00:08:07.420I think it came out last year in the UK
00:08:09.820and it's just coming out in North America soon.
00:08:11.700I also looked at a book called Daughters of the North, Jean Gordon and Mary Queen of Scots by Jennifer Morag Henderson, which talks more about other parts of Scotland besides just Edinburgh where Mary went. And then also the biography Mary Queen of Scots, The True Life of Mary Stewart. Sometimes it is different titles. Sometimes it's just called Queen of Scots. Sometimes it's called Mary Stewart. Anyway, it's by John Guy, G-U-Y. And that's the book that was, I guess, optioned. And it was the basis for this Saoirse Ronan, Mary Queen of Scots movie.
00:08:39.700anyway it's like a very thorough biography of Mary Queen of Scots and my first correction like
00:08:46.720we're getting into the the story Christina that's our editor Christina Lomagui can you put a time
00:08:51.980stamp to say actual discussion Mary Queen of Scots starts at however many minutes this is in case
00:08:57.840people want to just like skip right there anyway so my first correction is in the episode I believe
00:09:03.660the Mary Marie de Guise episode and that's Mary Queen of Scots's mom there was a some incorrect
00:09:09.280information given in that episode about who was the first king of Scots. In that episode,
00:09:15.760we said that it was Robert the Bruce. And that is incorrect. I was corrected by two different
00:09:21.860Scottish people. And I'm here to explain to you better about the history of monarchy in Scotland.
00:09:27.940And this is, it ties into the whole story. Because you know, Mary Queen of Scots is called
00:09:31.620Mary Queen of Scots. She's not called Mary Queen of Scotland. So it's always been a role that's
00:09:37.180monarch of the people, not of the land, which is a distinction that is important. So according to
00:09:44.120tradition, the first king of Scots was Kenneth McAlpin, who founded the state in 843. So like
00:09:53.340the year 843. And originally this was the kingdom of the Picts, which became known as the kingdom
00:09:59.260of Alba in Scottish Gaelic, which later became known in Scots. Scots being its own language,
00:10:05.720which is different from English, but kind of sounds like English with a really strong accent
00:10:09.380the same way that, I don't know, like German kind of sounds like English with an accent.
00:10:15.560Anyway, so Scots and English during the kingdom of Alba started calling it Scotland. And Kenneth
00:10:21.720McAlpin, first king of Scots. And then, you know, England, I said this out loud as just like
00:10:29.560thinking to myself in a previous episode where it's like, was England and Scotland just kind
00:10:32.880always at war? Yes. Listeners, yes. Because they share a land border that it's not like there's a
00:10:40.580river. It's not like it's too different. Like, it's just like now you're in Scotland, now you're in
00:10:44.240England. It's like, of course, that would kind of go back and forth where exactly the border is.
00:10:47.820And there'd be fighting. Kenneth MacAlfman, first king of the Scots. And then England took over for
00:10:51.940a while. But then in 1306, Robert the Bruce, he successfully won the land back from England.
00:10:59.240and then his grandson was okay robert the bruce had a daughter called marjorie great name love
00:11:10.800the name marjorie is that not a taylor swift song title anyway so robert the bruce had a daughter
00:11:15.860called marjorie marjorie married basically there's a whole thing about like the stewart
00:11:21.500family she married someone who was a stewart and then that kind of like combined the bruce family
00:11:26.980with the Stuart family. And so then the first Stuart monarch was Robert the Stuart in 1371.
00:11:33.680So Robert the Stuart was the grandson of Robert the Bruce. So there's a thing about the Stuart
00:11:40.300dynasty kind of started with a lass, started with a woman and that woman was Marjorie. And then later
00:11:46.600people are going to be like, it started with, it went in with a lass and it went out with a lass
00:11:50.400and the the lass or girl which i think lass is scott's word for girl was marjorie the daughter
00:11:56.960of robert the bruce so it's like robert the bruce had a daughter called marjorie marjorie married
00:12:00.900a guy and then their son was actually her spouse was walter stewart the sixth high stewart of
00:12:09.460scotland so marjorie and walter had a baby and that baby was king robert the second of scotland
00:12:16.700the first Stuart monarch. Okay. And I'm just going to say now, hot take. Based on what I've
00:12:21.760been reading, the Stuart dynasty was a disaster, top to bottom, T to B. There was, and I don't mean
00:12:28.560them personally doing things that were disastrous. It's just like, I think there's kind of a curse
00:12:32.780because shitty things just kept happening to like almost all of the Stuart monarchs. So Robert the
00:12:41.700Stuart. He was like in his 40s or 50s when he came to power. So he couldn't rule, quote,
00:12:47.560vigorously, because I guess maybe he had some illnesses or things. And then his son, also
00:12:53.000called Robert, suffered lasting damage in a horse riding accident. So he also wasn't able to rule,
00:12:57.740quote, vigorously. And then there was a series of regencies, like a bunch of just like a boy
00:13:04.660king i think it was yeah five boy kings happened and so when you have a boy king then someone
00:13:14.600needs to be the regent right someone needs to do the like day-to-day ruling type stuff and enter0.85
00:13:20.520the scottish asshole lords who we've mentioned before in the marie de guise episode if you0.70
00:13:26.560haven't heard those episodes yet just know there's these men who are the nobles of scotland0.99
00:13:32.600and they're just like this amorphous blob of just suck they're just they're the scottish0.73
00:13:37.700and they got more and more power because every time the new king ended up being a boy because1.00
00:13:44.060the dad died then they were like oh well you know the king is a child so like we the asshole lords0.97
00:13:49.560we need to rule in his debt so they just kind of like over like generationally just acquired more0.97
00:13:53.720and more sort of power and influence so yeah they just kind of usurped power from the crown
00:13:59.620And then when that boy king, like these five boy kings, when they were adults, they would try to attempt to address the issues created by having been a boy king, but then they would die leaving the next boy king.
