![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() With female regents in Portugal, France and the Habsburg empire, and then queens regnant in England, Spain and Scotland, the fears of men being subjugated to what John Knox called "the monstrous regiment" of female rule were lively and vicious. Kate Williams's Rival Queens falls resolutely into the sympathetic camp, analysing the life of Mary, described here as "a series of failures, and bloody breathtaking betrayals", in the context of her tortured and tortuous relationship with Elizabeth I, and wider 16th-century attitudes to female monarchy. The late Dr Jenny Wormald's 1988 study of how Mary lost her throne in a 1567 coup dressed up as an abdication, and then her head in 1587, after spending two decades under de facto house arrest in England, was initially subtitled "A Study in Failure". Most modern biographies of Scotland's only 16th-century queen regnant have been sympathetic, from Antonia Fraser's bestseller, more or less continuously in print since its publication in 1969, to John Guy's My Heart Is My Own, inspiration for the forthcoming biopic starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary, Margot Robbie as Elizabeth, and David Tennant as Mary's bête noire, John Knox, founder of Presbyterianism.īut admiring pity has not been the only response. In death, she has retained her ability to divide. In life, Mary, Queen of Scots was nicknamed "the daughter of debate" by her reluctantly bedazzled kinswoman, Elizabeth I. ![]()
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