by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: March 05, 2008

The life of Mary Stuart, otherwise known as Mary Queen of Scots, is known for extremes - heights of beauty, glamor, and power, and lows of treachery, fear, and imprisonment. At her best moments she was proclaimed Queen of England, Scotland and France, and at her worst she endured politically-motivated rape and was perhaps complicit in judicial murder. But today the billion or so of the world's Catholics call her martyr, as she hoped in her last hours that they would. At that time she showed the piety and dignity that she should perhaps have shown when she lived.

From even before the time of Mary's birth in 1542 at Linlithgow Palace events seemed to conspire to put her fate on a whirlwind course. Scotland had previously specified only males were to rule, but she was the only legitimate royal offspring after her father, James V of Scotland. He died shortly after she was born, on the battlefield against the English and Protestant Scottish rebels. He was not wounded in battle, but instead it was said that his harsh life and high stress level spent trying to govern a fractured kingdom led to his death from exhaustion and anxiety at just shy of age thirty. When given the news of his daughter he uttered the famous but ominous prediction, "Aye, my kingdom began with a lass and will die with a lass."

And while she was still a baby, that lass had the eyes of the western world on her every move. Her father had renewed the Auld Alliance treaty with France, signed at his betrothal ceremony to Mary of Guise, a French princess. Both held England as a common enemy, Scotland because they shared a border and France because they competed for territory on the continent and the new world.

This made the infant Princess Mary a perfect target for marriage negotiations in all three kingdoms. The most famous attempt at her hand was Henry VIII's 'rough wooing.' He wanted her for his young son Edward and sent an army to force the betrothal. Her mother, Mary of Guise, was none too excited for her daughter to marry an English Protestant, least of all in that family. Mary of Guise herself had turned down Henry VIII's overtures when he was between wives in favor of his nephew, James V, a snub he probably hadn't quite gotten over.

This and other problems left her poor mother quite beleaguered. At her husband's death she literally began to fight his battles, both with England and Protestant insurgents. Cornered and fearing for her life, she abdicated to her one year old daughter. And to protect

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