00:18:40.260And so the Scots considered England the old enemy, and old is spelled A-U-L-D, which is
00:18:47.200the word in, I'm going to guess, Scots language.
00:18:50.040So because England and Scotland had been at war on and off for hundreds of years, right?
00:18:56.260Scotland was an ally of the French. French was an ally of Scotland. And the main thing they had in
00:19:02.440common was Scotland and France both just hated England. And so France kind of saw like Scotland
00:19:08.000could be kind of like little France, like France could maybe kind of make that be France. And then
00:19:13.920once they had that, then they could maybe take over England. Whereas England was like, we could
00:19:17.360take over Scotland and then we can take over France. So England and France, much bigger, more
00:19:23.180powerful countries. Both have their eyes on Scotland. And so Scotland, they're allied with
00:19:29.800the French against the English, basically. This is why Mary's dad, J5, had married a French woman,
00:19:35.740Marie de Guise, just to kind of like keep that alliance like clear in everyone's minds. And so
00:19:40.080just for contrast, England at this point, like the 16th century, had a population of around 3.5
00:19:46.180million. Scotland had a population at this time of around 850,000. So England is much bigger.
00:19:51.760There's more people there, more population density.
00:19:54.660At this point in Edinburgh, which was the largest Scottish town in the like south, the lowlands of Scotland, there's about 13,000 people there, which was about one fifth the population of London.
00:20:06.900So England was just like a bigger place.
00:20:08.960France, also a bigger place, more people.
00:20:13.120But Scotland was just located in this really useful spot that both England and France kind of wanted it, wanted to take over.
00:20:21.760And let's talk about Scotland in this era for a minute, because that's also important. I mentioned
00:20:25.980the lowlands before. So between about a third and half of the population lived in the Highlands,
00:20:31.540which is like towards the north of Scotland. If you think about things like Outlander,
00:20:36.920the TV show, like that's the Highlands. So about a third to a half of the population lived there,
00:20:43.860wearing their kilts, speaking their own language, having their clans. And then the rest of the
00:20:50.220population, so two-thirds-ish, lived in the more prosperous and cosmopolitan lowlands region.
00:20:56.820So the king, J5, was advised by the Asshole Lords, aka technically the Scottish Parliament.
00:21:02.660And this was meant to represent the whole country, but it did not. So the Highland clans,
00:21:09.020as you may know, again, from Outlander, which is like 200 years set after this, or like the movie
00:21:15.640musical Brigadoon. So the Highland clans considered themselves separate. And there was an unspoken
00:21:21.520rule that the Highlanders and the Lowlanders just kind of like didn't fuck with each other. They0.98
00:21:26.160just kind of like ignored each other. And that's how we could all just get on with our days. So
00:21:31.260many Highlanders spoke Gaelic or Gallic rather than Scots. And this added to just kind of the
00:21:37.360cultural differences. So while Scotland is, is it a kingdom? Is it a country? All one thing.
00:21:43.300there's the king of scots but there was a real division between the lowlands and the highlands
00:21:48.600so again mary just being born and she's a little baby j5 is off fighting the english and speaking0.63
00:21:57.420of the english the king at this point of england was goddamn henry the eighth who i feel needs no
00:22:02.680introduction but just so you know henry the eighth he had six wives the musical six will explain that
00:22:08.440whole story to you. And if you're familiar with Henry VIII's deal, so at the point that Mary was
00:22:14.200born, he was between, he was currently single. He was between his fifth and sixth wives. So
00:22:20.580Catherine Howard had been executed 10 months before Mary Queen of Scots was born. And seven
00:22:24.980months after Mary Queen of Scots was born, Henry VIII married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who
00:22:29.900I talked about in a previous episode in a previous season. So this is like late career, Henry VIII.
