A plan for power
TRACY BORMAN reviews a study of a determined woman deeply embroiled in the machinations of the Tudor court
Margaret Douglas possessed that most dangerous of qualities in Tudor England: royal blood. The half-sister of James V of Scotland, she was only denied a place in the succession because her uncle, Henry VIII, had barred his Scottish relatives from inheriting the English throne. But this did little to stop the indomitable matriarch from scheming endlessly to seize power for herself and her family. And as Henry and his descendants struggled to produce heirs, Margaret moved closer to her ambition of seeing her family rule a united, Catholic Britain. During Elizabeth I’s reign, she arranged for her son Henry Darnley to marry the Virgin Queen’s deadliest rival: Mary, Queen of Scots. Disastrous though this marriage would prove, it resulted in a son who went on to rule a united England and Scotland, albeit a Protestant one.
With an endless cycle of drama, intrigue and Machiavellian scheming, Margaret’s remarkable life makes for a gripping biography. This study certainly brings to life the turbulence of the age and the complex relationships that were played out among the dangerously shifting sands of court alliances.
One of Lady Douglas’s key allies was that other formidable woman in Tudor England, Bess of Hardwick, but she is afforded curiously little attention. Nor does Mary, Queen of Scots emerge in any great detail, despite her pivotal role in Margaret’s dynastic ambitions.
Ring seeks to challenge the commonly held view of Margaret as an overbearing mother to her spoilt son and rightly argues that she was an altogether more complex character. Margaret certainly had her fair share of tribulations, but she still emerges as a rather unsympathetic protagonist. The book therefore does not quite deliver on its promise of giving the reader a “lovely Tudor rose on the royal family tree”, and it is hard to sense the charisma that attracted so many to her cause. Nevertheless, it is a very readable account and based upon a solid foundation of research, gleaned from a wealth of original sources.