If you follow me on Instagram (alltheroyalladies), you probably already know I'm in my Mary, Queen of Scots Era.
But what is it about Mary that gives her such an enduring fascination hundreds of years after her untimely death at the hands of an ill-prepared executioner?
I've been dealing with a fair bit of my own mental health struggles lately, and in the midst of it all, I want Mary by my side. Misery loves company so they say, and Mary's life very rapidly became very miserable.
Perhaps why she endures is the pace at which her life very quickly devolved from one of triumph, to one of despair. In the space of 18 months, Mary lost her mother, her father-in-law, her husband, her Queenship of France and her home in France. And, within seven years of her return to Scotland, she went from the fresh faced Queen to a reviled caricature worthy of the Madonna/Whore complex running wild in the misogynistic Scotland of the sixteenth century.
Blamed as being complicit in the murder of her erstwhile husband, Lord Darnley (he had it coming to be fair), Mary's fortunes never recovered and neither did her reputation.
Perhaps we all have a little Mary in us - Mary the Vulnerable and yet, Mary the Impulsive. Perhaps in our suffering we take comfort knowing that we are not alone. What can be said for Mary is that even in her most bleak moments she did not stop fighting. She may have been unwise in some of her choices (especially when it came to men, haven't we all been there?) but rather than change her course with the whims of the wind, she stood her ground - even if it led to her ultimate destruction.
And then, there's all the what-ifs? What if Marie de Guise had not died before Mary could return and was able to guide her daughter through the viper pit of the Scottish court. What if Francis II had never died, and he and Mary lived happily on France, with Scotland under the hand of a regent? What if Mary had never married Darnley and set off the series of catastrophic explosions, both literal and figurative, through her life?
We shall never know.
In the end, I think Mary's story is one of the most tragic, yet Mary endures, and so will I
And so will you.
Until next time,
Lady C xx