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Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart

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Mary Stuart was to the manor born, if indeed anyone ever was. She was the daughter of James V of Scotland and the great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England. She was raised in the Royal Court of France and was married at sixteen to the heir to the French Throne. Mary's father had died a few days after her birth and she had actually been Queen of Scotland since that time. Her realm was governed however by a regent who was for most of that time Mary's mother, Mary of Guise. The Guise family was a rich and powerful French family and they used young Mary to their advantage whenever they could. This misuse by her mother's family was just to be the beginning of a long series of betrayals that would finally end in Mary's execution.

John Guy has undertaken a huge task with this biography. The well-ingrained image of Mary Queen of Scots is one of a manipulative siren or of a Queen who was well out of her depth or both. Guy has examined many documents that have never been considered before and has reached an entirely different conclusion. In every way she was the equal of her cousin Elizabeth I, and in many ways her better. Mary's problem was that her Kingdom had been divided up by clan loyalties for years and the squabbles among the nobles made for an unruly Kingdom. Add to this the recent arrival of the Reformation in Scotland, and the further division it caused and the situation Mary faced on her return to Scotland was an almost hopeless one. Not phased in the least, Mary jumped right in and even her detractors had to admit that she was doing well. Even the rather unpleasant John Knox had to admit that the Catholic Queen did not lack courage.

Mary's also faced the problem that Scotland was so small and weak. That fact gave her very little leverage when bargaining abroad or with her cousin to the south. Then of course there was William Cecil, Elizabeth's Secretary of State, who hated Mary with a blind passion. Many Catholics in Europe, including many in England didn't recognize Elizabeth as the legitimate Queen of England, but instead looked to her cousin, the Queen of Scots. For that reason and his raging Protestantism Cecil decided that Mary had to go. And he went to extraordinary lengths to see that she did go.

Guy argues quite clearly that most of the charges that were leveled at Mary by rebel lords of Scotland were trumped up. Supported only by forged and doctored documents. The author is very convincing in his argument that Mary had nothing to do with the death of her second husband Lord Darnley and that in fact her accusers were the guilty parties. In all, Mary seems to have been caught up in events that simply were too much for anyone to handle. She seems to have made the right decision most of the time but with her own lords out to steal her throne and with William Cecil at work in London she simply had no chance.

Her only real guilt came near the end of her life when she did indeed conspire to remove Elizabeth from the English Throne. This conspiracy was more of an act of desperation than anything else, for she had languished in English custody for years. Day catches the sense of desperation Mary must have felt and the reader will understand why she acted thus. Day in fact does an excellent job of catching the spirit of the times as well as the spirit of Mary. Reading this book, one will see how often Mary was wronged while she was trying desperately to do the right thing. The author's thesis is that Mary was not only wronged in her own time, but has been badly wronged by history. In my opinion, he makes his point and it is well taken. After reading this wonderfully well-written book I don't think I will ever think of Mary Queen of Scots in the same way. She had her flaws, but she was indeed an impressive woman.

When I was a kid, my grandmother gave me the then-new biography of Mary by Lady Antionia Fraser. Growing up in a family of Scots descent, I remember my eagerness to read about the national heroine - and what a disappointment! I couldn't understand how such a flighty girl thought she could run a country between worrying about pretty frocks, decorating castles and torrid love affairs. Served her right, I thought, to come to such a tawdry end.

Now as an adult, I have an adult's view in 'Queen of Scots'. Discovering Mary's education began reforming her in my eyes. I gained a new understanding of Scottish politics and, not for the first time, deplored the way greed sold the land and people of Scotland to the English time and again. Although I've admired Elizabeth's resolve, Gee shows she behaved like a 'frail woman' more often than she and her modern spin doctors would like known. Mary is rehabilitated in my eyes, and I find it fitting the present British monarchy goes through her line and not Elizabeth's.

The book begins and ends with Mary's execution, but it's not that tragedy for which she should be best known. Mary is a heroine because she valiantly tried to put the principles of government she studied as a child in France to use in steering the nation of Scotland into the Renaissance and establishing it as an equal among the nations of Europe. That the greed of her advisors and political neighbors reduced her to a prisoner and Scotland to dependency is a history lesson that should not be forgotten.

Couldn't be a more perfect voice to narrate the tumultuous life of Mary Stuart than the author John Guy. An unparalleled historian and consultant to BBC, Mr. Guy reads with depth and understanding as he traces the years of the doomed queen from her youth spent in France to her execution.

There has not been a biography of Mary Stuart written in over a quarter of a century, and this is based on newly discovered documents that shed light on this enigmatic woman who has been presented as one who ruled emotionally rather than cerebrally. It is, of course, a first rate bio that reads as excitingly as any contemporary drama.

Listeners who enjoy not only history but an up close look at court machinations, plotting, and subterfuge will be enthralled by Mr. Guy's epic study. Offering previously ignored evidence, the author posits that she was wrongfully incarcerated and finally beheaded, framed by her enemies. Hers was indeed a life that stands larger than the most imaginative fiction.

- Gail Cooke

In this lively biography John Guy has produced a new, thoughtful, and very well researched, portrait of the much maligned Mary, Queen of Scots. He has dug up records that have not been used by historians in over 100 years and for the first time fully reviewed all the original documents relating to the death of her husband Darnley and come up with some very interesting results.

