Scotland, Religion and Power: The Myth of The Downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots
Author: Klaudia Gomez Tombelle
Translation: Nere Galletebeitia
On the second floor of Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, in the audience chamber used by Mary Stuart I of Scotland, a bloodstain decorates the floor where the body of her secretary David Rizzio is said to have been left after he was assassinated. This disturbing episode is considered the beginning of the downfall of Mary Stuart’s reign, considered one of Scotland’s most interesting figures: Known as ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’, her eventful, dramatic and romantic reign has earned her a place in the heart and mysticism of Scotland. However, there is no denying that she is a character full of controversy and mystery and remains an enigma today.
Mary was born in 1542, the daughter of King James V of Scotland and the French noblewoman Mary of Guise. Mary I became Queen of Scotland at just six days old, when the king died after her birth and his wife became queen regent, who decided to send Mary to France when she was just five years old, where she was deeply influenced by French culture.
Since Mary had Tudor blood (her grandmother was Henry VIII’s sister), she became next in line to the throne of England after the coronation of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, despite her disagreement towards Mary. At the same time, she married the French prince Francis II, which made her queen consort of France in 1559 and a widow at the age of 18 in 1560 when he died prematurely. All these circumstances made her one of the most powerful women of the time.
Her return to Scotland was quite turbulent, as Mary was now too French for Scotland. Furthermore, the country’s religion had undergone a Protestant reformation in her absence, led by the Calvinist John Knox, while the queen remained Catholic. This made her an outsider in her own country and made maintaining her reign much more difficult.
It is said that her reign was marked by her doomed marriages, starting with Francis II, and followed by her English cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, an ambitious young man to whom Mary refused to grant the title of full king. Unfortunately, this marriage also ended up involving her in two very violent episodes; there were two murders that marked Mary Stuart’s life.
Lord Darnley was very jealous of Mary’s close relationship with her private secretary, David Rizzio, a young Italian and Catholic who sparked debates within the Protestant Scottish nobility. The queen was pregnant during this period, and Lord Darnley is said to have suspected that the baby might be Rizzio’s. Thus, on 9 March, a large group of armed noblemen, led by Lord Darnley himself, broke into the Queen’s bedchamber while she was dining with Rizzio. Mary attempted to place herself between the attackers and Rizzio to protect him but was threatened with a pistol and thrown to one side, allowing the men to attack Rizzio, who was eventually killed after 56 bloody stab wounds. Nowadays, a visit to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh provides access to the bedchamber and audience chamber where the episode took place, where there is a large red stain on the floor where Rizzio’s body is said to have been left.

Lord Darnley believed that David Rizzio’s death would be a useful political move for him, but it turned out to be the opposite, as he lost the favour of the queen who never forgave him, and the episode triggered his own assassination plot; Lord Darnley turned up dead a few months later in the ashes of a fire, but the true cause of death was never discovered.
Mary, widowed for the second time, ended up celebrating her third marriage to the Earl of Bothwell, who was one of the main suspects in Darnley’s murder. This was the last straw, and a group of Protestant nobles eventually revolted against her. Her insistence on maintaining her reign over Scotland and fighting for her right to the English throne, along with suspicions of her involvement in her husband’s murder, led to Mary’s ultimate downfall. She was forced to abdicate the Scottish throne and after asking her for help, captured by Queen Elizabeth on suspicion that she would prove a threat to her reign. She was held prisoner for 19 years. However, Mary eventually became involved in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth, which gave the English queen enough evidence to decide to execute her. Her death made her a martyr for many Catholics, and her tomb in Westminster Abbey is a well visited site.
Mary’s enigmatic life has inspired art since her death in 1587, such as Sir William Allan’s painting The Murder of David Rizzio above. One of the most recent examples is the 2018 film Mary, Queen of Scots directed by Josie Rourke and starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary Stuart and Margot Robbie as her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. The film, in turn, is based on John Guy’s biography of the queen. The film focuses on the relationship between the two cousins and how religious tensions pitted two of the most powerful women of the era against each other. It pays special attention to these two women’s struggles with misogyny in political and power circles as high as royalty, and how they had more in common than has been established so far.
Despite her turbulent and mysterious history, Mary’s bloodline was the one that triumphed when her son, James VI of Scotland, was crowned both King of Scotland and King of England after Elizabeth’s death. Mary’s blood still courses through the veins of English monarchs to this day, just as her legacy remains deeply in the soul of Scotland and in popular culture: her role in history has sparked debates about power and gender, and feminist revisions of her story invite us to consider whether her immense influence was a benefit or a curse.
OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
Klaudia Gomez Tombelle (29 de julio de 2025). Escocia, Religión y Poder: El Mito de la Caída de María, Reina de Escocia. El blog de Tartalo. Recuperado 12 de marzo de 2026 de https://doi.org/10.58079/14g4a

