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| Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley | 
 enlarge | Author: Alison Weir
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 21.00
Buy New: CDN$ 13.86
You Save: CDN$ 7.14 (34%)
New (3) Used (2) from CDN$ 7.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 143237
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 704
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.7
ISBN: 0812971515
Dewey Decimal Number: 941
EAN: 9780812971514
ASIN: 0812971515
Release Date: February 10, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
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| Customer Reviews:
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 Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley July 20, 2004
This book is very well written and has a strong voice behind it, but definitly puts the authenticity of the Casket Letters in a bad light. Overall the author did very thorough research for this book and it is packed with hundreds of details of everything from the murder to the Casket Letters. An interesting read.
 Get it from the Library... April 9, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Alison Weir has often written books that sell rather widely. She is a decent writer, and upholds a strong narrative voice which - let's face it - many scholarly writers of history lack. Perhaps this is her greatest strength. It is a pity, however, that her facts are muddled and manipulated beyond recognition. Even pop history should make some attempt at accuracy beyond the well known details.
In the case of this book, Weir's research and knowledge of France is horribly lacking. Mary's childhood in France is very important to Weir's vision of Mary's adult characteristics - but at several points she makes embarrasingly incorrect statements or assumptions on both French royalty and French culture. To be frank, I felt like putting down the book after about 30 pages.
As for her analysis of the murder itself: It is clear that Weir is more comfortable with telling a story than with historical analysis. As I've mentioned above, she's a great writer, but I found nothing original or telling about her version of a rather well-known historical episode. Instead of giving the affair any historical importance, it is played out rather like a murder mystery.
In short, I have no problem with history as written by those not necissarily in the academic profession. Often these books bring more interest to the field than, let's say, Dr. Soandso from University X. On the other hand, it would perhaps bring more credability to non-academic historians if those like Weir were to truly research the context into which her historical snippit is placed.
 Mary's revisited February 25, 2004
I found this book excellent. Well researched and very clear in making the real killers appear from behind the shadows. I am very interested in this historic times and have read many new and old biographies of Mary (all of them in the research books mentioned by A. Weir) and they are not even close to be as interesting, dynamic and hard to put down as this book. I think that is difficult for us to appreciate the enormous task that a 20 year old young woman was put to endure, not only her kindom but the freedom of religion that we take for granted. She managed to be a Catholic in a country that was embracing the new religion and she managed to be fair with those whose faith was different than hers and at the same time she was able to reject the outside pressures, including that of the Pope, that wanted her to stop all oposition to her faith. This achievement alone is unparalleled at this time in history and she did it with great success. I think the author concurs with most present historians regarding Mary's inocence in the killing of her husband. Regarding David Rizzio's brother as one of the killers it seems far fetched but not impossible and for sure if he was involved he didn't do it alone.
Mary won't make the Mensa Chapter of Monarchs! January 7, 2004
Mary Queen of Scots was a tragic figure in the history of
emerging Reformation Europe. The tall and beautiful queen was raised in the luxurious French court where she was wed for the
first time. As a Stuart and Scot she became Queen of that misty
Scottish land in which John Knox and a band of nobles were in the proces of turning the kingdom from Roman Catholic to Presbyterian.
Mary married often but without luck. Her second husband who was English and a cousin of the redoubtable Elizbeth one was Lord Darnley. He was brutally murdered by a group of nobles eager to murder the Catholic Darnley, confine Mary to domesticity and use the young son of Mary James VI as a pawn in which to wield power in Reformation Europe.
Unanswered is whether Mary assisted the plot? Did she conspire with her third husband Bothwell (who was undoubtedly involved in the gunpowder plot which catapulted Darnley to Kingdom Come?)
Are the casket letters containing incriminating letters from Mary to Bothwell and others geniune proving her participation in the murder plot? Historians are divided on this issue as Weir
makes clear.
She asserts that Mary was more sinned against and was innocent in the murder of Darnley. She asserts that Mary was raped and wed by Bothwell (who would die in madness in a Danish prison) in
a power play for to become King of Scotland and eventually even
England.
None of the characters are attractive personalities. Mary was often impetuous and foolish (e.g.-she fled Scotland for England where her putative friend in female thronedom Elizabeth had her promptly tried and imprisoned and finally executed!).
Darnley was a stupid fop eager for sex and play in the fields and in the parlors of Scotland. Bothwell was a brutal bully and womanizer who was a "rotter" of the first magnitude!
The book is long and often is quite dull. It takes a detailed knowledge of who was who in Scotland and Europe at the time. The cast of plotting, corrupt and sinister figures is vast and almost
impossible to keep straight as one reads.
I have read all of Alison Weir's books and she is a reuptable popular historian. However I would advise the Amazon reader to order the more lucid biography on Mary by Lady Antonia Fraser.
The book is well researched; Weir knows her subject well but
to the nonspecialist in the time and characters she has trouble keeping an American reader interested in whatever happens to the puppets who parade their sanguinary passiona in this six hundred page opus.
Excellent, well-researched December 22, 2003
This is the best-researched and most definitive account of the centuries-long controversy over the murder of Lord Darnley. Ms. Weir convincingly lays down her case that Mary was probably not a murderer. For those interested in this period and in history, it is quite interesting indeed. However, I do believe the reader from OC was overly harsh with Mary. She did have poor judgement with Darnley but she did show intelligence, balance, and staminia during her rule in Scotland. Her policy of allowing the Protestant revolution of just one year earlier, even her mother had fought against them, and it was against her own beliefs, was a deft move. She faced a revolt in her first year of rule by Lord Huntly and dealt with it well, securing the loyalty of the Lords very quickly. Additionally, she would not have married Darnley if she had been able to secure one of several continental matches (plus an English one), including Philip of Spain, but these were refused because Scotland was considered too small and poor a country to be important. Overall, that she managed to keep stability in Scotland for six years is quite impressive. The country was torn with strife and war for the decade preceding her arrival, and it was torn with strife and war for many decades following her deposition. None of the supposedly crafty Scottish Lords in this tale secured power for very long, and indeed most did not survive as long as Mary did.
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