In this second installment of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, Alicia follows Mary back to Scotland after her tenure as teenaged Queen of France. A young widow, she returned to a Scotland that had gone through the Reformation, making her Catholicism a notable feature.
In 1565, after about four years back at home, she married her half-cousin, the ambitious Lord Darnley, which produced a son the following year. The marriage was troubled, with Darnley openly seeking to become King and not just the Queen’s consort, and to succeed Mary should she – and he certainly was not plotting to make this happen, no no – die.
The problem resolved itself in February of 1567, when the home that Darnley was staying in suddenly exploded and his body, and that of one of his servants, was discovered nearby, seemingly untouched. It was speculated that they had been smothered, and suspicion soon fell on James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, a confidant to the Queen and an ambitious climber himself. The whole thing was hugely suspicious, and Mary’s reign fully fractured just months later when she married Bothwell.
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