Her adult life was forged in struggle as she grappled with the demands of the Scottish
throne and the deaths of several husbands.
Her life was marred by poor decision-making and political strife in a royal existence
dominated by a war of wits against her own cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, and a painful series
of betrayals as her own family plotted against her.
In contrast, her childhood seemed idyllic.
She was raised in the wealth and opulance of the French court of Henry II and Queen
Consort, Catherine de Medici (also known as the Serpent Queen in the 2022 STARZ mini-series
of the same name).
Her long struggle ended after she was forced to abdicate and her own son, James VI, betrayed
her.
She then met one of the most gruesome deaths in the history of European royalty.
This is the tale of an infant Queen whose early life was spent in opulence at the French
Court of the Serpent Queen but ultimately ended in the most grisly of ways.
Mary, Queen of Scots was just six days old when her father died and in the blink of an
eye, the baby Mary assumed the throne as queen of Scotland in 1542.
It was a tumultuous time as King Henry VIII of England had just invaded her homeland of
Scotland.
At the height of this war, Mary’s father King James V of Scotland died and since he
was left with no other living heirs than his infant daughter, the crown was hers.
But his death made Mary more than just the Queen of Scots.
Turns out that many thought of Mary as the rightful heir to the English throne.
As Henry VII of England’s great-granddaughter, Mary was next in line to the English throne,
after Henry VIII’s children, and because not all of England was willing to recognize
any of the children of Henry VIII as legitimate, the crown was deemed by some to belong to
her.
Her cousin, Henry VIII, had converted to Protestantism so that he could divorce his first wife.
His conversion fractured his relationship with his family and erupted the British Isles
into a series of furious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.
And the Catholic Church adamantly refused to recognize any of Henry’s marriages after
his divorce, so they believed that his children were the illegitimate bastards of a bigamist
pointing to Mary instead, as the rightful heir to his throne.
To combat this and maintain his power, Henry VIII demanded a marriage between the infant
Mary and his son, Edward VI.
The marriage would have forced Mary to convert to the Protestant faith and would have put
an end to her claim to the throne.
But the Scots refused.
Mary, instead, was married off to the Catholic Prince Francis of France in a bid for the
country's support.
Added to this, her claim to the British throne would be signed over to France where she would
then be the queen of two countries united under one Catholic kingdom.
This meant that to the English court and the Protestant population, she was the greatest
threat imaginable.
Which brings us to the battle of the queens.
For the first 18 years of her life, Mary barely set foot in Scotland.
She had been rushed off to France when she was just five years old where she spent 13
years as a very pious Catholic Queen of Scotland and eventually as the Queen of France, after
the death of the French King Henry II.
The biographer, Antonia Fraser writes about Mary's time at the French court and whether
Mary was an ally or rival of The Serpent Queen, Catherine de Medici that she was, essentially,
"judged primarily from the point of view of Francis.
While Francis lived, while Mary was his wife and as such a necessary adjunct to his life
and happiness, Catherine would treat her with all the warmth and consideration which was
her due; but once Francis was dead, once Mary was no longer the helpmeet of one child but
a potential threat to the happiness of another, the picture was liable to be very different.”
In other words, when Mary's husband King Francis II of France died of an ear infection, leaving
her a widow at age 18, the throne of France was passed on to her brother-in-law, Charles
IX, and Mary was immediately seen as a threat to the power of the Queen Mother Catherine
de' Medici, so she was sent back to Scotland; thus changing her fate to rule over Scotland,
the country of her birth and putting her squarely in the crosshairs of crowned Queen Elizabeth
I of England (but more in just a bit).
On Mary’s return to Scotland, Catherine supported her claim to not only the throne
of Scotland but of England as well, seeing the political advantage of maintaining French
influence over England.
Scotland wasn’t the place Mary had known as a child any longer.
A growing faction of Scottish Protestants had sided with the English so much so that
Scotland was quickly becoming an officially Protestant country under the religious reforms
led by John Knox, a Scottish minister, theologian, and writer.
And even though England was now under the rule of Mary’s cousin, Queen Elizabeth I,
the kingdom of France under the rule of Queen Mother Catherine, had declared that they recognized
only the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, as the rightful ruler over England.
Mary's position had changed from that of a rival of the French Serpent Queen to the more
dangerous position of competitor for the throne of England.
Once Mary set foot on the shores of the country of her birth, a place she hadn’t seen since
she was a child, she was in mortal danger.
Mary refused to sign a treaty recognizing Elizabeth as the ruler of England, and Elizabeth
refused Mary’s request to recognize her as her heir.
Mary, Queen of Scots tried to keep the peace and maneuvered to win the love of Scotland’s
citizens by promoting religious tolerance toward the Protestants.
She even married an Englishman, her first cousin Lord Darnley, in 1565 thinking this
was a way for her to strengthen her claim to the English throne, but instead, the marriage
put in motion a series of events that would end in her grisly demise.
