Jenny Wormald (1942–2015)

The dangerous tendency of biographers is to become too fond of their subjects. No worries about that happening here! The way Jenny Wormald goes after Mary Queen of Scots, you'd think Mary was Richard III and Wormald was William Shakespeare trying to make propaganda look real.

This book, when it came out, was intended as something of a corrective to a view of history that made Mary Stewart mostly an innocent victim of circumstance. But Wormald's answer -- that Mary never took any actions, even when action was required, except that she worked actively to make the religious situation worse -- is no better answer.

Making it worse is Wormald's rhetorical style -- the constant disdain for her subject. She considers Mary lazy and stupid, and never allows for the complex situation the Queen found herself in. There is the sneering air of "of course she knew what was happening" -- e.g. Mary of course must have known that there was a conspiracy to murder Lord Darnley, even though Wormald offers no actual evidence. Nor does Wormald give Mary any credit for not trying to stoke the religious wars. Wormald gives the impression that Scotland was meant to be Protestant, and Mary should have just gotten aboard and helped it along. This is quite absurd -- while Mary's half-brother James Earl of Moray, one of the supports of her government but also one of the main leaders of the revolt against her, was Protestant, as was her third husband the Earl of Bothwell, and an illegal parliament of 1560 had officially made the nation Protestant and barred Catholic worship, there were still many Catholics (including quite a few earls and barons) in Scotland as well. Mary mostly offered toleration -- not considered a virtue at the time, but it at least offered Scotland a chance to work out its own troubles.

It is certainly true that Mary made bad decisions -- mostly when she let her emotions get away with her, as when she married Lord Darnley, then (when he was dead), she married Earl Bothwell, then finally when she fled to England rather than continue to fight on her own behalf. The first produced an insoluble crisis (there was a reason Darnley was murdered; he was simply impossible), the second cost her her throne, the last cost her her freedom and her life. The way I would put it is that Mary was dealt a poor hand which she played very badly. She was clearly emotionally disordered somehow, and she often let her emotions do her thinking for her, and she lived at a time when any mistakes she made were almost sure to prove costly.

And yet, people liked her; she was clearly very charming (although the claim that she was beautiful seems to be disproved by her portraits). She had genuine skills, if not the skills we really expect of a monarch. She did, in fact, like to work, as well as to go out and ride and hunt and exercise. She had a devoted following, if not a very effective following. In the right context, she might have done reasonably well as a Queen.

A good biography of Mary should certainly show the dark side of her reign -- the strife, the lack of governance, the instability that cost Mary her throne, as well as Mary's own inability to work out the best course of action. But by making Mary such a passive failure, Wormald makes it impossible to truly understand what happened. If all of Mary's decisions are stupid and harmful, how can one tell which ones were disastrous and which ones were not particularly important? Ultimately, this is a hatchet job, and it feels like it, and it damages its own case by being one.… (mere)

The subtitle of this book, A Study in Failure, drew me to it as I'd always thought that Mary Queen of Scots wasn't really cut out to be a monarch especially at that very difficult time in European history when great religious ferment was in progress due to the establishment of the Protestant religion. However, I found it a bit disappointing. It isn't a personal biography and I didn't expect that - and the author recommends Antonia Fraser's study which I read years ago - but somehow it seemed a bit superficial.

There were a few interesting points such as the layout of the palaces at that time allowing a monarch to withdraw and cut themselves off with their 'favourites', and the statistics on how few council meetings Mary did attend. It was also interesting that she was depicted in the Casket Letters, which implicated her in the murder of her second husband, as a lovelorn masochist which the author says would have been novel if these had been forged by one of the men who stood to gain from her being deposed - as women at the time were either categorised as Madonna/Whore. Probably correct, as the concept of sadomasochism was not, I believe, developed until the 18th century. Though rather than likening this to Barbara Cartland novels as the author does, I would have thought 1980s bodicerippers would have been more accurate a comparison - and contemporary to the original publication of this book. A 3-star read, with some interest but not as enjoyable or informative as I'd hoped.… (mere)