Antonia Fraser

A biography of Mary Queen of Scots captures the essence of the impulsive and beautiful Scottish queen who lost a throne for love and whose power struggle with Elizabeth I of England ended with her beheading. Reissue.

Mary, Queen of Scots

Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles with John Knox, and the unruly Scottish nobility; the fatal marriage to Darnley and his mysterious death; her marriage to Bothwell, the chief suspect, that led directly to her long English captivity at the hands of Queen Elizabeth; the poignant and extraordinary story of her long imprisonment that ended with the labyrinthine Babington plot to free her, and her execution at the age of forty-four.

Mary Queen of Scots

sariya

"It is often said that a secure childhood makes the best foundation for a happy life. In marked contrast to her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart enjoyed an exceptionally cosseted youth. It is left to the judgement of history to decide whether it did, in fact, adequately prepare her for the extreme stresses with which the course of her later life confronted her."

"On the principle of the sunflower and the sun, a frail child naturally rewards a more healthy specimen of the race with its admiration; a younger child hero-worships an older one; an unattractive child responds to a beautiful one by loving it."

"The stage was already set in French minds for the appearance of a childish heroine; to their satisfaction, Mary Stuart with her charm, her prettiness and the natural docility of youth, was ideal material to be moulded into the playing of this golden role."

"The development of her character is therefore predominantly a French creation. Up till now, vague events of violence, political intrigue and flight have swirled above her unconscious head."

"In all this drama, Mary Stuart alone seems to have remained unmoved, unknowing of the dangers ahead, uncaring of the dangers around her."

"With such splendid beginnings anything could be expected of her."

My favorite historical biography—I've now read it twice. Mary Stuart was a courageous, magnetic woman whose story never ceases to fascinate and inspire me. Fraser captures Mary's essence here beautifully and truthfully, rendering the consecutive tragedies of her life with care, dignity, and compassion as she maps her development from birth to the scaffold. It is an honest portrait: Fraser's approach to analysing and acknowledging, not only the queen's ill fortune—the cultural and political forces beyond her control—but her own missteps and natural shortcomings that led to her destruction, does true justice to Mary's character, which has, for much of history, been either unjustly blackened or impossibly romanticized with little in between. 

It is not enough for a work of non-fiction to be well-researched (though this one unquestionably is). Here, Fraser displays an immense and uncanny talent for recreating the past: her writing is so rich with sense and image and feeling that it orients you directly in the scene, such that the bloody happenings of centuries ago feel as equally raw in the present. There is not a dry passage to be found in this work. Instead, I find myself so moved by each word that I thirst to return to this book again to lap up every detail—and be beguiled once more by the infamous Queen of Scots. 

My favorite historical biography—I've now read it twice. Mary Stuart was a courageous, magnetic woman whose story never ceases to fascinate and inspire me. Fraser captures Mary's essence here beautifully and truthfully, rendering the consecutive tragedies of her life with care, dignity, and compassion as she maps her development from birth to the scaffold. It is an honest portrait: Fraser's approach to analysing and acknowledging, not only the queen's ill fortune—the cultural and political forces beyond her control—but her own missteps and natural shortcomings that led to her destruction, does true justice to Mary's character, which has, for much of history, been either unjustly blackened or impossibly romanticized with little in between. 

It is not enough for a work of non-fiction to be well-researched (though this one unquestionably is). Here, Fraser displays an immense and uncanny talent for recreating the past: her writing is so rich with sense and image and feeling that it orients you directly in the scene, such that the bloody happenings of centuries ago feel as equally raw in the present. There is not a dry passage to be found in this work. Instead, I find myself so moved by each word that I thirst to return to this book again to lap up every detail—and be beguiled once more by the infamous Queen of Scots. 

Eugenia Andino

Una investigación muy completa, muy bien documentada, y muy bien explicada además, de la biografía de una reina que no hizo gran cosa por sí misma pero fue una pieza clave en las intrigas políticas del siglo XVI. A ratos se hace un poco pesado pero de todas maneras la autora me encanta.

Jade Flynn

Anna Pinto

Maryam Hasan

Mary Queen of Scots passed her childhood in France and married the Dauphin to become Queen of France at the age of sixteen. Widowed less than two years later, she returned to Scotland as Queen after an absence of thirteen years. Her life then entered its best known phase: the early struggles with John Knox and the unruly Scottish nobility; the fatal marriage to Darnley and his mysterious death; her marriage to Bothwell, the chief suspect, that led directly to her long English captivity at the hands of Queen Elizabeth; the poignant and extraordinary story of her long imprisonment that ended with the labyrinthine Babington plot to free her, and her execution at the age of forty-four.

Mary, Queen of Scots

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