On greater and lesser prejudices - the ones we mask, excuse or deny, or blame on our superior breeding.

In 1957, I left my home in suburban San Diego to attend college. Then, as now, my choice was on the list of the top five liberal arts colleges in the United States.  It is currently
ranked behind Williams and Amherst.  Last year, it was number one. 

San Diego was a much smaller town in 1957 than in 2019. Long before September, most local admittees to the class of 1961 knew one another.  Five of us were Convair Management Club Scholars and many of us were in the California Scholarship Federation. Those of us in journalism competed for the same awards and vied for the same scholarship money. I went to college on a Union-Tribune scholarship and a State of California stipend. The rest was a gift from my grandfather who was a gardener. 

 The Fall Semester did not begin until the last week in September, but Orientation began two weeks earlier. The Freshman class was divided into groups of less than twenty, and each was assigned an advisor. During one of the weekends before classes began, our advisor hosted a party at Newport Beach. After the hotdogs and potato salad, and before the toasting of the marshmallows, we sat in a circle and each of us introduced ourselves with a short speech about our aspirations, interests, and family history. 

 I was surprised when one of the male students indicated he lived in San Diego County because I had not seen him at any of the events staged during the application process. In the course of his self-introduction, he revealed he had been raised on the East Coast and had been educated in private schools. He had been living with his mother since his parents separated, but his father practiced law in San Diego. In a group of young people who were for the most part rather full of ourselves, he was even less humble than the rest of us as he spoke. Nevertheless, he was good-looking with a touch of what I considered to be East Coast charm and his pretensions were not that much worse than mine.  He was doing fine until his dialog focused on social attitudes. His family politics were Conservative but open-minded, he declared, and to illustrate the point, he offered the following anecdote: 'On Christmas, my mother invites our servants and their families to the house to collect their presents, and she even lets them enter through the front door.'

I sat in the sand with my mouth open, and so did our advisor. He had been born in China and spent WWII  in Shanghai, in hiding in the house of his mother's servants.  If they had been discovered they would have been executed.  His father was a United States Marine who believed his wife and children were dead. They began life in the US without their mother who was not yet vetted and they lived in public housing. His mother was Manchu and the children looked less Asian than my Chinese granddaughters, but the family was sensitive to issues of prejudice and knew it when they heard it. 

 I am not certain our classmate didn't use the word negroes instead of servants, but his subsequent remarks made it very clear that was what he meant. I decided then he was not someone I wished to know. I suspect he felt likewise. I confess to having obviously plebian attitudes.I do not think I ever spoke to him, not then and not at reunions. Picture Justice Kavanaugh conversing with AOC.

We are both retired members of the State Bar of California and both of us are admitted to SCOTUS. He had a highly successful career in his chosen civil specialty and takes pride in his reputation as a trial lawyer.  I wear my 122 jury verdicts and successes in high profile cases as a badge. However, prevailing in child sexual assault and homicide cases does not get me on anybody's A-list. 
 Perhaps I stored the memory of the Beach Party for 52 years because it was a portent for what I am observing in American today.  I did not expect to find bigotry at my college in 1957, and I likewise did not expect to read hatred in the rhetoric of my friends and neighbors in the United States of America of 2019.  What is especially scary is these are not radicals shouting. These are coworkers, colleagues, relatives, and friends. Nevertheless, attractive, educated, widely respected people whose company the rest of us seek and whose opinions we let shape our nation, are walking on floors scrubbed by those who are barred from entering the house through the front door and no one is calling them to account. And I speak metaphorically as well as literally. 

