To some i was that husband Mary, Queen of Scots had before the really interesting one, the one who was murdered, blown up in a house which was quite theatrical, if I do say so. A shame I wasn’t awake to appreciate it. Or present for the aftermath. Or, you know, breathing.
It all began with my birth like most lives but i was a great-grandson of Henry VII on my mother’s side and i grew up to be a strapping six footer with the chestnut, flowing hair of a Renaissance painting and oh how I danced!
I arrived in Scotland in 1561 like a dashing, slightly sweaty knight in satin hose. Mary, my cousin and Scotland’s queen, was newly widowed and in need of a husband. And a baby. And possibly a good chat. I brought two out of three. The third? Let’s just say I wasn’t the greatest listener.
We married in 1565. A match made in heaven or possibly in the fevered scheming of various European nobles who thought uniting two claimants to the English throne under one roof sounded like solid diplomacy but it turned out to be more like stuffing a mongoose and a snake into a velvet sack and leaving them to get along.
At first, all was well. Mary adored me. I adored myself. We had a son (James—later King James VI of Scotland and, amusingly, James I of England). I strutted. I preened. I demanded the Crown Matrimonial, which would’ve made me co-ruler. Mary said no. I pouted. I threw tantrums that would embarrass a toddler denied his pudding.
Then came Rizzio, Mary’s private secretary, friend, and confidant but most importantly someone not me who enjoyed the queen’s attention. I admit, I may have taken out my jealousy in the most dramatic form possible, conspiring to have the man murdered in front of the pregnant queen. Yes. That happened. In a small room. With knives. While Mary watched. Not my best look.
Things went downhill faster than a Scotsman on ice skates. Mary, understandably cross about the whole bloody murder in my dining room incident, distanced herself. I responded by getting even more sulkier. I took to my bed with some mysterious illness and became less of a king-consort and more of a lavishly dressed invalid hiding in his bedroom.
Then, on the night of February 9th, 1567, I was staying at the Kirk o’ Field, a modest house just outside Edinburgh. Mary had gone to visit her friend. I stayed behind to have a good sulk and plotting my next temper tantrum when boom. The house exploded.
I wasn’t even killed by the blast. I was found in the garden, strangled. So, someone went to all the trouble of rigging explosives to presumably to make it look like an accident only to then manually have to throttle me.
To this day, historians can’t agree who did it. Was it Mary? (tragic queen, beheaded, romantic but unlikely), Elizabeth I of England (Virgin Queen, patron of the arts, destroyer of Spanish fleets but doubtful) Mary's future husband, Bothwell? (dashing villain, accused of everything so probably) or was it simply the universe’s way of saying, i had worn out my welcome?
I did leave behind a son who united two crowns which further serves as a cautionary tale about marrying your own cousin and never trusting a Scot with a match near your bedroom.
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