The Warrior Queens

Antonia Fraser wrote Warrior Queens in the late 1980s, but I read it in the wake of Hillary Clinton's campaign and the months of (still continuing) "why Bernie would have won."  The nightly news dovetailed neatly with Fraser's categorization of women leaders (some legendary, some fully supported by the historical record).   Many gained power through family relationships and all had to balance their needed strength with the need to appear soft enough to be a "real woman."  Women from Boudica (the real figure behind the legendary Boadicea) through Cleopatra, Zenobia, Elizabeth I, and Margaret Thatcher walked a fine line, balancing the softness expected of a woman and the strength expected of a leader.  We have no margin of error as women - even when perfect, we're "trying too hard."  I'd like to say Fraser's queens were inspiring, but in 2017, their stories were actually a bit depressing.

The Weaker Vessel

I'm not sure how I feel about The Weaker Vessel.  The topic (women in 17th Century England) interests me, and I enjoy Antonia Fraser's writing style.  I should have loved the book, but for some reason it didn't make much of an impression on me.  Perhaps it's because I read it over the course of six very stressful weeks and couldn't devote enough mental energy to the lives of the dozens of (mostly) noble women Fraser profiled.   A few weeks later, only shadows of the political maneuverers, writers, holy women, merchants, and actresses remain in my mind, along with the nagging suspicion that the understandably missing lives of poorer women (who would have been illiterate and therefore would not have left letters and diaries) would have made The Weaker Vessel much more interesting.

Faith and Treason

I first heard of Guy Fawkes when Paddington Bear used his grumpy neighbor's suit to make a dummy for Bonfire Night.  It seemed like a cute, quaint custom when I was 8, and I didn't learn until years later about the political implications.  Antonia Fraser focuses on the religious and political background to the Gunpowder Plot because it's more interesting, and, well, the plot wasn't well planned or executed, and Guy Fawkes was actually a minor participant, more notable for being discovered than for his actual role.

More interesting than the actual plot was the analysis of the highborn secret Catholics in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.  Elizabeth considered religion a private matter; Catholics weren't allowed to publicly practice their faith, but she didn't pursue private practices.  Still, it led to separate public and private lives, and houses with "priest holes" where the family's spiritual guide could hide if the authorities searched.  Elizabeth's death left a bit of a succession crisis (she hadn't named a successor, although James was the logical choice), and the Catholic underground hoped he might legitimize - or even follow - their practices.  They were wrong, forgetting that James's upbringing was more strictly Protestant than the compromise theology of Anglicanism.  More importantly, religion and politics were so closely entwined in the early 17th Century that one decided the other - it wasn't just that Anglicanism was the state religion, but Catholicism implied (often accurately) an affinity for England's enemy, Spain.  While Frasier couldn't have completely skipped the Gunpowder plot, I understand why she concentrated on the three year lead-up.

Mary, Queen of Scots

I enjoy books - not just reading, the physical objects.  I like seeing how styles have changed over the years, and trying to guess the print date of a particular edition from the typeface illustrations on the cover.  My copy of Mary, Queen of Scots is very clearly an old copy.  For one thing, it's a pocket sized paperback - non-fiction hasn't been published like that in decades (to the chagrin of those of us who prefer paperbacks because they can be slipped into a pocket).  There's also the price ($1.50), the photo of Lady Antonia Fraser on the back (with a bouffant, heavy eye makeup, and large rings, making her look a bit like the character Jo Grant from Doctor Who) and the page advertising Deliverance, which is "Soon to be a major motion picture."  There's also my grandmother's name in pencil inside the back cover, with the date "3/18/71."  My grandmother died in 1983, so this book has sat on my shelf for more than twice as long as it sat on hers.

Mary, Queen of Scots was Fraser's first book, launching a career which includes an almost equal number of biographies and mystery novels, and she writes more like a novelist than a historian.  I mean that as a complement - I've read two of her other biographies and her style is clear and compelling, no matter how dry the details of royal ancestry may be.  Here, she vividly portrays Mary Stuart as both a headstrong young woman and a political pawn.  Like her cousin Elizabeth, Mary was a symbol of her faith in a time of religious upheaval but maintained a 'live and let live' attitude towards others' beliefs.  Mary, however, did not have the luxury of ruling a fairly powerful state or the education and brilliance of the English Queen.  Mary was bright and well read, if perhaps not well-taught in the art of statecraft, but Elizabeth was an extraordinary intellect who benefited from a comprehensive education.  

Mary also married three times, once as a child and twice due to poor judgment.  Crowned Queen of Scotland as a newborn, Mary was betrothed to the French Dauphin and sent to France at age 5 to be raised in the French court.  Her fiance, Francis, was a weak, unpleasant boy, probably unequal to the task of ruling one country, let alone two.  Two years after they married and after a year as Consort of France, Mary was Queen Dowager and soon returned to her own kingdom.

The Scotland Mary returned to rule in 1561 was not the same country she left.  The Protestant Reformation had taken hold in Edinburgh, and the mostly Protestant nobility did not want a Catholic (and to a lesser extent a woman) ruling their country.  Mary's attitude was more modern - she considered faith a private matter and was willing to let Scotland remain predominantly Protestant but tolerant of Catholics like herself.  As I read these passages, I couldn't understand how she was seen as a threat to the Protestant majority.  Maybe her years in France and the expectation that Francis would be the de facto ruler of Scotland left her unable to effectively communicate her temperate views, or maybe John Knox was just too powerful of a personality.  Regardless, Mary come across as more of a victim than a perpetrator of interfaith political battles.

Elizabeth I understood the pitfalls of marriage, especially for a queen, and managed to steer clear.  Mary, though, impulsively fell in love with and married her pretty-boy cousin, Henry, Lord Darnley.  Henry was petty, vain, and promiscuous.  The couple essentially separated when Mary was pregnant with the future James VI/I, after he was involved in the murder of her private secretary, David Rizzio.  Henry, who showed even less talent for conspiracy than Mary, betrayed the Protestant nobles behind the plot but the marriage was essentially over from that point.  Mary and her counsellors explored the possibility of divorce, but Henry was murdered while escaping from a castle which was blown up by political enemies.  One of those men, Lord Bothwell, then abducted and raped Mary, and then forced her to marry him.  Shortly afterwards, she was forced to abdicate her thrown and tried to escape to England.  There she became the tragic figure of history, the Queen locked in a tower until she was deemed too much of a threat to Queen Elizabeth's power and was tried for treason and convicted on the basis of intentionally misinterpreted and mistranslated letters.