I had a friend named Rev. Wiley Burton who is now deceased. He and I co-chaired a Hate Crime Task Force in the Morongo Basin in the ’90s. In addition to his ministry, he was best known as the spouse of blues singer Nancy Wilson who also passed this year. He wrote a book called Divided we Stand years before small-house and independent publishing became competitive.  The photos alone make it a valuable addition to my library, but the message it delivers was personal for me because we were soldiers in a campaign against a new rash of hate crimes uncommon to our area, and while we were given lip-service from several quarters, it came with a caveat to be careful of our area’s good name. In other words, there were property values to consider and elections incumbents hoped to win.  We economized our efforts and got rid of the swastikas but not the hate.  Eventually,  we disbanded. We prosecuted one major hate crime and the Feds took credit for it. As compensation, I did get to hear some of Rev. Burton's best stories. And even they had racial undertones.

When Wiley was a young man seeking to make a living in tinsel town, he almost became Rock Hudson’s body double. It was a set-up, a practical joke arranged by Alfred Hitchcock, but no one told Wiley it was a prank. He thought it was a genuine job offer. One look and Hudson approved him. They shared the same good looks, size and formidable presence. Which of them was the better looking American Idol is debatable. But when they told Hudson the model he had selected as his double was black, he was fired on the spot. Wiley never worked in a Hollywood studio again. He spoke good-naturedly about the incident, but I was dumbstruck by its cruelty. Hudson was the butt of it, but Wiley was the Whipping Boy.

 I have a book on my shelf given to me by its African American author,  retired New York Times journalist Lena Williams in which she thanks me for 'Fighting the same fight against Hate, Bias & Ignorance.' The title is It's the Little Things.'   Williams speaks to habits and gestures that annoy, offend, and separate the races, yet appear trivial to the casual examiner and are thus easy to rationalize.  As an armchair historian and historical novelist, I look at vestiges of a culture based on exploitation and conquest as the culprit. The blond news anchor who flips her long straight hair almost in the face of her African American guest and the grand lady who sends a woman of color to answer a door she is forbidden to otherwise use do not consider themselves racists. The same holds true of Alfred Hitchcock, and just about every American politician who can muster a soundbite to explain actions in his or her past.  Hell yes, we have to do better.

On the passing today, June 7, 2019, of David William Wilkin, author, friend and patriot.

In memory of my colleague David William Wilkins, who passed today, I am borrowing a review I wrote of his excellent regency novel, Beggars Can't be Choosier.  David was a life long Republican whose last years of life were churned by the political turmoil in our Country.  He may not have had the audience of a Colin Powell or a Barbara Bush, but he had the courage to speak out against tyranny.  I profoundly feel the loss not just of a friend, or a colleague, but of a true American Patriot.

Beggars Can't be Choosier by D.W Wilkin - A Review by Linda Root.

It has been less than five minutes since I finished the first Regency romance I have read since I was in college, and my smile has yet to fade. I am still not certain whether I am in my desert lair or in a drawing room in London waiting for the sweetcakes and 

champagne promised to the guests assembled there. It seems that I have been away too long. What a miracle that a gentleman who lives in nearby Hemet by the the name of David William Wilkin could so magically transport a colleague on the far side of Mount San Jacinto all the way to London and into a society where elegance and grace were the talismans, but title and wealth were everything.

It would be dishonest to say I was captured in the first paragraph, or even in the first few pages. But I did get the message that a main character in the story was an earl whose pedigree was more impressive than his bank balance, and who was striving to live within a very limited income while still fulfilling the social obligations of a peer. He is living in what we would call a rooming house and having his shoes resoled, but he still dines with a group of men appropriate to his station. And each and every one of them is hunting for an heiress. That revelation was not especially provocative or new. 

I can site a long list of famous men who were fortune hunters from France’s Henri II who married Catherine de Medici for her fortune, not her looks, and Scotland’s famous roué, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who seemed to handfast or actually wed women he did not love whenever he was faced with mounting debt. At least in our group of drawing room bachelors, our protagonist Brian, Earl of Alfleck, is the least inspired of his friends when it comes to grabbing the first heiress who crosses his path. In fact, he is rather waiting in the wings for his childhood best friend Lady Sally to grow mature enough to appreciate him in a less platonic light than that of confidante and soul mate.
Enter Katherine.