00:22:36.760And he had spent most of his adult life really hating Scotland, hating the Scots, the Scottish
00:22:43.740people. He didn't like how they allied with the French. He wanted to conquer Scotland so that he
00:22:50.760could then take over France and have like one big sort of like empire that's like where France is
00:22:57.200would be under his domain. Also, that was like his big goal. Anyway, so that's who the king is of
00:23:03.040that at this point j5 mary's dad lost a battle he was upset um because of that um because it was
00:23:09.080like a pretty major loss and then he heard like he was not on the scene as mary queen scott's
00:23:14.160being born but then like a messenger or whatever came and told him that his wife had a baby he's
00:23:18.240like great but then he found out that it was a girl and he was just like no oh no because just
00:23:25.240you know this is like a sexist misogynist patriarchal culture and the son would just be
00:23:29.860like easier to there'd been so many boy kings and it hadn't been like great but like i was used to
00:23:34.140that but like a girl queen he's just like well that's it then for this dynasty and this is where
00:23:40.780he allegedly said it will end as it began it came from a woman and it will end in a woman or it came
00:23:47.200from alas and it will end we alas but which he means the stewart dynasty started with marjorie0.91
00:23:53.200and i guess he was saying like well now that this daughter has been born god damn it the dynasty is
00:23:57.360going to end au contraire but that's spoilers and I'm really trying to be mindful in this episode
00:24:02.900and all the American Scots episodes to not let you know what's going to happen next because I'm
00:24:07.400coming from a place and a lot of the biographies I read are also coming from a place where you kind
00:24:11.520of assume that a reader might know the story so you just kind of want to tie things to what happens
00:24:16.420in the future but a lot of you don't know the story and I want you to like be as shocked and
00:24:20.620appalled by the plot twist as possible so we're going to meet lots of people and I'm not going
00:24:24.800to tell you what way to think about them and maybe they're going to be okay maybe they're not
00:24:29.380i'm just going to try and be like really in the moment here anyway so james to him he's just like0.97
00:24:34.880well fuck this steward dynasty that's done the end and then he died of illness um his symptoms0.98
00:24:41.920included marvelous vomit and a great lax aka diarrhea so probably dysentery from drinking0.99
00:24:50.100water with poo in it as so many people died of before we, we, the human race knew to not0.95
00:24:56.320shit near your water source. So J5 himself, he had become king aged 17 months when his own father0.98
00:25:03.620had died. And now he like in a Stuart way was leaving a new baby monarch. The asshole lords0.75
00:25:11.480were just kind of like, yes, we come to expect this. Anyway, so you think 17 months old is young0.99
00:25:16.640to be a monarch guess what American Scots six days old and she is now the queen so like let's go
00:25:23.680so Mary herself she was named Mary after her mother so her mother is Marie de Guise but like
00:25:30.480the Scots an English version of Marie is Mary and also this is an era in time in which people
00:25:36.160really just spelling even within a document I think you just kind of like how are we going to
00:25:41.240spell is today. I don't care. So she's named Mary after her mother, which long time Titswood
00:25:46.720Bigot members will know there is a vulgar history bingo card. You can find it in my highlights on
00:25:50.660Instagram. Maybe I'll put on the website too. Anyway, one of the spots in the bingo card is
00:25:54.940when a woman names her daughter after herself, because I just love it. I appreciate that. I
00:25:59.680think it's been so much in history where a man names his son after him. So when a woman names1.00
00:26:04.260the daughter after herself, I think that's great. And I feel like let's bring it back.
00:26:07.760she's also named mary because her birthday was december 8th which is a day celebrated by the
00:26:12.820roman catholic church is the day that the virgin mary had been conceived and her mother was a big
00:26:18.820old catholic so too was scotland a catholic nation that becomes important later so as she was six
00:26:28.100days old obviously they had to find someone who was an adult to like be in charge of running
00:26:34.280everything, aka a regent. And so I think largely because of the succession of boy kings and the
00:26:45.000ascension of the asshole lords, monarchy in general as like an institution in Scotland0.93
00:26:49.220was not as strong as in other countries. Like in England, Henry VIII was like had kind of ultimate0.98
00:26:54.480power. Over in France, the French king had like so much power and influence. But in Scotland,
00:26:59.340it was kind of like the monarch and or regent had to keep a delicate balance of the constantly0.99
00:27:03.940scheming asshole lords. So who kind of saw themselves, there's like, anyway, they just0.98
00:27:09.480kind of saw themselves as kind of like co-kings. And you couldn't just tell them what to do because0.97
00:27:14.260then they would assassinate you as they had in the past done to previous kings. Anyway, so they're
00:27:18.380like, who's going to be the new regents? Of course, all the asshole lords are like me,0.99
00:27:21.280like all of them and then infighting. So one candidate for the role of regent is a guy called0.99
00:27:28.060David Beaton, who is a Catholic cardinal, and he had been friends with Mary's dad, J-5.
