Monarchies Are Strange …
… when you’re a stranger from America.
I loved this book about the Scottish Enlightenment, so when I came across a discounted copy of Mary Queen of Scots, it seemed like a good opportunity to learn more about Scotland.
From a more objective standpoint, Mary Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart is a high-quality book. John Guy writes excellent prose, and his research is thorough. He does a great job distinguishing between established facts and disputed accounts. If you want to learn more about Mary Stuart—or about England’s Queen Elizabeth I—then you’ll want to read this book.
However, I learned something about myself while reading it: I’m not all that interested in the history of monarchies. Probably too much ’Merica in me.
Individual monarchs may be interesting, and Mary does come across as a compelling person. But too much of the focus falls on strategic marriages and producing male heirs, which just seems weird from the 21st-century American point of view. It can make for good drama, but I personally prefer history that focuses on ideas and the people who develop them. The Scottish Enlightenment is a great topic for that, and so is much of American history. (The American equivalent of strategic marriages would be focusing on partisan shenanigans, which don’t interest me much either.)
Also, I have mixed feelings when it comes to speculating about history. Speculation may be unavoidable as we go farther back in time; 16th-century record-keeping may not be up to today’s standards. Nevertheless, when I’m reading nonfiction, I prefer to prioritize established fact as much as possible and leave the speculation to historical fiction.
Guy devotes a sizable chunk of the book to a murder mystery. Mary’s second husband, Lord Darnley, was murdered in 1567. To this day, questions remain about who knew what. Suspicion has even fallen on Mary herself, as theirs was not the happiest of marriages.
Guy lays out all the evidence and all the various, conflicting accounts, but a definitive conclusion is simply not possible at this point in time. Still, Guy has performed a great service in compiling all this information for the historical record and anyone who’s interested.
For me, the most interesting parts of the book were those focusing on the dynamic between Mary and Elizabeth, even though they never met face-to-face. It’s no surprise that the movie adaptation, starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie, chose to focus on this.
I watched the movie in hopes that it might bring the book to life for me. While the cast is excellent, the script had an uphill battle. A miniseries might have been a better fit.
(SPOILER ALERT)
The script requires some imaginative leaps to make the story work dramatically, the big one being that it imagines a meeting between the two queens—which, again, never happened as far as we know.
Guy writes:
“… the two ‘British’ queens never met. Elizabeth in the end would not grant Mary the personal interview she had always craved. And as the years passed, the real reason became apparent from her many lame excuses. She feared that the younger, possibly more beautiful Queen of Scots was so magnetic, so brilliant in conversation, that she would overshadow or surpass her.”
In the movie, though, not getting Ronan and Robbie on-screen together would have been a waste. So, the liberty is understandable, but it also suggests that maybe this book wasn’t the best choice for a film adaptation.
It’s still a quality book, though. It wasn’t the book for me, but it might be for you.