Book
The Wisest Fool
First published 2023
The Wisest Fool is Steven Veerapen’s biography of James VI of Scotland and I of England, following the king from a precarious Scottish childhood through marriage to Anne of Denmark and the political, religious and cultural struggles of his Scottish reign. It gives particular attention to James’s ideas about kingship, his household and favourites, and episodes such as the North Berwick witch trials.
The second half follows the carefully managed English succession of 1603 and James’s attempt to govern multiple kingdoms with different institutions and political expectations. Robert Cecil, Anne and other court figures appear within a reassessment of a monarch often reduced to caricature. The book is nonfiction political and royal history.
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