00:27:34.340And David Beaton, like, I know I just was like, I'm going to let you discover for yourself. He
00:27:38.940sucks. Just know he sucks. And if you know the musical Break a Dune, I don't know how much of1.00
00:27:44.420a niche reference that is. I'm a big theater kid. So to me, it's not. But there's a song in that
00:27:48.600where there's a character in it called Harry Beaton who runs away. And there's a song where
00:27:52.080they're kind of yelling in this echoey way. They're like yell singing Harry Beaton. So every
00:27:59.000time I have the name David Beaton in my notes, I have a written note like David Beaton. Anyway,
00:28:05.700he sucks. So one of the things he did was he faked a will because like J5 died and no one thought he1.00
00:28:11.800was going to, which it's like, you know what, given like the previous five monarchs of Scotland,
00:28:16.100maybe you should have written a will. You're going off to war, like write a will. Anyway,
00:28:20.560he hadn't. But David Beaton was like, oh, he totally did write a will. And when, you know,
00:28:25.580he left everything to me, including I should be the regent and the king or something. Everyone
00:28:30.940was like, no, fuck you. You're obviously lying. And he was, but he had like a faction. He was1.00
00:28:37.200kind of like the most powerful Catholic asshole Lord. And so like the Catholics were like, great1.00
00:28:41.860him. He gave me the regent, even though he sucks. The other option for regent was a Protestant1.00
00:28:46.960person named James Hamilton, the Earl of Arryn. And we're going to call him Arryn because he's
00:28:54.380going to be in this a lot. And as I mentioned before, 44 different people named James. So Arryn
00:28:59.680was actually next in line to the throne after Mary, because his, like, even though J5 had had
00:29:07.220all these illegitimate children, like that's not how things worked for King of Scots. Illigitimate0.74
00:29:11.080children couldn't just like, wouldn't be named the next king. So Aran, his paternal grandmother
00:29:17.080was the eldest daughter of James II. So basically he's like a distant relative. He has descended
00:29:23.240in a roundaboutsy way from the Kings of Scots. And so he was chosen as regent, Aran. And basically
00:29:32.360everybody supported him because David Beaton sucks. Marie de Guise did not support him,0.99
00:29:37.320but we get into that in the Marie de Guise episodes and one of the reasons she did not
00:29:41.540support him was he was protestant and she was catholic and she's like i feel like if we choose
00:29:44.940a protestant region this country is going to become protestant and that's like the number
00:29:48.060one thing i don't want to have happen note about aren he also sucked like there's no good options0.89
00:29:52.620here so here's some descriptions of him from like biographies so he was weak vacillating cowardly
00:29:58.920and he throughout his life would switch back and forth between being catholic and protestant just
00:30:04.060like a little greebly worm depending on like what would suit him better so he's not like i'm
00:30:09.540protestant and this is meaningful to me he was just like i'll choose whatever religion i need to
00:30:14.760like get some more power or whatever so again another reason why marie de guise didn't want
00:30:19.800him because he sucked and marie de guise is a great source for just like a great quote0.97
00:30:25.560she is responsible for the quote where is your god now john knox which is available on merch0.97
00:30:31.780at velgerhistory.com slash store. But here's another great Marie DeGuy's quote. She described
00:30:36.200Aron as a simple and the most inconstant man in the world for whatsoever he determined today,
00:30:41.940he changeth tomorrow. So he would just change depending on whatever. This will happen. Henry0.98
00:30:48.820the eighth down in England. He's like, great. Here's my plan. I propose you send baby queen
00:30:53.920Mary Groom Scots to England. She'll grow up here. And then Henry the eighth at this point had a1.00
00:30:58.860five-year-old son who was called Edward. And he was like, well, we'll send Mary here. She can marry
00:31:02.940Edward when they come of age. And then they'll be kind of like co-monarchs. And eventually that
00:31:07.840will lead to England subsuming Scotland and all being one big country. Thank you so much.
