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4.0 out of 5 stars
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This review is from: Mary Queen of Scots: The Fair Devil of Scotland (Hardcover)
Published in 1975, this non-fiction work is no longer in print, though perhaps it is time for Robert Hale (London publisher) and G. P. Putnam's (American publisher) to re-issue it as it would make a wonderful addition to public and school libraries. Four hundred pages shorter than Antonia Fraser's excellent biography, this book is more approachable by readers making their first acquaintance with Mary Queen of Scots. It is an illustrated biography with much the feel of a Thames and Hudson publication and has a two-page bibliography, a source list for illustrations, and a six-page index.
The book was written by Jean Plaidy, though that name was one of several used by Eleanor Hibbert, a prolific author of historical fiction, especially medieval and Renaissance queens of western Europe. Hibbert also wrote under the names Victoria Holt and Philippa Carr (not to be confused with Philippa Gregory, who writes in a similar genre at the present time). However, *Mary Queen of Scots: Fair Devil of Scotland* is one of only two non-fiction works Hibbert undertook. Plaidy has done an excellent job of portraying one of the most controversial queens in history, a Catholic queen who is still considered by the (mostly) Protestant Scots to have been a victim of the machiavellian Elizabeth I, queen of England, who had her cousin and rival Mary put to death after a twenty-year imprisonment. The English, on the other hand, tend to view Mary as a weak woman ruled by her foolish heart, "an adulteress and murderess," as they put it during her life. To them, she stands in stark contrast to the greatest of English monarchs, Elizabeth the Great, who might have worn with pride Shakespeare's epithet for Margaret of Anjou: "O, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!" Plaidy does an admirable job of presenting Mary of Scots fairly. She makes her neither the "fair devil" of English legend nor a sainted, martyred queen. The biography begins with her golden childhood as the princess of Scotland through her father, James V, and a member of the powerful Guise family of France through her mother. Married to the French dauphin Francis II at a young age, she became the daughter-in-law of the formidable Catherine de Medici and grew up at the French court. After Francis' untimely death, Mary returned to Scotland, which by now was substantially on the Protestant path under the leadership of the fiery John Knox. (Both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were given equal invective in Knox's famous "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women"; as a Presbyterian, he was making little progress with either the Catholic or the Anglican queen.) By the age of 25, Mary had been married three times, was the mother of one (the future James VI of Scotland and I of England), and pregnant with twins (later stillborn) conceived by her third husband, James Bothwell, while she was still married to Darnley, whose assassination they plotted and carried out. She was also a prisoner of the Protestant lords, led by her illegitimate half-brother, James, Earl of Moray, who became Regent for James VI after Mary was forced to abdicate. Kept a prisoner by either the Scots or the English until the age of 45, Mary was shuffled from drafty castle to drafty castle, being housed for many years directly above a filthy privy whose odor only added to her humiliation. Though she did abdicate her throne, it was under duress, and Mary never skipped an opportunity to try to win back either her own throne or Elizabeth's, to which she had a claim as the granddaughter of the first Tudor king, Henry VII (just as Elizabeth herself was). It was her constant plotting and her repeated escape attempts which finally forced Elizabeth's hand after Mary was found to be complicit with the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I, the Protestant queen who had no heir. Mary was beheaded in Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. Upon Elizabeth's death in 1603, Mary's son ascended the throne of England, the Tudor heir who founded the Stuart dynasty. Plaidy's prose is readable without being over-simplified. I found it hard to put down and genuinely wish school librarians and teachers could acquire this book for use by young adults. With the current interest in leadership styles, the approaches of Mary and Elizabeth resound again as a clash of opposites worthy of our attention
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