The life and death of Mary Stuart remains one of the most movingly tragic life stories I know. More than fifty-five years after publication, and forty years after I picked up a copy at a library sale but only now got around to reading, Antonia Fraser’s biography is apparently still the best “life and times” for the general reader. Fraser provides a readable narrative, covering Mary’s mistakes yet remaining overall sympathetic. As far as I can tell, she also did an impressive amount of research, resulting in a detailed narrative that runs 555 pages without counting an appendix, notes, and index. That makes for a thick book, perhaps one reason it took me so long to set aside the time to read it. And even now, I’ll confess I skimmed her discussion of the casket letters, crucial though they are to how one views Mary. I took in enough of Fraser’s discussion to trust her conclusion at the end of the chapter.
Fraser presents Mary as an attractive personality. She had barely been born when her father died, making her queen of Scotland. Her actual reign was brief, though, starting when she returned, still a teenager, as the widowed dowager queen of France. It did not go well, but what are you to do if you are destined by birth to rule an ungovernable country?
Perhaps Mary’s worst blunder was when she escaped her Scottish imprisonment and fled to England rather than France. This presented her cousin Elizabeth with an intractable problem whose solution seems inevitable in retrospect. For Many was, in addition to being the deposed queen of Scotland and the dowager queen of France, the next in line to the throne of England. A fatal complication was that Mary was Catholic. Thus, in the eyes of all the English who clung to the old faith, she—and not the excommunicated Elizabeth— already was the legitimate queen. As long as Mary remained alive, she was thus a factor in every plot to assassinate Elizabeth.
This led to framing a law that made not only assassins but also those in whose name they concocted their plots guilty of treason. Clearly, the law was meant to bring the downfall of only one person, leading to a trial that Fraser calls “one of the strangest judicial proceedings in the history of the British Isles.”
In a chapter entitled “The Uses of Adversity,” Fraser describes how Mary’s character was deepened by the long years of captivity in ways typical of the long line of imprisoned philosopher-monarchs. She also shows how Mary ensured that the death she knew she could not escape would fit the pattern of “the classic Christian manner of martyrdom and triumph.”
To that extent, Mary won. Her execution remains a blot on Elizabeth’s reputation. Meanwhile, as Fraser points out, all subsequent British monarchs, beginning with Mary’s son James, have descended from her, not Elizabeth.
My only reservation about Fraser’s portrayal of this remarkable person is that Mary comes off as more modern than the times in which she lived. She is clearly Fraser’s kind of Catholic — tolerant, discrete, yet unwavering. Fraser’s sympathy for Mary makes not only Elizabeth but even more so Scottish reformer John Knox inimical to her. Perhaps Fraser has accurately depicted Mary (she presents her case convincingly). But it’s also true that biographies inform us not only about their subjects but also about their authors. ( )

This is an interesting biography of the life of Mary Queen of Scots and a really good read. I have one criticism, hence only 4 stars there isn’t consistent translation of the French and Latin and I appreciate that the book was originally written in 1969 and both were probably taught at school back then. I was born in 1969 and went to a comprehensive school and did not do Latin and the foreign language I did study was German. So it was at times frustrating. I would like to read another biography on her life so that I can compare ( )

2/10/23

read this on Ashfield - donated to PV library April 2022 ( )

I was inspired to read this book after seeing the film about Mary last year and I really enjoyed it for a detailed and balanced view of a woman with a fascinating life. ( )