00:31:13.580Marie de Guise was like, fuck you, no. And then she used her cleverness and beauty to usurp control1.00
00:31:19.620from the asshole lords. Again, that's all in her episode. Can't get into that here. We've already1.00
00:31:23.960been talking for a really long time. So knowing that Henry was just kind of like really excited
00:31:28.120to invade scotland some more she moved baby mary from linlithgow to a castle called sterling which
00:31:34.120was better fortified like it'd be harder for you know people to come in and try and kidnap her or
00:31:38.360whatever sterling is a castle which you can visit still today in scotland it's a fortress at the
00:31:42.780top of a steep rock and it's also near enough to the coast that like ships could get there so like
00:31:47.480if france was going to come and help out like they could easily reach her there so anyway well
00:31:51.760actually no she said i'm going to do this and aren who was like technically in charge was like
00:31:55.080not gonna let you do that and she was like watch me and she did and so at this point as she's like
00:32:00.780going to sterling another guy comes on the scene who unfortunately matters and his name is matthew
00:32:06.800stewart the earl of lennox we're gonna call him lennox for short so lennox was the head of a minor
00:32:12.800branch of the stewart family every goddamn person in this story has the surname stewart because of
00:32:18.740all the like stewart was a family before they were the monarchs but then also all the kings0.97
00:32:23.780of having illegitimate children. It's just like the last name of everybody. Anyway, Matthew Stewart
00:32:28.020was a French subject. He was also one of the asshole lords. So should something happen to0.99
00:32:32.520Aron, he had a claim to maybe be a good regent next to. He also had a sort of scheme that he was
00:32:39.500like, and if I can like seduce Marie of Guise, then I can marry her and then I'll be the regent
00:32:44.540and maybe kind of the king and I can take over blah, blah, blah. And Marie of Guise was like,
00:32:49.700whatever this guy's useful and so she got him to provide uh bodyguards and when you think
00:32:55.720bodyguards you think like maybe one guy maybe like 10 guys lennox provided 2500 cavalry and
00:33:01.6001000 infantry and that was who escorted marie de guise and baby mary to sterling and to safety0.99
00:33:07.500guess what they got there safely so then the asshole lords are just like scrambling scrambling0.99
00:33:12.420Aaron, like the greebly little guy he is, agreed to work together with David Beaton because I don't1.00
00:33:20.500care, but whatever. All this put together means that Mary got to be crowned as queen at a little0.99
00:33:27.200coronation for a baby, a little baby coronation, a little baby crown. So Marie de Guise, she's 28
00:33:32.580years old. Gorgeous. I didn't mention that in this episode yet, but she is. And people mentioned0.95
00:33:37.380that she's really charismatic as well. She's like six feet tall. And I mean, I don't mean like she's0.54
00:33:41.580like she like literally was six feet tall she was so tall for a woman in that era and time and place1.00
00:33:46.080gorgeous beautiful so smart like every scheming asshole wanted to marry her or get her to marry1.00
00:33:52.640their son or marry themselves to the baby or have their son marry baby mariko scots it's just like1.00
00:34:00.480a woman and her daughter and everyone was like if we can marry either of them we the men will have0.98
00:34:05.180so much power and take over scotland um but marie de guise just she played them off each other1.00
00:34:10.500masterfully. Again, we talked about that in the Marie Diggies episodes. So one of the guys who1.00
00:34:15.100wanted to marry her was Lennox. Another guy who wanted, who's like a main sort of like guy who
00:34:20.740wanted to marry her was named Patrick Hepburn. No relation to my cat, whose name is Hepburn.
00:34:26.560No relation. I just really want to emphasize. So Patrick Hepburn was the Earl of Bothwell.
00:34:31.780And he was a shitty person who had been exiled by J5 to Denmark for being quote, unruly. So like,0.97
00:34:40.500Like, I don't know if Denmark was previously, like, how for a while England would send prisoners to Australia.
00:34:45.720Like, was Denmark just the place you just, like, send people to?
00:40:32.900So David Beaton, they came in, they, like, captured him in his house.
00:40:36.020And then before they assassinated him, they forced him to listen to a long-winded sermon.
00:40:39.800They're just like, blah, blah, blah. Protestantism is great. Blah, blah, blah. And then he was stabbed and his naked body hung from the castle walls by knotting sheets together to make a rope. I share these details just to say, this is what it was like in Scotland at this time. Like the asshole lords were just like stabbing people. A bunch of them after this, like kind of stayed in his home and then they kind of barricaded themselves in there.0.98
00:41:05.120they had anyway the french eventually got them and captured them and sent them off to france
00:41:09.800and one of those people was john knox who we're going to talk about later anyway so he's dead0.93
00:41:16.360david beaton he was the chancellor and so the also lords are like shit we need a new chancellor0.78
00:41:20.460because we just killed that one and so as the new chancellor they chose a man who was the earl of0.76
00:41:24.880huntley aka george gordon and i think you understand why i'm going to refer to him solely
00:41:29.800by his nickname which was cock over the north so cock over the north was extremely influential
00:41:36.820and important and we will talk about him in later episodes in more detail but just i just want to
00:41:43.380let you know that this is when he's on the scene in this context he was a catholic and all the
00:41:47.640people in the northern bits of scotland like the highlands and also other parts in the north
00:41:51.620saw him as kind of like their leader like kind of not their king but it's kind of like you know
00:41:57.340Game of Thrones. Ned Stark was kind of like in charge of like Northern Westeros. It's kind of
00:42:02.540like that vibe. But Cocker the North, cooler than Ned Stark. Anyway, so Henry VIII died and his son
00:42:09.680Edward became boy king over there. So many boy kings in this story. He's like, so much has been
00:42:15.100going on. Like when they first were like, he should marry Mary. He was five. Now he's nine.
