The Memoirs Of Mary Queen Of Scots, by Carolly Erickson

There are a few facts a would-be reader of this book needs to know before reading the book. Chief among them is that this work is a work of whimsy and not a work of fact, though it does follow the generally known and accepted facts of the tumultuous life of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is also helpful if the reader is aware that the author makes the best possible case for the goodness of both Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. Certainly other people can and will make a much worse case against both. In many ways this was a book much like the Virgin Queen’s Daughter [1], attempting to show a female-centered and romantic picture of the Tudor period.

It is important to note that this is a partisan account. It is not even-handed in the least. I found this to be somewhat bothersome, especially because Mary’s personality seems to frivolous and emotional to have made a successful queen in her cutthroat times. She relied on her legitimacy, after having alienated her subjects through religion and her poor choice of husbands. Even the book portrays her as a bit of a tease, flirting rather indiscriminately, using her attractiveness to charm powerful men into being her allies or heroes or would-be protectors, whether we are talking about Lord Boswell, the Duke of Norfolk, or the Austrian Don Juan. The author may find this tendency to be cute, but I found it to be severely troublesome. We are talking about a woman who married three times, that we know of, wasting the funds of the Scottish throne on finery, flirting casually with every handsome nobleman in sight, and letting her stubborn temper override the wise and cautious advice of others.

Mary certainly led a tragic life, but a lot of that tragedy she brought on herself. No one forced her to marry her dissolute bisexual cousin Lord Darnley, or to marry his murderer (and even this book, as charitable as it is, has Mary openly talking about the need to get rid of him–and when a royal talks about the need to get rid of a problem, there are always military people around who are willing to get rid of the problem in the roughest way possible). She walked into all of those problems, and many other ones, with eyes wide open. She foolishly believed that her legitimate status as the Queen of the Scots meant that she would be able to enforce her claims by force, but showed little ability in inspiring people to fight for her, whether in Scotland or in England.

One thing that can be said in this book’s favor is that it is a quick read and full of drama (political and sexual–this book is not for the puritanical, and I found some of its descriptions a bit troubling) and action. The Scottish lords and nobles are shown to be an unsavory lot–either pirates and cattle rustlers or pious and sanctimonious hypocrites. The author has no sympathy with the stern religious beliefs of Presbyterians, and while she is critical of the Catholicism of Rome as well, she is far more sympathetic to the English Catholics looking for a savior to free them from Tudor tyranny than she is to the sincere and somewhat fierce Puritans and other forms of Protestants.

This clear lack of interest in moral self-discipline, which is evident in the author’s choice of works in general, as well as the sympathy she has for her heroine, about whom the nicest thing that can be said is that she was a casual and superficial and inveterate flirt, definitely is a drag on this book. Those who find the heroine to be less than sympathetic are not likely to be charitable to her faults, including her persistent intrigues against those who had taken her power away from her. Worse, the author apparently started writing nonfiction before her (probably more successful) career in writing historical romances, which makes her terrible historical essay (included as an appendix in this book) even more inexcusable, considering any undergraduate student of history, and probably more than a few high school students, could be capable of more reflective views on the relationship between the past and present insofar as it relates to our historical perspective.

So, if you are looking for a lightweight, extremely sexually provocative work on the Tudor period that portrays a lightweight and flirtatious Mary Queen of Scots, and presents her in a highly sympathetic light, this is a good place to go. Obviously, if you are looking for sober rationalism or for a morally uplifting tale, you need to go elsewhere. I did not think that this work was particularly worth a detailed examination of the byzantine dynastic politics of the time, but if you like reading about heroines who bite their fingernails all the time, perhaps this is the work for you. Caveat lector.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/book-review-the-virgin-queens-daughter/