Mary comes across as an intelligent, well educated, politically astute woman when she finally took her place on the throne of Scotland. It's often easy to overlook the fact that for close to 5 years she successfully ruled Scotland and its plotting Lords in her own name before the dramatic events which shaped her eventual fate took place. John Guy successfully puts these years of successful rule in their place and presents a version of the death of her husband Darnley that makes a great deal of sense given the evidence of this event that is still preserved in English archives.

Mary's later captive years are dealt with in less detail, but the plots that eventually bought about her death are presented in with insight and detail. This biography has a lot of new information on Mary, and if you are interested in this complex and tragic historical figure then this book is a must, and it will make you re-think some of the assumptions in earlier biographies.

John Guy's biogaphy is one of the best works of scholarship I have read in a long time. His book gives us a non-romanticized vision of Mary Queen of Scots, a woman raised in France (and married, briefly -- before being widowed -- , to the dauphin and then king of France). After his death, she returned to Scotland and learned a fast lesson is Scottish Politics. More of a fragmented land of kin groups, revenge and blood feud than anything she encounted in France, Mary coped as best she could.

Guy does not gloss over her disastrous marriages, first to the dissolute Darnley and then to the man who probably assisted in the murder of Darnley, the brutal Bothwell. He does, however, provide a convincing portrait of her stamina, intellect, and will.
Mary has been constantly compared to Elizabeth, but here she comes across as an a woman who acts, whereas Elizabeth seems more of a ditherer, often overbourne by her adviser, Cecil. This may be giving Elizabeth less credit than she deservers, but the new perspective is refreshing.

I found this (long) biography hard to put down. While the opening seems almost formulaic, once Mary is in Scotland, the prose picks up and we are exposed to documents that have had little or no scrutiny in the past. If I have one objection, it is that the wild excitement of the events of Mary's life are sometimes rendered in too factual of a tone. Occasionally, the rainbow of her life is lost in the stones of fact.

This is a big book in more ways than one. Even though it's a tome I read it very quickly and with great satisfaction. The religiosity of Elizabethan politics were clearly as cynical as the politics of our own time, but in those days you could have your head removed for it. That thought never left my mind as I plowed through this great read. This is a serious book, but it reads like a novel.

Elizabeth is always held up as a master politician, and although Mary may or may not have been her equal politically she was her superior in charm by a long shot. You cannot help sympathizing with her, admiring her courage, even if she might have been complicitous in her own victimization. She was a very complex character, and this book does an excellent job of teasing out the various strands of her personality.

There is a lot of new information here as well. If you have read the other books on the subject, especially Antonia Fraser's, or are looking for a good place to begin, this is the book for you.

John Guy seems to have spent much fruitful time digging up everything he could for Queen of Scots, the True Life of Mary Stuart. Along the way he seems to have fallen completely and hopelessly under her spell. That is not to say he does not, on occasion, find fault with her (her marriage to Bothwell could never be presented as a smart idea) but he puts up the best defence against Mary's detractors (Cecil and Elizabeth) since the reign of the Renaissance papacy. This is only occasionally a problem in this otherwise interesting and mammoth book. Mary has been oft maligned in favour of Elizabeth and it seems, for some reason, one is always expected to choose between these two British queens ruling at the same time and the author makes his choice abundantly clear. The author covers the complicated factionalism of Scotland with adroitness. The murder of Mary's husband, Lord Darnley, is handled with more thoroughness in other books (such as Alison Weir's) but this author places the assisnation in its context quite comfortably. A good book on a fascinating woman.

I am writing my thesis (roughly 80 pages)on Mary Stuart and I have to say that, aside from primary sources, this book was by far the most valuable contribution to my research. Guy's treatment of Mary's life is balanced, detailed, and well contextualized. It's also beautifully written, so that reading it doesn't feel like research at all. I would recommend this book to anyone researching Mary Stuart, but more impressively, to anyone with a simply recreational interest. I wish I could thank John Guy personally. Superb.

I thoroughly enjoyed John Guy's biography of Mary Queen of Scots. The only flaws are that Guy insists that Mary's prayers before death were for a public show of her Catholicism. I don't think so - people about to die don't act that way. Also, he says that when Mary was kidnapped and raped by Bothwell, she must have enjoyed it because she did not cry for help. Sorry, but studies of rape victims have shown that even today women are afraid to go to the police. In those days, a woman was heavily stigmatized when violated against her will. But other than those flaws, this biography is a work of profound scholarship, depicting the details of Mary's daily life as I have never before read anywhere else. Guy also shows that Mary was a clever and even a savvy politician, as clever as Elizabeth her rival, although she fell through treachery and one lost battle. Very sad but very enlightening. Recommended.

This artful and unbiased treatment of the Queen of Scots, along with Antonia Frasier's earlier work, is a must for any historial, professional or amateur, who wishes to resolve, refine or at least consider the still debated questions concerning Mary, her ability to rule, her relationships with the scottish nobility, and of course, the dynamic of her relationship with Bothwell and her guilt or innocence of the killing of Lord Darnley. As a retired prosecutor of murder cases and somewhat of an expert on conspiracy, Guy's book provided me with the evidence I would need to review a case against her. There is enough well-researched detail to satisfy the close scrutiny required in reading a work on this already broadly treated enigma.