00:42:17.860And then two months later, the king in France died, leaving the new king in France was an adult,
00:42:24.860Henri II, who is the husband of Catherine de Medici, who we've talked about before in previous
00:42:31.480episodes. And so the De Guise family, Mary's maternal family were like super powerful and
00:42:38.460they were like heavily advising the king. And they were like, you know what? You should have
00:42:42.660your son, the French Dauphin, which is the word for like heir to the throne in France. The De Guises
00:42:47.600were like, you should marry the Dauphin to marry Queen of Scots, our baby niece. And around the
00:42:52.580same time goddamn john knox is here so david beaton had been assassinated by the asshole lords0.99
00:42:59.960for like burning a man so the burned man had been one of john knox's mentors john knox was0.99
00:43:05.400described as one of his bodyguards so john knox was one of the people who like stayed in the
00:43:09.480castle after the assassination and they were captured by the french and then he along with
00:43:12.720these other guys were forced to row in french galleys which was like their version of prison
00:43:17.520for 18 months, which is big Jean Valjean energy from Les Miserables. Anyway, but then it's just
00:43:23.880like England, France, Scotland, like who's allying with who and when and where and why. But at this
00:43:28.380point, for some reason, the English arranged for his release. And so he went to London. And this
00:43:33.380is because England, Edward is the new king, Protestantism is happening there. And they're0.56
00:43:37.980like, well, these guys are Protestants, these like Jean Valjean guys. All right, John Knox goes to
00:43:42.780England. The person who mediated his release was a young secretary named William Cecil, who's going
00:43:49.080to become important later. John Knox got a job as chaplain to the boy king of England. I regret
00:43:56.100to inform you, John Knox is going to come up numerous times throughout the rest of these
00:43:59.600episodes. Anyway, more wars are happening. Mary, age 4.75, like four and three quarters, had to
00:44:05.600be carried away at one point to um inch my home priory a remote spot on an island in the lake of
00:44:13.220mentis which just seemed like a safer place for her to be there for a while and there's these
00:44:17.900beautiful trees there and apparently those trees can date back to her time there and so you can
00:44:22.140picture just this little you know almost five-year-old mary just being like i don't like
00:44:26.120everything is chaos but it's nice here i guess so then aren still there he made a deal with the
00:44:32.240French king in which Aron was named the Duke of Chatelheru and he was promised a bride for his
00:44:39.400son who we're going to call Aron Jr. because his son is also called James. And then also plans were
00:44:44.860finalized to marry Mary Queen of Scots to the French Dauphin Francis who was one year younger
00:44:49.380than her and so you know at this point it's like thank god she's going to France. Scotland is just
00:44:53.640like who wants to be there at that point. So to get ready for this international move Mary was
00:44:58.640moved to Dumbarton Castle, which used to belong to goddamn Lennox, but had been confiscated from
00:45:04.020him when he switched to Team Henry VIII. While there, she caught either the measles or smallpox,
00:45:09.300which is just like, fuck, what are we going to do if she dies? But she did not. She got better.0.99
00:45:13.200And so one day in late July, Mary, aged five and a half, kissed her mother goodbye and boarded
00:45:18.160the Royal Galley of Henri II. So the journey was rough. There's something like they got on the ship
00:45:24.740and actually they had to stay on the ship for a week before the ship could even set sail because
00:45:28.860the journey was so rough. But this is where we learned that Mary Queen of Scots had a superpower0.98
00:45:33.560that I share, which is iron stomach, which is I do not get carsick. I do not get seasick. I don't
00:45:42.260know why I'm so lucky, but I do not. And neither did she. Everyone else on the ship was like
00:45:47.240puking their guts out and she was fine. And so who else was on the ship? Well,
00:45:51.580she was accompanied by her own court including four friends whose names were all mary so they
00:45:58.140were four girls her own age all called mary i saw rumor that they all had to change the names to
00:46:03.400mary so they could have the same name as her but it's just no it's just everyone the same name
00:46:06.900the four marys i'm not going to get into them too much now because they're going to have their
00:46:10.860episode later they were daughters of some of the most noble families in scotland beaten seton
00:46:16.320Fleming and Livingston so Mary Fleming is one of the Marys she apparently when they were like stuck
00:46:23.880in the ship for a week and they couldn't leave like she she's got an attitude I like she's got
00:46:28.560some personality she's just like get me off the ship they wouldn't let her anyway so the also
00:46:33.040coming along was a governess so Mary Fleming is one of the four Marys her mom Janet is also the0.54
00:46:38.940governess to Mary Queen of Scots I just need to let you know that Janet Fleming was gorgeous she
00:46:44.880was curvaceous and vivacious and like just know that she's gonna people in france are gonna be
00:46:52.120very interested in her also on the ship was one of mary queen of scots's illegitimate half siblings
00:46:58.740a brother whose name is james stewart which is also the name like again lots of people called
00:47:05.720james had to think of a nickname and the first one that came to mind is james stewart jimmy
00:47:09.540stewart the hollywood actor from it's a wonderful life and vertigo so i'm gonna just always call
00:47:14.400this guy, Hollywood icon, Jimmy Stewart, by which I mean Mary Queen of Scots is a legitimate half
00:47:19.740brother. So he was older than her. He's 17. She's five. He was going to Paris to go to university.