Katherine is everything any man in Brian’s tightknit circle of fortune hunters could want. She is beautiful, unencumbered, intelligent, mysterious and incredibly rich—some have said as rich as the royals. But there is more to Katherine than meets the eye—she too has a craving. She is the daughter of a bastard, a self-made man who made a fortune in India and left it to his only daughter, but who never knew or at least did not acknowledge who his father was— Katherine is committed to solve the puzzle. To do so, she needs to be accepted at the higher tiers of police society, the notorious well born, well bred and wealthy social clique know in Regency Romance as the Ton, a term which was as strange to me as the term Sgian Duhb would be to someone who does not read Scottish historicals. Hence, the incredibly wealthy Katherine has come to London shopping for a man of title, and she has done her homework and settled on the earl of Alfleck, our thrifty, reasonably honorable Brian. And here is where the story deviates from the norm. She neither seduces him nor entices him. She invited him to dinner and propositions him. The deal is simple. They marry, she clears his debts so they can regain possession of his family estate which is leased to some who can afford its upkeep, she provides a reasonable allowance and he provides her with his title and a public illusion of wedded bliss until a year after she had whelped a male heir and which time her position in society will be guaranteed and his finances will be substantially repaired. At first our noble peer is aghast at so blunt a  proposal, but then a quick trip to Lady Sally’s estates outside of London to test the waters there and he realizes that he is a valued friend, and nothing more. So Brian excepts the proposition and the real story is launched.

Regency Interior Design

Like most things written in the manner of Regency Goddess Jane Austen, the story suffers because so much of the action occurs in the somewhat stilted environment of the drawing room and club, but that is what the Regency Romance is made of. We glimpse behind the propriety projected by the polite society of the day into some of the more forbidden topics such as childbirth and the female body. We also see some underlying vices exposed, and discourses on the proper role of a woman, and the fine art of gambling sneaks into the story. In Katherine’s almost pathological need to be accepted in a society that without her title would shun her in spite of her wealth, we see some of the same hypocrisy we see in the vestiges of drawing room society surviving in the present day.
The language Wilkin employs in his dialogue, although not stilted, is as appropriate to the early 18th Century setting as is the references to the phenomena of sex. Wilkin lets us know it is happening, but it is happening beneath the sheets, and we can only judge its quality by the fatigue it produces in the actors. This is not a Highland Romance novel. There may be a hint of the forbidden, as in an open dressing gown, but as in an original Austen novel, not a single bodice will be ripped. And yet, Wilkin produces a sexual tension and release that arouses but does not offend the tender sensibilities of the drawing room crowd in the milieu in which he writes.
Once immersed in the story, it moved quite well for me, and I pronounce myself cured of my aversion to this genre. I will indeed visit the drawing rooms of the darlings of the Regency Romance again, and soon. It left me with a nice glow. And yes, a thirst for champagne and a taste for sweet cakes. And a day later, my smile remains.
Mr.Wilkin’s delightful novel is available at :Amazon.uk and Amazon.usReviewers applaud Mr.Wilkin’s high degree of expertise in dealing with the Regency Romance genre.
Reading and reviewing Beggars Can’t be Choosier has been a delight. 
Linda Root

Mary Queen of Scots - the Movie: Shame on you, John Guy. I read your book.

When I heard John Guy was going to consult on the script for the 2018 version of the life of Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots, I was a pre-determined fan.  I should have known better when I heard the movie included a scene portraying a meeting of the Queen of Scots and her cousin Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, an event that never happened.  I considered an argument offered by the filmmakers that the scene could be interpreted by historians as a dream sequence and in any case, what transpired between the royal cousins could be excused because the views and sentiments expressed at the mythical meeting were consistent with their letters and public declarations.  Nevertheless,  a generation who learns its history at the cinema will be left with an impression of an encounter that is at best a fantasy, and at its worst, inaccurate.
When Elizabeth removes her wig in the presence of a rival queen whose legendary beauty was a thorn in the hand that held the scepter, I wanted to scream aloud.




















