Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart

by John Guy

From Elizabeth’s viewpoint, of course, Dudley’s candidacy was logical. By marrying him, Mary would be subordinated to a Protestant male on whom the English queen knew she could always rely, a man she still loved and trusted never to betray her. More maddeningly eccentric was her idea of how it might play out. Of two minds about allowing Dudley to leave her sight, she came up with the almost ludicrous proposal that there would be a ménage à trois or extended royal family. Mary, Dudley and Elizabeth would all live together at Elizabeth’s court after Mary was married, where the English queen would bear the costs of the “family,” which, she said, was merely the right way for “one sister” to behave toward “another.” This was not a ploy to drag out negotiations and so stall plans for any marriage Mary might seek to make on the Continent; Elizabeth was serious. Of all her designs, it comes closest to fantasy and makes nonsense of the traditional interpretation that she was always astute and never prone to making decisions on the basis of her emotions. As Randolph ruefully observed, Elizabeth’s idea of happy families turned “this comedy” of Mary’s marriage “altogether liker to a tragedy.”