00:47:25.620So Mary eventually arrived. So Henri II and Catherine de' Medici at this point had,
00:47:31.160I think, four children. So Mary was five. Frances, her like child fiance was four. And then there's
00:47:37.580also girls. There's Elizabeth. There's Claude, a younger brother named Louis, who would sadly die
00:47:42.520of measles before his second birthday. And later, four more children joined the nursery. Charles,
00:47:47.440Henry, Marguerite, aka Queen Margot, who we've done an episode about. And then another son also
00:47:52.360called Frances. So basically, she's just, she's coming over and she gets to grow up in the royal
00:47:57.600nursery with the princes and princesses who were like of similar age. That's nice. So Mary at this
00:48:03.040point, she spoke Scots and almost no French. So she was, it became a French immersion situation.
00:48:09.540And in fact, the four Marys were sent away because they didn't want her to have too many Scottish people around her.
00:48:15.920They wanted her to be surrounded by basically French people only.
00:48:18.860So the four Marys were sent off to a convent school elsewhere.1.00
00:48:21.760But don't worry, they're going to come back.0.58
00:48:24.140Her governess, Janet, became a mistress of the king because she was gorgeous.0.68
00:59:35.720and people who met her were just like oh my god she's gorgeous so she was also trained in spycraft
00:59:41.600so how to write secret letters using ciphers um not to leave letters around where anyone could
00:59:47.420find them that being said she was also like she had people advising her namely her uncles and
00:59:52.760she just like trusted them so she was very trusting is this gonna be a problem later on
00:59:58.260we'll see but for instance as an example of her just like trusting and doing what she was told0.99
01:00:02.980She would like sometimes send her mother just blank pieces of paper, but with her signature at the bottom so that other people could write on it what it was supposed to say, which is kind of could be dangerous when you're an asshole Lord's scenario.0.98
01:00:15.360But I don't think anything bad ever came of that.0.97
01:00:17.340But it just shows that she's kind of like very trusting.
01:00:19.880Also, when she wrote, I found this endearing.
01:00:21.840She often started out writing very neatly on the first page, but by the second or third page, she began to rush.
01:00:27.120And if you look at her embroideries, it's similar.
01:00:29.680Like, I think she just liked to get stuff done quickly.
01:00:32.880Anyway, so she was really highly educated.
01:06:45.940Like Elizabeth was born like nine months after Henry and Anne got married.
01:06:49.160But then later Henry turned on Anne Boleyn.
01:06:51.800He divorced her and then executed her.
01:06:54.600And when she was executed at that point,
01:06:55.740Elizabeth was literally declared to be illegitimate by an act of parliament
01:06:58.860in a clause that had at that point never been repealed.
01:07:02.200so and then henry the eighth died you know years later and the whole thing is like there's a there's
01:07:08.420a case for why one might consider elizabeth to be illegitimate if you were a catholic person who
01:07:13.420didn't want her to be the queen whereas mary queen of scots like there's nothing illegitimate about
01:07:19.120her claim whatsoever like there's no it's direct line from like king to queen to whatever so the
01:07:25.660de guises were like great so they they in france just proclaim mary was queen of england scotland
01:07:31.680in Ireland. And it's not like they were like, oh, because she's illegitimate. They're like,
01:07:35.120she's Protestant and we don't want a Protestant queen. But they're also like, but what we can say0.91
01:07:38.920is she's illegitimate and we don't want an illegitimate queen. Like that was easier to
01:07:42.560sort of defend. So Uncle Charlie ordered. So the like heraldic arms of England, it's just sort of
01:07:48.680like that thing that looks like a shield. So they made like a new heraldic arms that was like
01:07:54.400part France, part Scotland, part England, just to be like, it's all one country now.
01:08:00.100And they had to put on all the like dishes, the like plates, and also all the furniture that Mary and Frances had. This was like a very provocative thing to do. And then an English guy was visiting France. He saw this and he was just like, oh, Jesus. He drew a picture. He's like, this is what they have on their plates. And he went and told William Cecil. And William Cecil was like, ooh, I can use this for my own scheming reasons. And apparently his drawing of like this heraldic plate was like William Cecil. He kept it in his files for like decades because he's just like, oh, that's treason.
