A Royal Catfight

It ain’t easy being queen, as Jane Dunn shows us in her dual account of the lives of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots

By Peter Kurth

February 8, 2004

ELIZABETH & MARY: Cousins, Rivals, Queens, by Jane Dunn. Knopf, 453 pp., $30.

In the unlikely event that anyone reading this review has never heard the story of Elizabeth Tudor, queen of England, and Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, Jane Dunn's new account of the battling 16th century monarchs, "Elizabeth & Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens," might not be the best place to start.

This isn't meant as a criticism of Dunn's work, which is, in fact, a wholly engrossing and sumptuous retelling of a tale that entered legend even before its protagonists were dead. But some prior knowledge of Tudor England, Renaissance Europe, the Protestant Reformation and the Elizabethan Age might be useful in order to appreciate Dunn's particular approach to this most compelling of historical catfights.

Dunn, whose previous books include biographies of Mary Shelley, Antonia White and the Stephen sisters, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, confesses up front that she came to the story of Elizabeth and Mary "as a biographer, not a historian," and that there are "many fine biographies already of these most written-about queens."

The war of words and nerves that consumed the two cousins lasted from earliest childhood until 1587, when Elizabeth, under pressure from her Protestant ministers and Parliament, had the Catholic Mary beheaded at Fotheringay Castle. "Dans ma fin est mon commencement," Mary remarked -- "In my end is my beginning" -- and she couldn't have been more right about that.

"From that one act of regicide," writes Dunn, "a queen killing a fellow queen, a mythology of justification, romance, accusation and blame has been spun that retains its force to the present day. ... That these two remarkable queens should have been contemporaries, neighbors in one small island, is gift enough for any writer. That they should be united by blood but inextricably enmeshed in a deadly rivalry for the same kingdom, the same throne, gives the story of their relationship the brooding force of Greek tragedy." That they should also never have met, or even once laid eyes on each other, makes their struggle for power even more fascinating.

So what's new in Dunn's account? Her publisher calls "Elizabeth and Mary" a "dual biography," but Dunn rejects the term. Rather, she says, it's "a kind of hybrid, about historical figures but not a history ... chronological, but not strictly so." This is both the strength and the weakness of the book. Dunn has battled her way through a mountain of published and unpublished sources to give us a portrait, not of monarchs, but of women trapped by events -- two sides of the same coin, co-stars on a stage that was large enough only for one.

Dunn's tale begins in 1558, when Elizabeth and Mary, as young women, "were poised on the margin between apprenticeship and their public lives as female monarchs. By the end of that year both had embraced their fate" -- Elizabeth as the ultimate ruler of Tudor England, and Mary, who had been queen of Scotland from the age of six days, as the bride of the future king of France, a coddled, much-loved princess, raised in Paris, who barely knew her native country and expected to spend her whole life at the gaudiest and most lavish court of Europe. Both were tall, redheaded, well-educated and serious of purpose, but the cousins could not have been more different in temperament and style.

For Elizabeth, the road to the throne was fraught with peril from the time she was 3, in 1536, when her father, King Henry VIII, having broken with Rome and established the Church of England in order to marry her mother, Anne Boleyn, got tired of Anne, falsely accused her of adultery and witchcraft, and had her head chopped off on Tower Green. While still acknowledged as Henry's daughter, Elizabeth was officially bastardized, left to grow up with a succession of tutors, nurses and keepers in various palaces far from court.

"I have had good experience and trial of this world," Elizabeth declared in middle age. "I know what it is to be a subject, what to be a sovereign, what to have good neighbours, and sometimes meet evil willers." By the time she became queen at 25, she was already determined to go it alone. "Better beggar woman and single than Queen and married," she said, and while she may not, in fact, have remained the virgin of lore, she had only one husband throughout her life, "namely the realm of England" -- this at a time when a woman on the throne was considered, at best, bad luck for the nation and, at worst, an affront to the natural order.

"Given the general sacrifice of young women to their reproductive functions it was understandable that the gods, and even God Himself, was seen to value women less highly than men," Dunn observes: "Princes could be murderous, mad, licentious, fathering bastards at any opportunity, and still continue to rule. Princesses had to be very careful."

It was careful, in spades, that Mary Stuart failed to be. As a granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister, and in light of the Catholic-Protestant rift of Europe, her claim to the English throne was strong -- all it required was Elizabeth's death and an army to quell resistance, and to this she put her mind for most of her adult life. Beautiful, sexual, passionate both in love and religion, Mary seemed congenitally convinced that she could have whatever she wanted, by right or desire.

"Being a queen from birth inevitably meant Mary was surrounded by excessive flattery and tainted praise," Dunn explains. "Lacking challenges she grew up unaware of her capabilities and own strength of character, cocooned instead in a false security and a fatal detachment from her subjects." Within two years of her French alliance she was already a widow. She returned to Scotland at the age of 19 and proceeded to make a hash of it from there, marrying twice more, bearing a child, raising an army against her own rebellious people, and finally abdicating and fleeing to England, where she hoped to find Elizabeth's protection. What she got instead was a long captivity and eventual execution, in her own and many eyes, as a Catholic martyr.

In Dunn's account, it really does seem as simple as that. To the extent possible, she allows Mary, Elizabeth and their contemporaries to speak for themselves, in the gorgeous language of their time. And while this approach humanizes both women and makes the book a lightning page-turner, it leaves the portrait skewed, because -- there's no way around it -- Mary was never a match for Elizabeth. In a biography of her own, she can be presented fully, fairly and sympathetically, with all her faults and foibles, but Elizabeth's shadow still hovers over all. You could write a book about Elizabeth, however -- many have -- in which Mary plays only a supporting role.

Indeed, it might be argued that Mary Stuart accomplished nothing in life apart from producing a male heir, James VI of Scotland and I of England, whose reign put an end to the succession dispute. There was lots of trouble with the Stuarts later on, of course, but Mary's descendants, not Elizabeth's, now sit on the throne of the United Kingdom. In death, they are equals, as Dunn imagines, but only, permanently, there.

Peter Kurth's latest book is "Isadora: A Sensational Life."