Eleanor Morton is a Scottish stand-up comedian, writer, and actor who began her comedy career at just 18 years old. Based in Edinburgh, she’s known for her sharp wit, insightful humor, and love of history—a passion she recently channeled in her BBC Radio 4 show, The Rest of Us, which explored overlooked figures in UK history. With her debut book, Life Lessons From Historical Women, Eleanor continues this journey into the past, shining a light on remarkable women from around the world. Her writing is funny, fiery, and deeply personal, blending historical facts with her unique style to make these stories feel vividly relevant today.
In one standout chapter, Eleanor reimagines Mary, Queen of Scots—often reduced to tragic clichés—as a complex figure who made bold choices in a dangerous world. By looking beyond the usual ‘tragic and doomed’ narrative, Eleanor offers a fresh, human perspective on Mary’s life, making history as engaging as ever.
Here’s an excerpt from the book where Eleanor reimagines Mary, Queen of Scots, offering a witty and insightful take on the Scottish queen’s life:
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Mary, Queen of Scots
How to know what you want
Considering the impression you’re left with from the study of Scottish history at school, it might be surprising to learn that there are any women here in Scotland at all. I had to get a special licence from the council just to exist.
If representation in the media is anything to go by, there are just three famous Scottish women: Mary, Queen of Scots; Flora MacDonald; and Lulu. Mary is maybe one of the most famous non-famous people ever. By which I mean, everyone has heard of her, but not a lot of people know anything about her life. Even in Scotland, the main fact we all picked up about her was from the playground rhyme ‘Mary, Queen of Scots got her head chopped off’, where you would gleefully decapitate a daisy with your thumbnail as you sang it.
If you google Mary, most of the articles that pop up are littered with the same phrases over and over again: ‘tragic’, ‘glamorous’, ‘doomed’, ‘romantic’, they paint a picture of a woman who had few choices in a life that could only ever end badly. But I think Mary was savvier than that. And I think that, like many of the women in this book, she in fact made lots of difficult choices in an intensely dangerous environment. So, who was the real, human Mary, underneath the tragically, doomed, romantic, glamorous image? I have always felt a bit of a kinship with Mary. Although it’s true that I do tend to feel a kinship with literally anyone else with red hair, including Kim Possible, Fat Bastard and Danny Alexander, so that’s not saying much. But learning about Mary as a teen, I was instantly drawn to this lonely girl, who never felt quite at home in her own country, who it seemed could never quite make the right decisions, and who felt at odds with everyone around her. Maybe it’s the Catholic mother, maybe it’s the terrible crushes, either way whenever I see a portrait of Mary I get a little wistful.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was born in Linlithgow Palace on 14 December 1542, daughter of King James V (we had a lot of Jameses, seven in total). In case you’re wondering why she is always referred to as ‘Queen of Scots’ and not ‘Scottish Queen’, I’ll tell you. In Scotland, the monarch is not in fact the ruler of the land, but of the people. So all Scottish monarchs are in fact ‘King/Queen of the Scots’ not of the country itself. Personally, I prefer this. It’s a reminder that, if you’re going to have a hereditary unelected leader, they have a duty to their people. So there you go. Lil fun fact. Whip that out at parties.
According to Reformation preacher John Knox, whom I do not trust (and you’ll find out why later), Mary’s father was heard to exclaim, when he heard of her birth, ‘It cam wi’ a lass and it will gang wi’ a lass!’ (‘It came with a girl and it will go with a girl!’), referring to the Stuart dynasty. A real vote of confidence from Dad there. A week later, her father died and she became queen at only six days old (what have YOU done today?). As historian Jenny Wormald points out in her book, Mary, Queen of Scots, James left Mary with a difficult inheritance: ‘He left behind him a baby daughter, a huge political and religious crisis, and a power struggle far more savage than had ever been experienced before, which began literally at his death bed.’
After spending her early years in Scotland, it was decided that she should be packed off to France when she was five to avoid the current conflicts with England (known as the ‘Rough Wooing’, which is a dodgy-as-fuck way to describe one country invading another). Her mother, Mary of Guise, was French, and it was arranged that the young Mary would be betrothed to the Dauphin of France. Mary of Guise stayed behind in Scotland to try to maintain some sort of peace.
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Mary arrived in Leith in 1561, welcomed by the people but distrusted by the Protestant aristocracy. Although aged only 19, Mary had been raised from birth to be queen, and was probably more excited than daunted about her new life. A bit like those Olympic gymnasts who start training aged three, the idea of being queen was all she’d ever known. Mary had two primary goals on her return: to meet Elizabeth I of England and pursue her to make Mary her heir presumptive; and to marry a powerful king and get a nice alliance set up. This would be no easy feat. And to top it all off, Mary felt out of place in the Scottish court. She was Catholic, she was ‘French’, she was a woman, and she was surrounded by men who all basically wanted her dead. On Sunday she would go to church (in order to pacify her Protestant Lords) and hear John Knox complaining about Catholics and women and birthday cake and kittens and anything else fun or nice.
It’s all too easy to see Mary’s strained homecoming as an omen of her ultimately doomed fate, but as historian and National Museum of Scotland curator Dr Anna Groundwater explains, Mary also had some great successes in her early years in Scotland from 1561. She maintained relative religious peace and put down two separate rebellions. In the beginning, she worked well with many of the nobles and was a beautifully dressed and exciting addition to the Scottish court. Groundwater doesn’t want us to think of Mary simply at her end point, but rather “in the moment”: “‘Mary gets her head cut off’… We know that’s the end point, and we tend to view everything that happens before as somehow leading to that end point.”
Groundwater also pointed out to me that we often forget how integrated Mary was into European politics. She had a French mother and upbringing, and Scotland had communities all over mainland Europe, including in Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium. Mary was as much a European monarch as a British one, and Scotland too had strong ties to the continent. Although Scottish politics were definitely tumultuous at the time, Scotland was not a medieval backwater, as is often depicted in films. It had a strong sense of its own government, in which councils and advisors to the monarch fulfilled an important role, and imported many European goods, fashions (such as Mary’s own beautiful French-made jewellery) and architectural designs.
Mary had to start securing Scotland’s future, and with one husband down, it was time to get onto number two. There was a lot of pressure on Mary to produce an heir, a male heir, obvs, and even though she would rather have married another ruler, to keep the peace with her court she needed to marry another Scottish noble with a strong claim to the throne. Enter Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He was perfect! He had claims to both the Scottish and English thrones, he was cultured and, best of all, he was Mary’s cousin, a real must-have for any 16th-century love match. He also, rather notoriously, didn’t (or couldn’t) grow a beard, which means that Mary wasn’t reminded of Morton or Knox when she looked at him. And one more bonus: he was also Catholic. Mary was smitten.
Mary fell hard for the charming Darnley, but unfortunately for her, he was also a bit of a playboy and all-around classic dickhead. We’ve all been there. Either you’ve dated him, you’ve tried to date him or you’ve watched your friend date him. It never ends well. It doesn’t usually end in his murder, but we’ll get to that.
Life Lessons From Historical Women (£18.99) is available to purchase from Waterstones.