The fictional meeting of the queens is not the movie's only sin nor the fatal one: I am only one among the several people who know their history who applaud the cinematography, the casting and the costuming, but are left wondering if the movie somehow missed the point. Others who saw it felt the scene portrayed Marie as the stronger character,  which was never the case. The queens came from the same bloodline but as very different women. Marie was a divine right monarch and upon her father's death did not need a husband to hold a throne given her by God, but during a childhood spent in France, her country was ruled by others in her stead. By the fall of her mother's regency, the Reformation had altered the political thought of those left behind in Scotland, bringing changes Marie never entirely grasped. However, upon Henry VII's death, Elizabeth, grew to womanhood third in line to the English throne at best and disqualified by bastardy in the eyes of many.  Her survival and ascendancy required an entirely different skill set, one necessarily sensitive to the Winds of Change.  The movie attributes more progressive thought to the Queen of Scots than it's co-screenwriter Guy reports in his excellent history.  During the early months of her personal rule, she accepted the guidance of her brother James Stewart, known to history as the Earl of Moray, and her foreign secretary, Sir William Maitland.  Their influence kept her ardent Catholicism in check, and allowed her to achieve a strained but working relationship with Scotland's firebrand Reformer, John Knox, but not for long.

(David Tennant, John Knox in the Queen of Scots film.)

The Mary Queen of Scots screenplay is not the 'True Life of Mary Stuart' of John Guy's book.  In a sense, the title of the movie is itself a misnomer.  Those who have read Guy's stellar biography of Marie Stuart and followed his lectures will have come away with two strong messages to help us understand the tragedy of the iconic queen: 1) The youthful queen who returned to her birthplace to begin her six years of personal rule was a French girl; and 2) her marriage to her English cousin Henry Stuart, commonly known as Lord Darnley was her downfall.   The movie makes neither of these points apparent, and thus, the Marie Stuart in the movie, however superbly acted by Saoirse Ronan, is not the queen in Guy's  history, The True Life of Mary Stuart, QUEEN OF SCOTS, first published in the UK as ''My Heart is My Own' - The Life of Mary Queen of Scots.  I concede the commercial necessity of making the cinematic Mary Stuart a construct fashioned to please an audience, a premise with which I have no quarrel. Focusing on her relationship with her regal English cousin makes good sense if the objective is box office appeal. There is something almost magical about the Tudors. However, I do take issue with a script that needlessly distorts or omits portions of a history every bit as dynamic and intriguing as the fictionalization that displaces it.

Marie Stuart did not wish to return to Scotland when her husband Francois II died.

I should have sensed problems from the first scene, which is not at all what happened when the Queen of Scots returned to Scotland to occupy the throne. The truth was far more humiliating to the Queen than merely being cast from a landing craft into kneedeep water at the tideline. After surviving a brutal North Sea Crossing, the Queen of Scots was faced by a colossal snub that would have played every bit as well as the fiction scene of Ms. Ronan on hands and knees in murky water.

Marie Stuart was more than the French Dowager. In her own right, from the time she was six days old she was an anointed queen. As such, she enjoyed a position at the French court that even the consort Catherine de Medici could not claim, and indeed, she rubbed it in. Adolescent Marie Stuart was said to have called the French king Henry II's consort 'the Italian shopkeeper's daughter.' Also, her display of the English Arms at the French Court while Dauphiness and Consort left no question she considered Elizabeth a bastard, an inferior and a usurper. All of modern Europe knew she claimed the English throne, a claim she never abandoned although at one point after her imprisonment in England, she agreed to do so if Elizabeth named her son James VI her heir.  When her sickly husband Francis II died, Marie did not decide to return to Scotland until her European marriage prospects failed to materialize.  Her first choice and that of her powerful French family, the Guises, was Don Carlos, the eldest child, and heir to the King of Spain.  The fact he was known to be mentally unstable and likely homicidal did not matter.  He had the proper pedigree. Contrast this with the disaster of Elizabeth's sister Queen Mary Tudor, a lesson of which her younger sister Elizabeth took heed. However, the King's Mother, Catherine d' Medici, as Regent for her son, Charles IX, jinxed the marriage because it threatened the position of Catherine and the late King Henry's daughter Elisabeth, who had married Phillip in 1560.  The Queen of Scots deemed all other candidates inferior, including those advanced by her uncles, the Guise. With a suitable European marriage thwarted, the Queen on Scots looked favorably on a return to Scotland because she had run short of choices. She may have considered her return a temporary measure until she could place one of her Guise uncles' probably Renee, as Regent. Catherine must have been delighted to send the Queen of Scots and several of her Guise male relatives on their way to Scotland.  And since Marie was Dowager Queen of France, she embarked on the journey with considerable pomp and circumstance and a sizeable French fleet. The question was the route.

