The Story of Mary, Queen of Scots: Royal Road to Fotheringhay

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Summary: A QUEEN WHO RULED WITH HER HEART AND LOST HER HEAD...
Review: This is a wonderful, captivating work of historical fiction. Weaving a spellbinding tale out of a tapestry of actual events, the author recounts the tragic and dramatic tale of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.

Born in Scotland, Mary, whose father, the King of Scotland, died when she was very young, was an only child. Her father's death left her mother, Marie De Guise of France, to rule as Regent in Scotland for their daughter. A wily woman, Marie saw only danger on the horizon for Mary, if Mary remained in Scotland. So, she had Mary betrothed to Francois, the Dauphin of France, and sent her at a very young age to live in the French Court.

A happy, pleasing, and bonnie child, Mary matured into a beautiful young woman and eventually married the Dauphin. After the unexpected death of the King, she and Francois went on to reign as King and Queen of France. Alas, her happiness was short lived, as Francois was sickly and in poor health. After his premature death, there was no place for Mary in the court of her brother-in-law, Charles, the succeeding French King, thanks to the machinations of her evil mother-in-law, Catherine D'Medici.

Mary then did the only thing left to do. She set sail for Scotland under the protection of border lord, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, to reclaim her kingdom as its anointed Queen. Her mother, Marie De Guise, now dead, the Catholic Mary was faced with reclaiming a Protestant kingdom that she had not seen for many years, a kingdom over which her half brother, the illegitimate and Protestant James, meant to rule himself, irrespective of his illegitimate birth.

Little did Mary know of the travails that would await her. A quarrelsome group of lords and nobles, whose perfidy, deceit, and ruthless jockeying for power knew no bounds, would plague her brief reign. They would plot against her with her Protestant cousin in England, Elizabeth I, a Queen who ruled with her head and not with her heart. Mary's half brother, James, whose naked ambition was to wear the crown himself, was determined that Mary would be Queen in name only. He would stop at nothing to secure that which he felt was his by right, if not by birth. John Knox, a fire and brimstone religious fanatic, who held Scotland in his Calvinist thrall, denounced the Catholic Mary at every opportunity, proclaiming her a wanton and rebuffing her overtures and requests for religious tolerance. This is what awaited Mary in Scotland, a harsh and most inhospitable land.

This woman, who would be Queen, eventually decided to marry again and made the greatest mistake of all in electing to marry the young and dissolute Lord Henry Darnley, an English Catholic. Though royal by birth, he would eventually bring nothing but shame upon her, plotting against her and those loyal to her. Darnley was the catalyst for some of the greatest scandals in the history of Scotland. Notwithstanding Darnley's perfidy, Mary did her duty and, having been delivered of an infant son fathered by Darnley, provided Scotland with an heir to the throne. She eventually became nothing more than a pawn in the ambitions of men, pitting Mary's half brother, James, now the Earl of Moray, against James, the Earl of Bothwell, one of Darnley's alleged murderers and Mary's seducer. It would be a fight to the finish.

With Darnley having died under mysterious circumstances and her passions now aroused, Mary married the Earl of Bothwell, much to the outrage of all of Scotland, and together incurred the enmity of many of the lords and nobles. This would lead to Bothwell's exile and captivity in Denmark, while Mary would flee to England, hoping to meet with Elizabeth and obtain her help in securing her kingdom. Instead, she would remain her cousin Elizabeth's captive for twenty years, being moved from castle to castle, as Mary's Catholic supporters plotted over the years to restore her kingdom to her.

Finally, these plots included the throne of England, and Elizabeth could no longer close her eyes to the threat that her still living cousin, Mary, an anointed Catholic Queen with a claim to the throne of Protestant England, presented. For her alleged treason, Mary would be tried, and the castle at Fotheringay would be the end of the line for her in the land in which twenty years earlier she had unwisely sought succor.

This is a spellbinding story, told with an infusion of historical detail. Those interested in the story of Mary, Queen of Scots, will, undoubtedly, enjoy this work of historical fiction. It is a fascinating tale of a historical figure whose life remains an intriguing enigma even today.