Tudor Princess, Stewart Queen

Long ago when I was a teenager, I first developed what became a life-long interest in the ill-fated but historically decisive (if inevitably overly romanticized) life and reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. For all sorts of reasons, the Tudor period in England and the parallel events north of the border in Scotland continue to fascinate. Hence the continued output of books, movies, etc., about the Tudors and their contemporaries. Now add to that estimable collection this book by Linda Porter, The Thistle and the Rose: the Extraordinary Life of Margaret Tudor (2024), which details the life of Mary's English-born grandmother, through whose marriage the ultimate union of England and Scotland came about some 60+ years after her death.

The fundamental facts of Margaret's story are familiar to all devotees of the period. Born in 1489, Margaret was the eldest daughter of England's King Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty (having defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth), and Elizabeth of York (daughter of England's Edward IV). Their marriage, which proved to be quite successful and loving, united the warring houses of Lancaster and York. Brought up by her loving parents in the manner of a conventional Renaissance princess, Margaret was married off, by a "Treaty of Perpetual Peace," to Scotland's King James IV in 1503. She had a happy life, in a surprisingly loving marriage, as Scotland's successful Queen Consort. The "perpetual peace," however, did not last, and soon enough war broke out again, and James IV famously died tragically, along with much of Scotland's nobility, defeated by the army of his brother-in-law England's Henry VIII, at the battle of Flodden on September 9, 1513. Margaret then served as regent for her son King James V until her ill-considered marriage to the Earl of Angus, Archibald Douglas. (Through her first marriage, she was the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots. Through her second marriage, she became the grandmother of Mary's second husband Henry Lord Darnley. Their son, James VI, became England's King James I, when the more prolific Stewart dynasty succeeded the last Tudor monarch, Margaret's niece the childless Elizabeth, 100 years after Margaret's marriage to James IV.) After several tempestuous years of unsuccessful attempts at power and comparably unhappy marriages, Margaret died in 1541, on very good terms with her son and his wife, Mary of Guise, and on at least tolerable terms with her third husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Methven.

Such is the bare story, punctuated by aristocratic rivalries, successes and failures at holding and losing the regency, battles with her brother over her inheritance, and flights across the border, which biographer Linda Porter so effectively brings to life in her new account.

The Renaissance was, among other things, an age of powerful queens, Margaret's granddaughter Mary, Queen of Scots, her nieces, Mary 1 and Elizabeth. I of England, as well as Isabella I in Spain and the formidable Catherine de Medici, Queen Regent of France. It was also an era in which successful marriages - like those of Henry VII and Elizabeth and of James IV and Margaret - mattered a lot, as, for different reasons, comparatively unsuccessful marriages, like those of Margaret's infamous brother Henry VIII also altered English and Scottish history.

Of the two, England was always larger, richer, and more powerful than Scotland. But Porter's narrative highlights the many ways in which Scotland was at the time still quite a successful country and a factor ont he larger European stage. Among other important features, its reigning house, the House of Stewart, was long-established and recognized as legitimate, even among otherwise quarreling Scottish clans. This was in stark contrast to the novelty and dubious legitimacy of the Tudors. Hence, the Tudors'; obsessive preoccupation with the succession, in which - thanks to Margaret - the Stewarts eventually beat the Tudors.

Porter's account also highlights how public and domestic lives were intertwined in the royal courts of the period and the impact of the way royal children were raised and educated, and how Margaret's training served her well as a successful late medieval queen consort. One of the great paradoxes of Margaret's story as the widow of Flodden was her subsequently poor judgments and mistakes in her ill-advised second and third marriages, which undermined her previously powerful position. In this, she perhaps anticipated her granddaughter's even more catastrophic personal mistakes. At least Margaret was spared having to deal with the tragedy that was the Reformation, which was so central to her granddaughter's undoing. (The Reformation did not spare her completely, however, when iconoclastic Protestants desecrated her grave and destroyed her mortal remains.)

Porter has a modern appreciation of the challenges which a powerful 16th-century woman faced in politics, in what was very much a male profession. She effectively responds to some inherited images of Margaret which fail to appreciate the complexity of her situation and the comparably complex ways in which she responded both personally and politically. A modern appreciation of the dynamics of sibling rivalry likewise informs her analysis of the complex relationships between Margaret and her brother, Henry VIII. Margaret was lifelong letter-writer, and we can be grateful for the treasury of her letters - especially between her and her brother.

Finally, Porter repeatedly highlights the importance of ostentatious display and ceremony in Renaissance royal life - something that has not quite disappeared from modern politics.