Elizabeth and her chief minister William Cecil were not unmindful of the threat of having a committed Catholic on the neighboring Scottish crown. When negotiations between  Cecil on behalf of the English Queen, and William Maitland of Lethington on behalf of Marie Stuart, failed, dashing hopes of smoothing over issues caused by the Queen of Scots publically flaunting her claim to Elizabeth's throne, the English retaliated. Elizabeth refused to grant safe conduct to the Scottish queen's party, which would have permitted her to sail from Calais to Dover.

By the time Elizabeth's temper cooled, and the passports were issues, a formidable French fleet carrying the Queen of Scots and her household had embarked on the perilous route to Leith.  But, Marie Stuart left France with trepidation and a heavy heart, with expectations of a warm welcome from Elizabeth and the English dashed.  And the disappointment was not over yet..

The Queen of Scots was not dumped in knee-deep water on a deserted beach as if she were a homeless refugee as depicted in the movie. She arrived at Leith in full regalia aboard a  French flagship commanded by Nicholas Villegagnon, the same notable admiral who had piloted the ship carrying her from Dumbarton thirteen years earlier. Nevertheless, it had not been an easy crossing. They had lost the ship carrying their horses and another bearing their household accouterments in a North Sea storm. The survivors had fallen behind the flagship, which entered the harbor alone. Admiral Villegagnon ordered his flagship to fire its cannons to announce the queen's arrival, but no one of consequence came. Her principal Scottish ministers were at Saint Giles listening to a sermon, no doubt delivered by John  Knox or his protegee John Craig, both committed anti-Marians.  The crestfallen queen rested in a house commandeered by her attendants while the Four Maries found someone who would provide horses for the journey to Edinburgh.

The Lamb House. Leith

After a brief rest at what is known as The Lamb House in Leith, with evening approaching, the queen left for Holyrood Palace on a borrowed horse and simple saddle. And thus, the first hours of her personal rule of Scotland began with an insult, not a mishap.






What Happened to Scotland in this Story?

The fast and loose historical treatment of Scottish history does not end with the queen's arrival, although many of the oversights and errors are sins of omission rather than significant deviations from the truth.  For example, the Queen's arrival at Holyrood Palace was not the first meeting between Marie Stuart and her half-brother James Stewart.  He had traveled to Scotland with the five year old queen in 1548 and had attended her wedding at Notre Dame de Paris in April 1558, as a member of the Scottish delegation. Later when his half-sister's husband Francois II died, and Marie had despaired of husband shopping, he spent five days in closed conference with his sister with an aim to persuade her to return to Scotland on terms agreeable to the Protestant lairds rather than sailing to Glasgow where the rival Catholic faction lead by John Leslie and the Northern Catholic promised their support and a Restoration of Catholicism.  By omitting the competition between the factions, the scriptwriters write Scotland and the Scottish Reformation out of the story.

While some writers suggest Marie was anxious to please her brother and not that committed to her Catholic faith, her decision was likely made to avoid escalating hostilities between the religious factions on the brink of civil war until her position could be secured.  It also bought her time to establish better relations with Elizabeth and the Protestant government in England. This required a level of statecraft requiring her to balance the power of her Reformation government and the Northern Catholic Earls.

