Fatal Majesty: A Novel of Mary, Queen of Scots

Returning from the sophisticated court of France to take up her throne in a cold and backward Scotland, 18-year-old Mary found herself trapped in a web of ambitions and intrigues -- those of her self-righteous brother, James, whose ambition was to rule in her place; of her brilliant Secretary of State, Lethington, dedicated to placing the Stuarts on the throne of England; and of Elizabeth I, dazzling and unscrupulous, who feared Mary as a threat not only to her crown but to her life. Reay Tannahill depicts the resulting intrigues as not merely desperate events in an era of easy violence, but as episodes in a grand, sometimes terrifying, and ultimately successful design.