.
** Mary herself. Her life can be described as one bad decision after another.
* DomesticAbuser: Darnley was well-documented for it, and getting his allies to murder her musician friend Rizzio right in front of her in a jealous rage was the topper. It didn't help that Darnley AND Mary were near-equal claimants to the English throne, and some of his actions looked at the time as a way of eliminating her to put himself closer to the throne.
* EvilUncle: Her French uncles, the Guise brothers, had a tendency to view her as a pawn for advancing their own interests.
** Her Scottish relatives were no better.
* FatalFlaw: [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter Her horrible choice of allies]], her lack of patience and her unbending sense of self-righteousness.
* FieryRedhead
* HistoricalBeautyUpdate: Mary was beautiful in her youth, but by the time of her execution she had become fat and unseemly due to her prolonged imprisonment, various indulgences, and poor health. Most artistic depictions of her, however, kept her beautiful all the way up to her end.
* JerkAss: Darnley is practically the poster boy for this trope. It is only fair to say that at least one contemporary observer blamed his youth - he was nineteen - and a lack of good advice for his Jerkassery.
* KangarooCourt: She was denied access to the documents that proved her guilt, for one thing. She also made the argument that she had no obligation to submit to an English court, as she was not an English citizen and an anointed queen in her own right.
** To be fair to her accusers, Mary did correspond with one of the conspirators in the Babington Plot, and had been linked to earlier conspiracies to help her escape. Whether she committed treason (which as a foreign Scottish sovereign would be an issue) remains up to debate.
* KissingCousins: Darnley was her first cousin.
* LoveRuinsTheRealm: Bothwell.
* OneSteveLimit: Had four attendants who were also named Mary.
* NotSoDifferent: To her cousin Elizabeth I a fact that did not escape either woman or their contemporaries. Opinion was divided on whether they were born to be allies or rivals. Mary, greedy for the English throne, turned herself into a threat to Elizabeth which did not end well for Mary.
* ParentalAbandonment: Her father died when she was 6 days old, and her mother shipped her off to France for her protection when she was a little girl. Her son was also a victim, as Mary spent most of his life imprisoned, and his father, Lord Darnley, was murdered when he was a baby.
* TheRival: To Elizabeth I, who knew and dreaded it.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: She used the French spelling of her name, "Marie Stuart," after her French in-laws kept mispronouncing her name.
* {{Squick}}: Mary did ''not'' die well. Her execution was botched.
* TooDumbToLive: Bothwell. He topped what has to be the most incompetent political assassination in Scottish history by 'kidnapping' and marrying Mary while Darnley's corpse was still warm reeked of ambitious intent to where nobody accepted it. Whether Mary was a willing participant in any of it became a moot point, and it led to her banishment, exile and captivity in England. Bothwell himself ended up dying as a madman in a Danish dungeon.
** ''Mary''. Incompetent as a ruler and hopeless as an intriguer only Moray and Elizabeth I allowed her to survive as long as she did.
* UnwantedSpouse: Darnley, after marrying the JerkAss against the advice of every responsible minister she had Mary discovered that they had been right and she wrong. Mary's nobles agreed to get rid of Darnly for her, see above for how that turned out.
* TheWoobie: Mary never caught an even break. A political pawn the minute she was born, married off to various men - even as a baby - most of whom either abused her or left her to family allies who did abuse her. Was forced to watch the murder of one of the few friends she had, a court singer accused of sleeping with her. When her evil husband was finally killed off, her lover Bothwell overplayed his hand by kidnapping Mary and marrying her so swiftly the other Scottish lords rebelled out of common decency. Wrapped up in one conspiracy after another in order to regain one throne (Scotland) or seize another (England). None of her peers could trust her, and her final years were in the custody of a woman who dared not give her any mercy. Spent most of her adult life in one prison or another. Even her death wasn't easy.
----
!!Works associated with UsefulNotes/MaryOfScotland:

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

[[AC:{{Music}}]]

[[AC:{{Theatre}}]]

* She meets [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethI Elizabeth I]] in the Elizabeth mini-series, starring Creator/HelenMirren. She has a French accent.