James Stewart, Earl of Moray

The political quagmire in which she found herself is reasonably accurate. She could not have achieved any degree of success without the support of her powerful brother James Stewart and  Secretary William Maitland of Lethington, who Elizabeth I dubbed 'the flower of the wit of Scotland and who had the best chance of affecting a meeting of the queens.


Marie Stuart had a good sense of theatre, and she made her self visible when her subjects serenaded her on the evening of her arrival, even though she was thoroughly exhausted. The movie accurately displays her personal charm and her popularity with the people. The Scottish court was probably not as austere as portrayed, thanks to Marie's mother Marie d' Guise, a member of the powerful House of Guise and the Queen's father James V, who had improved his southern castles to please his French-born wives. Holyrood was not at all like a chateau on the Loire, nor was it as opulent as the convent of Saint Pierre les Dames du Rheims where she spent much of her time after her husband Francois's death but it was not a carved out bat cave as portrayed in the movie.

The confrontation between the Queen and John Knox is one of many that occurred soon after her arrival, and it is reasonably well done. Knox was one of the few people who could bring Marie to tears in a public setting. It is reasonable to believe the conduct in the queen's apartment was far too relaxed to please the Calvinist lords and clergy.  The authenticity of the frolicking is documented. The scene between Marie and Knox is a reasonable portrayal of what transpired between them, enhanced by the strength of the actors. David Tenant's Knox is a good match to Ronan's Queen of Scots, but both are cinematic constructs.  Knox was indeed a rabble-rouser, but he did trim his beard and behaved with some restraint when it behooved him. As for other members of the Scottish powers of the time, I find the lumping together of bitter enemies such as William Maitland and his arch-enemy James Douglas, Earl of Morton, an offense to most Scots.



Switching mid-scene from the Scottish to the English court may seem awkward to the general audience, but allows for parallel glimpses of Elizabeth and Marie and is easy for the experienced Marian historian to follow. The influence of William Cecil on Elizabeth's actions and in engineering the execution of her cousin is underplayed but present.  Elizabeth and Leicester provide the only viable romance in the story.  The killing of Davie Rizzio places the wrong people present but does display Darnley's complicity and Marie's shock and horror. But from that point to the death of the Queen of Scots many the most poignant pieces of 16th Century Scottish history are omitted in favor of dwelling upon a dialogue between principals that is unnecessary to the plot. The details of Darnley's murder,  two military confrontations between the Marians and the Rebels who base their legitimacy on the pretext of avenging the infant prince James, and ensuing Douglas Wars are excised to allow screen time for a fabricated meeting of the queens. The political climate and factionalism that resulted in Marie Stuart's death require at least some attention to the circumstances of her flight from Scotland after two military confrontations --the first in 1567 at Carberry Hill, and the second, at the Battle of Langside following nearly a year of incarceration and a miscarriage at Lochleven Castle. Unfortunately, omitting them leaves the viewer with little understanding of Marie's abdication in the late summer of 1567 or her flight to England after  Langside.  Her abrupt fall from favor of her people after Darnley's death, the controversy over the marriage to Bothwell and the dynamic of their relationship are all left out of the story, when in many respects, they are the story.  Also, we are left knowing that Darnley was a drunken rake, which is accurate, but the impression that Marie despaired of her marriage because of his possible sexual relationship with Davie Rizzio, perverts the story.  The queen who once sought to wed the mentally deranged and homicidal Don Carlos would not have dumped Darnley for a homosexual encounter with her favorite.  She dumped him because he was conspiring with her enemies with an eye to seizing the Scottish throne in a coup.  The Scots would have overlooked Darnley's faults if he had been malleable and controllable.  What finished Darnley was his intriguing with the militant Catholic factions in Europe when Marie refused to convey a grant of the crown matrimonial to her increasingly dissipated and probably syphilitic spouse. What killed him was his thirst for power and his unsuitability to wield it. If truth be told, Bothwell did not fare much better.   For those who controlled the infant king, Marie as a widow was easier to manipulate, at least until Bothwell made his move.  But the film wastes no time on Bothwell or explaining who he was, nor does it allude to the many months of her imprisonment at Loch Leven while the Queen reflected on her fall from grace. After fleeing the battle at Langside without a definitive defeat, Marie Stuart refused to risk another imprisonment like the one she had escaped. She believed  Elizabeth would place their positions s sister monarchs above their politics, a decision that spelled her doom.

