A tragic queen

Prince's Street is Edinburgh's shopping centre and it runs parallel with the Royal Mile which goes from the Castle to Holyrood House. This is the residence of the Queen when she is in Edinburgh and it was also the scene of one of the most famous murders in Scottish history.

Mary Queen of Scots had been brought up in France, and returned to Scotland in 1561. She was a Catholic in a country that was becoming more and more Protestant. This meant that all her life she was involved in religious and political struggles.

Mary made many mistakes in her life. The first real one was her marriage to Henry Lord Darnley in 1565. He was handsome and ambitious but at the same time vain, self-indulgent and weak. Their love did not last. Darnley became suspicious of Mary's Italian secretary, David Rizzio. On 9th March 1566, while Mary and her friends were having supper at Holyrood House, Darnley and his friends broke into the dining room, dragged Rizzio outside and stabbed him to death. The spot where this took place can still be seen today.

Mary continued to live an unhappy life and was exiled for many years in England. Her cousin Elizabeth I of England had always been suspicious of her and decided that her worries would stop only when Mary was dead. Therefore, in 1587, she finally ordered that Mary should be executed.

Susan Sheerin, Jonathan Seath, Gillian White: Spotlight on Britain; Oxford University Press, 1985, page 85