* Creator/RobertBolt's ''Vivat! Vivat Regina!'', written in the early 1970s. Something of a {{Deconstruction}} of Schiller's romanticized play, showing Mary as sympathetic but extremely foolish.

* TooDumbToLive: Bothwell. Kidnapping and marrying Mary while Darnley's corpse was still warm reeked of ambitious intent to where nobody accepted it. Whether Mary was a willing participant in any of it became a moot point, and it led to her banishment, exile and captivity in England. Bothwell himself ended up dying as a madman in a Danish dungeon.

After Francis's death, Mary returned to Scotland, where her Roman Catholicism made her unpopular in a country that had adopted the Calvinist form of Protestantism. Mostly among the nobility; she was very charismatic and capable of winning the common subjects to her side when need be. In 1564, she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, a fellow Catholic from [[OopNorth Leeds]] and, like her, a claimant to the throne of England. The marriage was a distinctly unhappy one -- by nearly all accounts, Darnley was both vicious and effeminate, while Mary was widely accused of luxury and adultery, supposedly with the French poet Chastelard and her Italian secretary and court musician, David Rizzio, whom Darnley (in league with the Protestant Scots lords) murdered in the Queen's presence in 1566. Following a separation, Darnley took refuge from his numerous enemies in a house at Kirk o' Field -- which was blown up in February 1567, though Darnley himself apparently escaped the explosion, as he was subsequently found strangled to death in the garden.

Popular opinion blamed Mary, who was supposed to have wanted to clear the way for her lover, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who kidnapped and married her in April 1567. (Whether this was consensual, a plot between Mary and Bothwell that made their marriage absolutely mandatory to preserve the Queen's honor, or just plain rape is still a matter of debate.)

A rebellion resulted; Bothwell fled the country and Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle and forced to abdicate the throne in favor of her son, the one-year-old, James VI (later James I of England). After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, Mary fled to England seeking protection from her cousin, [[UsefulNotes/ElizabethI Queen Elizabeth I of England]]. Elizabeth, however, ordered her arrest, as she and her Protestant councilors (not entirely unjustifiably) considered Mary a focus for Catholic conspiracies against her rule. After nearly twenty years of imprisonment (Elizabeth was notably hesitant to condemn her), she was tried and executed for treason on the grounds of conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place herself on the throne of England.

* NotSoDifferent: To her cousin Elizabeth I. They shared similar hardships of childhood and near-similar political plots and intrigues. The only difference being Mary had little control over whom she married (and when, practically married off while just a child) whereas Elizabeth avoided that particular intrigue and was able to determine her own fate when the time came. Despite the similarities, events set it up to where cousin Mary became a threat to Elizabeth, which did not end well for Mary.

* KissingCousins: Darnley.

* TheWoobie: Mary never caught an even break. A political pawn the minute she was born, married off to various men - even as a baby - most of whom either abused her or left her to family allies who did abuse her. Was forced to watch the murder of one of the few friends she had, a court singer accused of sleeping with her. Wrapped up in one conspiracy after another in order to regain one throne (Scotland) or seize another (England). None of her peers could trust her, and her final years were in the custody of a woman who dared not give her any mercy. Spent most of her adult life in one prison or another. Even her death wasn't easy.

* RapeEqualsLove:

* HistoricalBeautyUpgrade: Mary was beautiful in her youth, but by the time of her execution she had become fat and unseemly due to her prolonged imprisonment, various indulgences, and poor health. Most artistic depictions of her, however, kept her beautiful all the way up to her end.

Mary I (1542 - 1587) of TheHouseOfStuart, popularly known as '''Mary, Queen of Scots''', Queen of Scotland from 1542 to her forced abdication in 1567. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King James V. Because Mary was only six days old when her father, King James V, died, her mother, Mary of Guise, assumed the Regency of the kingdom and arranged her marriage to Francis, heir to the throne of France, who was crowned as Francis II in 1559, only to die the next year.

!!Works associated with MaryOfScotland: