This metamorphosis influenced Mary after her flight into exile in England. She would reinvent herself in the 1580s as a good Catholic woman persecuted for her religion alone. But in the 1550s, the Guises were politiques, or moderates, equally opposed to Protestant and Catholic extremism. Where religion mattered most to them was in relation to their dynastic project, because only the pope could make a definitive pronouncement of Elizabeth Tudor’s illegitimacy, and so of Mary’s claim to the English throne.
