Mary Queen of Scots

This biography follows Mary Stuart from her childhood as Queen of Scotland through her French marriage, return to Scotland, political isolation, imprisonment in England and execution. Fraser treats Mary as a dynastic ruler rather than simply as a romantic victim, setting her marriages, Catholic identity and claims to the English succession against the politics of Elizabethan Britain. The book is concerned with the forces that made Mary dangerous to her contemporaries: religion, legitimacy, faction, diplomacy and the uncertain boundaries between queenship and captivity.