I’ve read bios of both Elizabeth and Mary and have heard both sides of the story - what do you history types think? Did Elizabeth have any choice in chunkin’ Mary’s head off? Mary seems to have made one dumb (or desperate?) move (and marriage) after another and seems to have been asking for it.
It seems to me that most of Mary’s actions suggest that she was an opportunist who had an unfortunate tendency to get emotionally and physically involved with some very bad choices, but who otherwise rarely let her eye slip from the Main Chance. While it seems likely that her personal preference was with Catholicism (especially since her childhood was spent that way), I find the idea of her as a martyr to her religion laughable; as I understand it, she married James Hepburn by Protestant rites, she readily agreed to allow her son to be raised Protestant, and the greatest likelihood is that she had her second husband, Darcy, assassinated!
She not only exhausted Elizabeth's forgiveness, but constantly bitched that Elizabeth wasn't doing anything to put her back on the Scottish throne, despite having abdicated in favor of her son, and leaving Scotland (which she'd pretty much always detested) quite voluntarily. Of course, she'd so alienated her own aristocracy by then that they were pressuring her pretty hard.
So, she had one husband killed, married her (probable) co-conspirator by Protestant rites, gets thrown out/abdicates and leaves Scotland, Hepburn tried to take it back and fails, dying miserably in Denmark, I think, and then wandered around England demanding asylum. Despite this, she continued from early adulthood to refer to herself in both title and arms as Queen of England, yet had the nerve to demand succor from the woman she labeled an illegitimate usurper. This woman, not out of kindness, but because she has a very strong sense that Royalty must only be judged by its peers if at all, puts Mary up for what - 20 years or better - and finally executes her when the plotting becomes so thick that Elizabeth's own life is seriously threatened.
Or was Lizzie just ax-happy? Opinions?
:m: Peace.
It seems to me that most of Mary’s actions suggest that she was an opportunist who had an unfortunate tendency to get emotionally and physically involved with some very bad choices, but who otherwise rarely let her eye slip from the Main Chance. While it seems likely that her personal preference was with Catholicism (especially since her childhood was spent that way), I find the idea of her as a martyr to her religion laughable; as I understand it, she married James Hepburn by Protestant rites, she readily agreed to allow her son to be raised Protestant, and the greatest likelihood is that she had her second husband, Darcy, assassinated!
She not only exhausted Elizabeth's forgiveness, but constantly bitched that Elizabeth wasn't doing anything to put her back on the Scottish throne, despite having abdicated in favor of her son, and leaving Scotland (which she'd pretty much always detested) quite voluntarily. Of course, she'd so alienated her own aristocracy by then that they were pressuring her pretty hard.
So, she had one husband killed, married her (probable) co-conspirator by Protestant rites, gets thrown out/abdicates and leaves Scotland, Hepburn tried to take it back and fails, dying miserably in Denmark, I think, and then wandered around England demanding asylum. Despite this, she continued from early adulthood to refer to herself in both title and arms as Queen of England, yet had the nerve to demand succor from the woman she labeled an illegitimate usurper. This woman, not out of kindness, but because she has a very strong sense that Royalty must only be judged by its peers if at all, puts Mary up for what - 20 years or better - and finally executes her when the plotting becomes so thick that Elizabeth's own life is seriously threatened.
Or was Lizzie just ax-happy? Opinions?
:m: Peace.