01:08:28.400The de Guises didn't stop with just plates. Letters and official documents were sent out to the rulers of Europe, like other countries.
01:08:35.880They were being like, hey, guess what? Francis and Mary are the king and queen of Scotland, England and Ireland.
01:08:42.240Don't worry about it. That's just happened.
01:08:44.440By that summer, when Mary was like making her way to church, people would be like, you know, make way for the queen or whatever to like get people to get out of the way.
01:08:52.520And they started yelling, make way for the queen of England.
01:08:54.680like what was happening was not subtle there was no you couldn't confuse what was happening like
01:08:59.460they were literally being like oh she's the queen of england and we everyone in france thinks that
01:09:04.000now in rain the tv show there was a scene where mary and francis went to uh justin tournament i
01:09:09.000think and she showed up wearing like red and gold which were like the colors of england and i was
01:09:13.740like herman my pills like it was very again rain accurate in that sense so but like just saying
01:09:20.640she was the queen of england isn't enough to like make that be true so the degizus went to the pope
01:09:25.860to be like make this official please but the pope was like no and why was the pope like no0.95
01:09:31.800because he was pals with spain enters the chat so the king of spain at this point is goddamn philip0.91
01:09:40.060who was the one who's married to mary the first and was a shitty husband to her anyway so the0.91
01:09:46.420pope was bros with philip of spain and philip of spain wanted spain england to get along for like
01:09:52.720various reasons one of which was he wanted elizabeth to marry him so the pope wouldn't
01:09:57.700make this official and then eventually this is just all kind of getting weird and so eventually
01:10:01.740the king of france was like the degueses are going to be like too powerful here so he's like
01:10:06.700uh let's make france and spain be friends now to like challenge england which he did by so remember
01:10:14.180mary had grown up with the french princess and princesses one of them was called elizabeth they
01:10:18.300were like best friends like her and elizabeth they would make marmalade they would play act
01:10:23.140being peasants anyway they elizabeth was married off to philip in spain and we're going to talk
01:10:28.600about her and that marriage in a future episode so mary's bff shipped away very sad fun fact that
01:10:35.460marriage is the marriage being celebrated in the pilot episode of rain the tv show anyway so
01:10:40.680basically the degeezes and mary had to like u-turn they had to be like oh let's stop
01:10:45.480calling you queen of england because yeah that didn't work as i mentioned before when mary was
01:10:52.420stressed her illness her like chronic illness would trigger and so it was around this point
01:10:58.940that she had what is seems like a porphyria attack um because she was like trapped between
01:11:05.520what her uncles wanted and what the king wanted and she's just like i just want to like make
01:11:09.320marmalade and like vibe out do some dancing and then at a jousting tournament her father-in-law
01:11:15.640the king got a splinter in his eye that went to his brain and killed him so he died well he died
01:11:22.380slowly actually he was just like gruesomely injured mary and francis watched day and night
01:11:27.160by his bedside for 10 days and then he died of a massive stroke so mary five months short of her
01:11:32.62017th birthday was now the queen of france and so it was time for coronation but it's like they
01:18:46.180She demanded France send more troops to Scotland.0.97
01:18:49.240She confronted her uncle Charlie, just like blaming him correctly for fucking everything up.0.98
01:18:54.340She burst into tears and took to her bed.0.96
01:18:56.500She does a lot of, there's a lot of crying in this story because she is frustrated a lot.
01:19:01.780So this was happening, and then the treaty happened.
01:19:04.400So also involved in the treaty were Spanish King Philip, Catherine de Medici, making this horrible treaty.
01:19:09.840So the treaty also included that France recognized Elizabeth as rightful queen of England,
01:19:14.440Frances and Mary would drop their claim to the English throne, and French troops would evacuate Scotland.
01:19:20.100Mary and Frances had not been consulted about this, and, like, she refused to sign off on it.
01:19:25.860Her mother died shortly after negotiations for the treaty had begun,
01:19:29.140and but the fact that mary refused to ratify this document bred further distrust and ill1.00
01:19:34.560feeling towards her from the asshole lords but she's just like my mom just died this is a fucking0.99
01:19:40.100nightmare she was grief stricken her portrait was painted around this time to send to england1.00
01:19:45.080because amid her grief and like illness and everything she's just like i need a plan i need
01:19:50.060to like because she saw everyone was like always switching teams and who they supported so she's
01:19:54.220Like, if I can get Elizabeth on my side as, like, relatives, because they were, like, cousins, as just, like, sister queens, like, two women in a men's world, like, maybe we can be friends.
01:20:03.940And the way we're going to do that is by exchanging portraits.
01:20:06.240So she had her portrait sent to Elizabeth, and they started being pen pals, basically.
01:20:11.280Then Francis, her husband, fell ill initially.
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01:31:51.460do you love disney do you love top 10 lists then you're going to love our podcast disney countdown
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