Minor Issues:
For acting, the movie gets a five-star review based on the performances of actors Saoirse Ronan  and Margot Robbie as the queens, with strong support from Guy Pearce as Elizabeth's minister William Cecil, David Tennant as a sufficiently odious Knox, and Ishmael Cruz Cordova as Davie Rizzio, the queen's lutenist and correspondence secretary. The casting has raised an issue in some quarters as to how far filmmakers should go to achieve ethnic diversity. I applaud the concept when it is done without adversely affecting historical authenticity.  The major complaint seems to focus on the casting of Adrian Lester, a Jamaican, as ambassador to Scotland, Sir Thomas Randolph, who historically had an affair with Marie Beaton, one of the Scottish Queen's Four Maries. Both queens were offended and worked together to solve the problem.  Elizabeth had him recalled and sent to Russia to the court of Ivan the Terrible. Beaton was quickly married off to one of Marie Stuart's lesser courtiers. Sir Thomas Randolph did not return to Scotland until James VI began his personal rule in the mid-1570s.  I do not see the distinguished Shakespearean actor Lester's presence in the film as an issue.  Audiences are aware they are attending a display of Twenty-First Century cinematic art.

CONCLUSION:

A viewer with a keen eye to what it is and is not, and able to sympathize with the filmmakers acknowledgment of ethnic diversity and political correctness by making Elizabeth Tudor's ambassador to Scotland a man of color, and framing the story as a feminist dialogue between two powerful women, neither of whom were feminists, and finally, by realizing that the principal force at play in the plot--Reformation Scotland--is omitted altogether, then by all means enjoy the scenery and the costuming and the stagecraft. The movie is well worth the price of the ticket and the time.

Visitors to my post who are familiar with my studies of the life and times of the Queen of Scots and who know my interest in all things associated with Marie Stuart have asked some penetrating questions about the film.  One is whether Marie Stuart was progressive and tolerant of religions other than her own, as depicted in the film.  My answer has to be, no.  Her last words, as translated from the letter she wrote to her brother in law, Henri III, King of France, paints her as being strong in her Catholic Faith and in the legitimacy of her claim to the English throne. Her actions in her later years indicate she was willing to endorse a regicide to achieve a Restoration of Catholicism.

However tolerant she chose to be during her years of personal rule and during her almost twenty years of imprisonment in England, the Queen of Scots still prayed for a  Catholic Restoration in Scotland, if possible, with herself holding the scepter, and if that could not be affected, with it in the hand of James. If her acts sometimes masked that purpose, I believe it to be more a matter of timing than one of tolerance. She had, however, learned some temperance of her Stuart impetuousness as she aged, and was careful not to endorse lost causes.  Early in her life, she watched the slaughter of Huguenots at Amboise with reluctance. During her own personal rule, she witnessed the execution of the heir to the Huntly earldom and the desecration of his father George Gordon, Earl of Huntly's body after the battle of Corriche Burn, a striking down of one of the principal Northern Catholic Earls.  In that battle, she rode beside her protestant champions, her brother James Stewart, soon to be declared Earl of Moray, and a longtime knight-at-arms  Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange.  That did not make her a champion of Protestantism or a warrior queen, and she lost nights of sleep because of it.  She was compelled to mask her Catholicism in dealing with Elizabeth at first, but when their meeting  never happened, and  Elizabeth sought an English marriage for her defiant cousin--one that would guarantee an English succession to the Scottish throne, Marie Stuart continued to hope for the Catholic powers of Europe to come to her rescue before the English prevailed. These were not fly-by-night episodes of wishful thinking.  Her nephew Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell and the exiled Northern Catholic Earls vigorously campaigned for such an outcome in France, Spain and the Hapsburg Netherlands.

