I’ve always thought Mary, Queen of Scots was a fascinating character, even if she was a foolish woman. A couple of weeks ago while I was in San Angelo, I read Queen’s Own Fool: A Novel of Mary Queen of Scots by Jane Yolen and Robert J. Harris, and although the novel portrays Mary sympathetically, I was confirmed in my opinion that she was an unthinking person who made unwise decisions. Yolen and Harris use a real historical character, Mary’s French female jester La Jardiniere, as the central character from whose viewpoint the story is told. According to the authors’ note, “we know only this much about Mary’s French fool La Jardiniere, all from the court records: that she was female, that she was given several expensive dresses, that she was given linen handkerchiefs, and that she was sent home to France with a large payment when the queen went off to England.” Yolen and Harris give this fool a name, Nicola, and a character, honest and loyal to a fault, and they create a story featuring the fool Nicola’s friendship with the queen Mary and the known historical events of Mary’s life. It’s a good story, but again, it’s hard to tell who is the fool and who is the wise leader.

I remember the first historical fiction book I ever read about Mary, Queen of Scots, the book from which I learned the basic outline of Mary’s life and times. It was called Immortal Queen; A Novel of Mary Queen of Scots (seems to be the obligatory subtitle) by Elizabeth Byrd. I just looked on Amazon, and although the book was published in 1956 and is now out of print, it gets excellent reviews from the two reviewers there. I would give it a good grade, too, especially since I re-read it several times until my paperback copy fell apart and since I still remember the facts and the fictional scenarios presented in the novel. Mary is again portrayed sympathetically, although she’s obviously weak and a poor judge of character. Her ill-advised marriages are her downfall, and she’s shown to be complicit in Darnley’s death, but in denial about her own role as an accomplice. Immortal Queen is an adult novel, but the explicit sex of today’s historical fiction for adults is thankfully absent from Byrd’s novel. Queen’s Own Fool, by the way, is a YA novel, but I see no reason that adults wouldn’t enjoy it, too.

Have any of you read any good novels or biographies of Mary, Queen of Scots or her dear cousin Elizabeth I? What about other historical fiction set in that time period? Reading the Past has this note about the plethora of novels about Elizabeth I, saying that she may be the most popular subject for historical fiction.

By the way, Protestant reformer John Knox called Mary a “honeypot” and wanted to burn her as a sorceress. Knox makes a brief appearance in both novels mentioned above. Does anyone know of a good book about John Knox?