In 2018, Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie made history by starring in an absolutely terrible movie. Well…not history, as it’s an already forgotten relic and also not terribly accurate – but that’s not the point! The point is, the last real mainstream attempt at both Mary Stuart and Elizabeth Tudor came from this abysmal film. And guess which man is in the middle of his Stuart Dynasty obsession? This guy!
I need you to imagine me pointing to myself.
The Stuart Dynasty might be understood as the most consistent study in monarchical failure we have in European history. Over a century defined by minority rule, followed by another century or so of unpopular monarchs being ousted. Not just our subject Queen Mary, but her grandson and great-grandson – whose daughter then handed the thrown to another dynasty to prevent that line from returning. But nobody is a bigger failure than Mary, Queen of Scots. No other monarch has a book written after then literally titled after that consistent lack of success.
The story of the last independent Queen of Scotland requires a lot of context that I am going to cram into a single paragraph. The Stewarts, having maintained Scotland’s independence from England for over a century, were down to James V and his second wife, the French noblewoman Marie of Guise. King James’ uncle, Henry VIII, had failed to pull Scotland into the Protestant fold, and their rivalry grew with each diplomatic snub to the English. Then, both of James’ sons died, and in 1542, having basically collapsed under the stress of it all, Queen Marie gives birth to a daughter, who is now the focus of Scottish, English, AND French interest. At birth, she is possibly the greatest heiress in Europe. It’s a lot of drama.
Thus, a legend is born. Everyone wants a piece of the pie – or really just the whole thing. The infant Queen Mary is first betrothed to the English heir, Prince Edward, before being shipped off to France in 1547, because Henry VIII is not good at waiting and got a bit…rough in his wooing. They’ll call it the “Rough Wooing”.
Once in France, Mary becomes a bit of a strange beast. Raised amongst the royal children of France, she’s both an ornament and a political cudgel to the increasingly difficult English. While historians don’t quite universally agree whether she became “more French than Scottish”, that is the prevailing wisdom. She certainly was French enough to sign papers agreeing to have the French inherit Scotland, should she die without an heir. That doesn’t happen, and she soon outlives her usefulness. By the time she’s 18, she’s a widow to a French King, a rejected bride for his brother, a political piece of dynamite for the whole of Europe, and on a boat back to Scotland.
The film covers what is essentially the rule of Mary as Queen of Scotland, and can be divided into three acts, as can Mary’s reign. The Honeymoon, The Darnley Years, and The Collapse. It does so in a trodding, painful way. You hit every point of a pro-Marian retelling of the story of her reign. She is kind, she is naïve, she is betrayed. But mostly, she is painfully bland.
What sparks of interest the film has are in its rare wild swings towards characterising Elizabeth Tudor as this high strung, near psychotic head of state. Not in a good way, but it’s something! What it actually is would be actually termed as character assassination, in order to try and frame her rival as…not this. A scene in the film where we see her begging her lover (hi Joe Alwyn!) to marry the “beautiful” Mary for their sakes. The Queen making flowers in a state of mania, contrasted with Mary’s bloody birth scene. Holding her skirts to see her shadow pregnant. Moments where she keeps being talked down by her advisors from making a friendship with the virtuous and perfect Scottish Queen.
These are watchable moments in contrast to the rest of the film, but unnecessary and weirdly cruel. They stand out because they’re basically the only moments where the movie is having fun, but it’s…weirdly sexist. Elizabeth is driven mad by her inability to marry and have kids. Everyone pities her. It’s a strange choice for what was the most powerful woman in Europe, who for most of the film was between 28 and 34. In order to make Mary Stuart seem more competent, Elizabeth Tudor must be a woman rotting from the inside.
If there is a historical inaccuracy that destroys the film, it is not the usual points levied at it, that being the non-white actors scattered through the cast and the one figure written as being transgender with evidence to the fact. No, the issue is that this film wants you to fucking adore it’s central character. The story the film is telling is that of comparison. Elizabeth becomes less human, less alive, and eventually is in the mask of Queenship we know her as in portraiture. Mary never gives in to the men around her, and allows herself to be a “woman”, and thus loses her throne because of it. In many ways, it’s telling the same story Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ (2016-present) does…but that’s not the story here.
Mary did not lose her throne by being too brave, too singular, too “feminist”. Her apparent “progressivism” within the film did not threaten the world so much that she had to be removed. Her rule was not simply undermined by a misogynistic Scottish court. She was singularly bad at ruling a court that was primed for literally anyone to take charge of it.
Jenny Wormald’s pivotal text on the subject, ‘Mary, Queen of Scots: A Study In Failure’, paints the picture well. Scotland was not a country of barbarians, any more than England or France. Mary’s arrival was after only a few years of consistent Protestant influence, which could have at least been halted. In many ways, she arrived to a country much more stable and malleable than she had any right to. But her inability to act in any substantive way consistently undermined her authority, until she was essentially without any.
That is not to say her decisions as Queen had no merit, but that they were too few and too little followed through. Her eyes looked elsewhere, to England, to France, to Spain. By the time they returned to Scotland, she had been too inactive for too long. The loss of her throne was a consequence of her actions. Hell, even her battle for her crown, the climatic battle of the film, was poorly handled and suggestive of Mary’s inadequacies as a ruler. A monarch’s one real duty was to see their people and win their battles. She did neither.
The film ends with it’s one near-iconic moment – the meeting of the two Queens. Long denied to us from history, it seeks to represent what might have been. And in some moments, it truly does work. Mary’s haughtiness and ego are on full display here more than most of the film, and there’s a snap to the dialogue that much of the preceding snoozefest would have benefitted from. Mary keeps saying what she thinks Elizabeth wants to hear, while Elizabeth speaks mostly from a place of painfully earned wisdom. It builds to something nearly visceral, as her pretty words and begging come to naught.
But it just…does not fit with the rest of the movie.
Maybe this all could have worked without Elizabeth’s physical presence until this moment. A movie about hubris, that ends with a confrontation that details exactly why Mary failed. As it stands, the moment is just as much about Elizabeth’s insecurity (a historical reality) as Mary’s ego (another reality), but it cannot stand the weight of them both. It makes two very interesting women seem flat. One needs to give way and a movie called ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’ should not ask the title character to do that, but she does, because the movie is uninterested in her real failings.
It feels like it wants to be about Mary’s delusions cracking for herself and the audience at the end – except they never do. She ends her narrative still convinced she can beat it all. Her sense of self-importance, so carefully nurtured in France, unbending. She dies for it all.
Every time I think about how the last few scenes of the film go, I am almost convinced it could be a masterpiece. That Josie Rourke and Beau Willimon really understand the history at play, and it was all a silly little ruse to highlight how detached from reality this one woman’s vision of the world was. But then I watch the first two acts, and remember the truth. The Mary Stuart of this film is not simply delusional, she’s meant to be the victim. It’s supposed to be a tragedy.
Well, it was definitely one for me the audience!
Select Bibliography
Mary, Queen of Scots: A Study in Failure by Jenny Wormald - link
Mary, Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser - link
Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy - link
Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley by Alison Weir - link