Mary Queen of Scots - too ambitious for her own good?

Mary Queen of Scots is another of those "romantic" figures in Scottish history who, like her descendant Bonnie Prince Charlie, has gained a heroic martyrs place in the memories and affection of most Scots that is quite frankly unjustified and heavily blinkered.

The sad truth is, they both got what was coming to them.

Mary cared little for Scotland or her people. Had she done so and been satisfied with ruling just the one country, she might well have reigned peacefully for many years and lived long enough to die of old age.

Scotland though, to Mary, was just a convenient stepping stone to the greater glory of ruling the entire British Isles, and France for good measure too.

She found the country and its inhabitants uncultured, primitive and wild, a far cry from what she was used to, having been brought up in the opulence and majesty of the French Royal Court.

Linlithgow Palace

Born in 1542 in Linlithgow Palace, Mary succeeded to the Scottish throne when she was only weeks old, on the death of her father, James V. Her French mother, Mary of Guise, would rule as Regent in her place until Mary's coming of age.

She had been sent to France at the age of six, for her own protection, mainly from Henry VIII of England whose plan was to marry off the infant Queen with his own son Prince Edward and thereby "unite" the crowns, even if it meant kidnapping her to make sure it happened.

Husband Number One - The Dauphin - not looking terribly happy about it

The sickly Edward, though, spoiled daddy's plans for neatly incorporating Scotland into England by dying in 1553, and instead the teenage Mary married Francis, the Dauphin of France in 1558. The next year, Henry II of France died in a jousting accident and suddenly Francis was King, and Mary the Queen of France.

In 1560, however, Francis too died suddenly, and Mary's position in France was placed under immediate threat by the powerful and scheming Catherine of Medicis, the old Queen Mother.

In August 1561, Mary returned to the land of her birth to take her place as Queen. Mary of Guise had died the previous year and Scotland was in turmoil, not least because of the deep religious divides and upheavals thrown up by the Reformation of the Church.

A Catholic, Mary was not welcomed by the Protestant Reformers who now ruled the roost in the country, with the fanatical John Knox at their head.

When she arrived in Leith, it was foggy and there was no-one there to meet her. It was not an auspicious start. But it would only get worse.

She immediately sought to gain recognition from Queen Elizabeth that she should be proclaimed her successor to the English Crown in the absence of Elizabeth bearing a son.

Her claim was not unreasonable given that she was the grand-daughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's mother, but it made her the focus for every Catholic plot to oust Elizabeth in England as well as every Catholic plot to reinstate that religion inScotland. She became a pawn in a very dangerous game, whose rules she simply did not understand.

Lord Darnley - Husband number two, whose deportment suggests that he enjoyed the medieval equivalent of McDonalds and Eighty shilling.

She strained her already fragile relations with the Scottish Protestant establishment by marrying her power-hungry cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, another Catholic and also a grandchild of Margaret Tudor with claims to the English throne. In a stroke, the threat to Elizabeth was now doubled.

From that moment, her life was to spiral completely out of control.

Darnley, in league with several other lords, arranged the murder of the Queen's private secretary, David Riccio, in Holyrood Palace on the 9th March 1566. No impropriety between the Queen and her dashing Italian confidante has ever been proved, but that's not to say it didn't happen.

Less than a year later, Darnley himself was murdered when the house in which he was staying was destroyed by an explosion.

Husband Number three - James Hepburn, Earl of Boswell

The prime suspect for the murder was James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, who lo and behold married the not very bereaved Queen just three months later.

Draw your own conclusions. The people of Scotland certainly did. Regicide, even by Royal consent, was no laughing matter and even if innocent of that, such moral lassitude in the manner and haste of her re-marriage could not be accepted in the Presbyterian climate of the day.

Opposition grew rapidly against Mary until the inevitable rebellion ensued. She and Bothwell were defeated less than a month into their marriage at the Battle of Carberry Hill. Mary surrendered, was forced to abdicate, and was imprisoned in Lochleven castle, while Bothwell escaped into exile.

In May 1568, she escaped her island prison and with the Duke of Hamilton's aid mustered an army in opposition to her half-brother the Earl of Moray, who by now had been proclaimed Regent of Scotland in her stead, with Mary's infant son James VI the new King.

The two armies met at the Battle of Langside near Glasgow. It was short but decisive. Mary's forces were soundly defeated and she fled Scotland on the 16th May 1568, never to return.

Queen Elizabeth I - the virgin queen - cos it would have taken so long to get all that clobber off

Naively believing that Queen Elizabeth would support her, as one monarch to another, she sought refuge in England. Elizabeth, though, was not so stupid and kept Mary under effective house arrest for the next 19 years.

She continued to be the figurehead focus for both English and Scottish Catholic plotters. Her very existence was a threat to Elizabeth's hold on power. She had to go.

An English inquiry into the Scottish Rebellion was turned into a trial of Mary herself and it was here that the infamous "Casket Letters" purportedly written by Mary to Bothwell first appeared. Now deemed to be forgeries, they clearly implicated Mary in the murder of Darnley and gave Elizabeth just cause for her continued confinement.

Mary's fate was sealed when her complicity in what was known as "the Babington Plot" was revealed. An apparent scheme to assassinate Elizabeth, the whole thing was set up and engineered by Elizabeth's own ministers and agents to trick Mary into agreeing, in writing, to treason. She fell for it, giving Elizabeth just the excuse she needed.

Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off

Mary Stuart was executed in February 1587 at Fotheringay Castle after a show trial whose outcome was pre-ordained.

Some might say, however, that she had already lost her head well before then by her impulsive and reckless acts.

An innocent and misunderstood Catholic Martyr manipulated and overcome by the self-seeking of hypocritical and disloyal men? Or a power-crazed, impetuous Queen of Tarts led astray by her sexual passions and inflated sense of destiny?

FirstFoot leans strongly towards the latter point of view.