What Marie did not appreciate, and she was not alone in her miscalculation, was the atmosphere of change rising on the Continent, especially in what is now knows as the EightyYears War.  The volatile developments in France during the Religious Wars and the rise of independence in the Low Countries made an invasion in Britain less likely with every passing year. Whether it was frustration with her son's politics, her continuing restricted freedoms or natural aging, the Queen's discretion failed her with the Babington Plot and unfounded hints of support from Hapsburg Spain. In essence, she deceived herself in looking to France and Spain for a military solution.

A second question I have been asked concerns her relationship with Darnley and whether Elizabeth was behind his trip to Scotland.   Evidence on that score supports the idea that the Queen was infatuated with Darnley when she maneuvered a meeting when she was visiting Weymms Castle in Fifeshire. They had probably met earlier in France when Francois II died, but it was a state visit of no consequence.  At the time, Marie was husband shopping, and the English had suggested Leicester, who Marie found beneath her station.  Darnley, however, was another great-grandchild of Henry VII, a bonafide Tudor, son of Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, Marie's Aunt.  As a couple, they would have a double claim to the English throne.  Add to that the fact he was taller than she, well-mannered when it suited him, and an elegant dancer.

No matter how much Elizabeth might have savored placing a rake-like Darnley in her rival's bedchamber, it is disingenuous to think she would have hatched a plot against her own throne.  I do, however, suspect Margaret Douglas was delighted to send her mollycoddled son Henry to Scotland to join his father. Elizabeth probably had her own suspicions about her Cousin Margaret's motives and sent her to the Tower. By the time of the marriage, Marie was viewing Darley somewhat more objectively but proceeded with the wedding.  When we recall her earlier hopes of marriage to insane Don Carlos because of his pedigree, it is not hard to imagine the Queen of Scots going forward with marriage to a rakish man with a claim to the English throne equal to her own.  Guy's book and lectures pinpoint that decision as her downfall, which is not quite so evident in the movie.  In essence, there was more to Marie Stuart's destruction than her rivalry with her cousin. The tragedy was her reliance on Elizabeth on saving her crown.

Those who have seen the film often ask is if the Queen of Scots considered Elizabeth her inferior, as indicated in the dialog of their non-existent meeting.  The answer, of course, is yes. She was born to a station Elizabeth had struggled to attain and fought to keep. In Marie Stuart's mind, only God could create a Queen. and Marie Stuart's God was Catholic. In the long view, it is hard to determine which of the queens won. Marie Stuart has the larger tomb, but  Elizabeth has an age named in her honor, and the many European monarchs who have a Stuart in their ancestry also have a Tudor in the shadows.  The most notable among them are buried in the Henry VII Chapel.

In closing, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and will no doubt acquire a copy when it becomes available. I grew up wishing I had been Elizabeth and only marginally familiar with the Queen of Scots. That all changed when I read Antonia Fraser's book, but it was John Guy who gave me the Marie Stuart of my novels. I am a member of the Marie Stuart Society and venerate her memory, but I do not consider her a warrior queen. Nor do I not consider myself a militant feminist, but a vocal feminist when it comes to social causes.  To me, the contrast between the queens in Marie Stuart's story highlights the feminist dilemma presented to competent women in a world controlled by men. Perhaps neither of the cousins were truly free.  Perhaps that is the true story of the Queen of Scots, and if so, it gives the film its modern significance as a story which remains a work-in-progress.

RECOMMENDATION:  See the movie for its elegance, but also read John Guy's book.  I make the same suggestion to Professor Guy, not entirely in jest. I am thoroughly enjoying his 2016 biography ELIZABETH The Later Years, and he remains my favorite historian.