Everyone knows of Mary, Queen of Scots: her tragic death, her real and imaginary lovers, the letters to her English cousin Queen Elizabeth I, her physical beauty and splendid black dowager gowns, her staunch catholicism. But there is another Mary, Queen of Scots, who also lived in the Sixteeenth century and who also greatly impacted the history of Scotland: her mother. Marie of Lorraine, born in November 1515 in the duchy of Bar, was the second French queen of James V and queen consort from 1538 to the death of the king of Scots in December 1542. Eighteen years later, Marie died desperate and powerless in Edinburgh Castle. Only a handful historians, overwhelmingly women, looked into her life since, and her rediscovery only started in the nineteenth century. There are several reasons for her absence in French historiography and history books.

 Queen and the power

At first sight a rather unspectacular noblewoman, Marie replaced in 1538 the first French queen of the widowed king James V, but he died four years after her arrival on Scottish soil. The king of Scots was the second husband the young princess lost after a few years of marriage. In December 1542, Marie was left with a young son from her first husband the duke of Longueville, but the boy was educated in France, and with a fragile baby girl which hardly anyone wanted as sovereign. As mother of the only legitimate heir of the Scottish throne she now had to deal with many power hungry Scottish, but also French men, in particular king Henri II of France and two members of her highly ambitious family, the Guise. In June 1550, after the death of her father Claude, second son of the House of Lorraine and first duke of Guise, her younger brothers Francis, now duke of Guise and Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, came to get more involved in Scottish politics. The death of king Henri II, following a jousting accident in July 1559, left the Kingdom of France in the hands of a young boy, the fifteen-year-old Francis II, and his equally young wife Mary, Queen of Scots and France.

Whereas Marie of Lorraine, « mother of the Queen of Scots », never received any French biography, her mother Antoinette, duchess of Guise, inspired French historian Gabriel de Pimodan a book published in 1889. In his foreword, Pimodan states that Antoinette, « the mother of the Guises », is simply « the best of wives and mothers ». However, both women were much more than just « mothers of ». Antoinette was a long-living, highly influential French duchess, whereas her eldest daughter Marie was Queen of Scots and later, queen regent of Scotland. Her high position might be one reason for her absence in French historiography: powerful women had – and mostly still have –  a bad reputation. Queens like Isabeau of Bavaria or Marie de’ Medici, strangers both which complicated further her position and legitimacy to wield power, still suffer from negative views. Marie of Lorraine, who was living in a remote and – in the eyes of sixteenth century France – a « barbarian » and « savage » country, trying hard to preserve her daughter’s rights against all odds, did not lead a glorious life, and she was not beautiful. Her duty as representative of an absent child queen was not the stuff legends are made of.

Lorraine or Guise?

Secondly, what didn’t help is the fact that Marie of Lorraine was – and continues to be called – « Mary of Guise », even if she wasn’t born a Guise. Her father Claude, a younger brother to Antoine duke of Lorraine, only became duke of Guise in 1527, when his eldest daughter Marie was eleven years old. She lived then at the court of Nancy with her uncle Antoine, her aunt duchess Renée, and their children. Marie’s first marriage in 1534 made her a duchess of Longueville, and her second with James V, a queen consort of Scotland. In June 1538, she left her family for Scotland and only came back in September 1550, when in France everything had changed. Henri II was now king, and closely counselled by her brothers Francis, duke of Guise and Charles, cardinal of Lorraine. Her daughter Mary had been living in France since 1548, and the little Queen of Scots had become a perfectly French princess.

Marie was a Catholic, like all members of the Houses of Lorraine and Guise, but unlike her mother duchess Antoinette and her brothers, she always showed tolerance and openness towards members of the « new religion », simply because she lived in a country where Protestantism had gained power year after year. Towards the end of the 1550s however, her decisions and wishes were more and more perceived as coming directly from France, whether it be from king Henri II (which was still acceptable to the Scottish nobility), be it from her daughter Mary (which was much less), or, after the king’s death in July 1559, from the new French king styled « roi de France et d’Écosse ». Young Francis II had married Mary Stewart in April 1558, and the two uncles of the Queen of Scots, the duke of Guise and cardinal of Lorraine, were now considered champions of the catholic faith and de facto rulers of both teenage sovereigns. The name « Guise » took on a negative and religious meaning, and Scottish protestant preachers such as John Knox kept reminding the Scots that their queen regent was the sister of the Guise and therefore, a Guise herself.

Mother of – Sister of

Lastly, Marie of Lorraine has not been remembered as a person of her own but « sister of » the Guise and « mother of » the famous Queen of Scots. When Marie left Scotland in autumn 1550 and sailed to France to tour her family and see her son and daughter again, did she hope she could stay with her mother at the family castle of Joinville? Or maybe in one of the Longueville dowager houses? Nothing was left for her in Scotland: her husband James V was dead and buried, and her son and daughter were both living in France. But she left for Scotland the next year, shortly after the death of her sixteen-year-old son François, duke of Longueville, who was never married and had no children. Did she obey king Henri II and her brothers, all ordering her to defend Scotland against the English and keep the realm Roman Catholic? Did she go back to preserve her daughter’s rights as Queen of Scots? Or was it her own strong will to fulfil her destiny, defend the rightful monarch of Scotland and ride out in the battlefield like Joan of Arc, another woman from Lorraine who had fought the English and put Charles VII, the rightful king, on the throne of France? Could she have forgotten that the English army had plundered the town of Edinburgh and Holyrood Abbey back in 1544, in which church she had been crowned in 1540 and where the tombs of James V and their little sons lay destroyed?

It is fascinating to realize that at the end of her life, Marie of Lorraine fought the army of another powerful and not particularly beautiful woman, Queen Elizabeth I, another female Renaissance sovereign who had decided she didn’t need a man to rule her realm, nor her life.