My review of Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots, by Linda Porter

Crown of Thistles: The Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots

by Linda Porter

My rating: 5 out of 5 stars 

If, like myself, you feel to have exhausted all biographical coverage of those two British queens in one isle, Mary of Scots and Elizabeth I, Crown of Thistles is the ultimate addendum. Exploring the background to, rather than the substance of, this fatal sisterly relationship, Linda Porter brings a freshly insightful perspective to a much-told tale, forever mesmerising in its many complexities and uncertainties.

There is no cut and dried version of much of this legend whose allure lies in its very reshaping, according to the teller and their biases.  The missing elements will probably remain so ad infinitum. These are: the defining rationale behind much of the Queen of Scots' perplexing decision making (and her level of complicity in her second husband Darnley's murder); the extent of Elizabeth's knowledge, jealously, rivalry and regal or familial integrity behind so many of her actions or inactions; and the related hushed discussions and covert activities behind so many closed doors across Britain between 19 August 1561 - when Mary returned home to Scotland, a stranger and teenaged queen dowager of France - and 8 February 1587, when her head was clumsily removed by an incompetent executioner at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire. 

That final bloody act was cited by Catholics everywhere as religious persecution, as they rallied into action the Spanish Armada the following year. If successful, that crusade against the most dangerous enemy of their faith would have seen Protestant England invaded and Elizabeth become not the Great but the Ousted. History could and would have been very different.

Porter, like her predecessors, aims to interpret this history's blurrier aspects through rational reasoning and critical discussion which, as with all versions, makes for some stimulating speculation, in parts convincing and in parts not so. Yet regardless of our leaning, towards Mary being victim or villainess, we remain compelled to read every last word there is, so as to somehow draw or reinforce our own conclusions. Such are our reasons for restlessly revisiting this messily unresolved epic, time after time. We strain to see through the misty patches of this tantalising legend, such is its unending allure. With certain hard facts forever slipping elusively through our fingers, we remain irreversibly entranced.

Possibly no data here is newly published, just this author's formation of facts, her presentation of contributing factors in the half-century or so lead up to Christendom's first and most shocking royal judicial execution ('Regicide!' roared the Catholic church from one end of Europe to the other). This famously protracted episode's culmination made a female Catholic martyr of Mary at the hands of her excommunicated Protestant female 'heretic' cousin, Elizabeth. All at a time when women were already thought unfit to rule due to their lack of levelheadedness. No wonder this has become the stuff of romantic fiction, high drama, ballet and opera. 

Because of Mary's natural place in the succession and her son's successful claim of it, here, too, was the shaping towards a royal dynasty we know today, with its peculiar links to Norman antiquity. Mary Stuart is, after all, the historical monarchical link between medieval British monarchy and its current ruling house. It is, significantly, she, a Scottish Stuart, from whom today's English royals descend, the Tudors having reached extinction with the demise of Mary's great 'barren' rival queen, cousin and executioner, Elizabeth I.

Fans thirsting for those irresistible, heart wrenching fine details of Mary's interminable state confinement under Elizabeth will be sorely disappointed and may as well save their eyes and reading lamps the labour. None of that is here. At what point Mary's goals and priorities switched from regaining her own throne to being drawn towards conspiring to usurp Elizabeth's ... what fired Elizabeth at every delicate turn, how she truly coped with 'that' allegedly botched signing of Mary's death warrant ... barely a fleeting moment of this gripping drama is to be found within these pages. The substance of this book is, instead, the distant background to all of that. 

Porter cannot be fairly faulted for her reliance on conjecture, which is the case with all her predecessors and contemporaries. This is an uncertain story on so many levels. What Porter argues 'might have' steered choices, what 'perhaps' shaped certain events, even what 'must have' unfolded in private is the inevitable explanatory trajectory, without which there would simply be no accessible angle on much of the material. Every such historian falls back on this device of logical yet subjective reasoning in the absence of sufficient documentation to get an absolute picture of certain story points.

Every smallest historical detail was acutely relevant to me. I particularly appreciated the Stewart and Lancastrian/Tudor family trees preceding the Prologue and the fifteen-page Dramatis Personae following the Epilogue – features common to such histories but still vital quick reference points for even the most knowledgeable reader.

Though I have read more hotly emotive accounts and drier, less engaging ones, Porter's balance was, I felt, fine enough. I learned more and gained greater insight than had I not read it. The narrative style is possibly less engaging that in her earlier two books, which I thoroughly enjoyed (Mary Tudor: The First Queen and Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr) but this is counterbalanced by the riveting essential content itself. This story will always endure, regardless its teller, but by concentrating its particular background into one work, the author saves Mary of Scots fanatics much gruelling research.

Highly recommended.