Turns out that Lord Darnley was brutally abusive and jealous and he became convinced that Mary
was having an affair with her secretary, David Riccio.
Lord Darnley consequently had Riccio murdered.
He was stabbed to death 56 times as Mary, who was heavily pregnant, was forced to look
on in horror.
But Mary was stuck with the abusive Darnley since he was the father of her firstborn son,
and under Catholic rules, she was forbidden to divorce.
The only way she could get away from Darnley was if he died.
Enter the mysterious death of Lord Darnley when, on the morning of February 10, 1567,
a explosion occurred at Darnley's house outside Edinburgh.
Oddly, the partially clothed bodies of Lord Darnley and his servant were found in a nearby
orchard, apparently strangled but unharmed by the explosion.
As for Catherine de Medici, she took back her alliance with Mary.
While she may have been shocked at the murders of Riccio and Darnley in Scotland, she nevertheless
believed the English propaganda that Mary was implicated and turned her support to Queen
Elizabeth I instead.
The French also wanted an alliance with Elizabeth as a means to end English support for the
French Protestant Huguenots who were causing a great deal of strife under Catherine's rule
in France as well as to stand strong against the ever threatening Spanish Catholics.
With the death of Darnley, Mary was an immediate suspect.
Rumors spread that Darnley had been killed under Mary’s orders by her personal adviser
and the man to whom she was very closely connected, James Hepburn, the 4th Earl of Bothwell.
And even though Bothwell was acquitted of any charges of Darnley’s murder, any lingering
doubts were merely strengthened when, almost immediately after the trial was over, he roguishly
married the Queen of Scots.
Mary was denounced as an adulteress and a murderer and her Protestant Lords revolted
against her.
This led to a confrontation between her army and the Scottish Nobility at Carberry Hill,
near Edinburgh, on June 15th, 1567.
Mary’s army was defeated and she was subsequently imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle.
Her new husband Bothwell, fled to Scandinavia where he was captured and imprisoned.
Mary would never see him again.
Her one year old son James, was taken from her and given her crown.
To add to the misery, Mary gave birth to stillborn twins while she was imprisoned.
She made a brief attempt at escape from Loch Leven when George Douglas, her prison warden’s
brother, helped her to raise a small army and break out of prison; but the attempt failed
miserably.
Mary fled to England naively believing that the ties of blood were stronger than all else
that had come between her and Queen Elizabeth I. She therefore got it into her head that
her cousin would help her win back her throne.
But Mary was proven to be entirely wrong.
Queen Elizabeth had Mary dragged into custody and thrown into prison where she would spend
19 years in captivity under the watchful eye of her own cousin.
Which brings us to The Grisly Execution Of Mary, Queen Of Scots.
In the years leading up to her impending doom, Mary begged her cousin to pardon her and show
mercy.
But Elizabeth’s court was growing increasingly paranoid about their hold over the crown and
ignored Mary’s pleas.
Many believed Elizabeth to be an illegitimate queen to England, as her father Henry VIII's
marriage to her mother Anne Boleyn, was not recognized by the church.
As such, plots against Elizabeth’s reign were not unusual and the queen, consequently,
was typically anxious.
With Mary under her charge, Elizabeth grew only more paranoid; and when letters between
Mary’s jailer and a Catholic priest regarding a plot against Elizabeth were discovered , Mary
was immediately implicated in having plotted against Elizabeth herself.
She was thus deemed guilty of treason in what became known as the Babington Plot.
Elizabeth knew that as long as her cousin was alive, there was hope from the opposing
forces that Mary would become queen of England and that she, Elizabeth, would continue to
live in fear.
Added to all of that, poor Mary Queen of Scots, had to endure the betrayal of her son, now
pursuing his own ambitions as a politician.
He recognized that an alliance with Queen Elizabeth the first would ensure his own ascension
to her throne upon her death, leading him to sign an alliance with England and to cut
ties to his Scottish ancestry.
This included abandoning his mother, now facing execution.
Add one more nail to Mary's coffin when the French, still under the rule of The Serpent
queen Catherine de' Medici, failed to make even a token objection to Mary’s imprisonment
and pending execution.
On February 7th, 1587, Elizabeth I signed Mary's death warrant, dictating that she was
to be beheaded on the gallows at Fotheringhay Castle.
The execution of Mary Queen of Scots was a grisly affair.
The first blow of the ax missed Mary’s neck and became wedged in the back of her head.
The second blow was too weak and left her neck severed; but still she remained agonizingly
alive.
The third blow finally finished the job.
The grisly details didn’t stop there either.
An eyewitness was recorded to have said that “Her lips stirred up and down a quarter
of an hour after her head was cut off.”
Add in the heartwrenching story that Mary's little dog had been hidden under her skirts
and afterward would not leave the dead corpse and lay between her detached head and her
bloody shoulders.
When it was over, the executioner held up her severed head and exclaimed to the crowd:
“God save the Queen.”
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