Mary, when asked if you are Protestant or Catholic, say you’re a Buddhist, OK?

Rab McNeil takes a light-hearted glance at some of the people, places and iconic cultural mainstays that have Scots asking: wha’s like us?

SPOILER alert: this doesn’t end well. To paraphrase Monty Python, our subject ended up shorter in height. Tragic, romantic, unwise, ill-fated, headstrong, headless, Mary, Queen of Scots is one of Scottish history’s most famous figures. Born on December 8, 1542, at Linlithgow Palace, her dad – James V – died six days later, meaning she succeeded to the throne before she even knew where the hell she was. When that sort of thing happens, the country is ruled by regents, who at least are potty-trained.

Her great uncle was Henry VIII, and this malodorous oaf engineered the Treaty of Greenwich, which stipulated that Mary – by that time aged six months and on the brink of adolescence – would marry his boy, Edward, when she reached the grand old age of 10. The point, of course, was the neverending project of yoking wee Scotia to England’s heaving bosom.

I won’t bore you with all the ProtestantCatholic tomfoolery going on at the time (only joking; I will) but, suffice to say that, in terms of the regency, Catholic Cardinal Beaton and Protestant Lord Arran were at each other’s throats and, when the former started getting the upper hand, Henry VIII was not best pleased. But, then, when was he ever?

His mood worsened when Scotland started getting pally with Catholic France, prompting Henry to arrest Scottish merchants heading there. Now the Scots got mad. The above-mentioned Arran even decided to become a Catholic. He knew when he was Beaton.

Meanwhile, the Parliament of Scotland (yay!) said you can shove your Treaty of Greenwich up your Tudor fireplace, prompting Henry’s “rough wooing” of Scotland, with towns and villages set ablaze in an orgy of destruction.

After Henry VIII died and went to heaven, and Cardinal Beaton’s mutilated corpse was dangled from a window by Protestant lairds, Henry II of France proposed a putative betrothal of Mary to his three-year-old son, Francis. He was a Dauphin, ken?

Despite the promise of a French dukedom for himself, Arran agreed, as did the Scottish Parliament (meeting in a nunnery while the English wreaked more devastation around East Lothian).

So, Mary was spirited away to France where, in 1858, aged 16 and never been in a nightclub, she married the heretofore mentioned Dauphin. At the French court, Mary picked up bad habits such as needlework, languages, poetry, and horseriding. Allegedly, she liked nothing better than playing with her virginals. All in all, says her biographer Antonia Fraser, she enjoyed “an exceptionally cosseted youth”.

She grew to 5ft 11in, meaning she’d plenty to spare when it came to her eventual fate. Mary was considered attractive, with the regulation two eyes (hazel in hue) sitting snuggly in an oval coupon framed by auburn hair. Her diddy Dauphin, incidentally, was notably short, which didn’t stop him becoming king of France, with Mary as queen consort, after Henry II died from jousting injuries. Hey, it happens.

The Dauphin, meanwhile, died of an ear infection – eh? – just two years after marrying Mary, whereupon the young widow returned to her native Scotland, landing in sunny Leith to a welcoming volley of cannon fire and quickly discovering that the old Protestant-Catholic thing was still raging.

John Knox, the church reformer, took against her from the start, not least because she liked the dancing and wore fancy claes. Bit rich for a bloke with a butch hat and a manicured beard down to his navel. In a spirit of Christian charity, he called for Mary to be executed.

When Mary started looking for another husband, Knoxxie was pretty far down the list, as was Pierre de Boscosel de Chastelard, a besotted French poet whom she found under her bed. He was banished and, later, having lost his head to Mary, er, lost his head to Mary. In the end, she plumped for her half-cousin Henry Stuart, a

The Scots Parliament said you can shove your treaty, prompting Henry’s ‘rough wooing’ of Scotland, with towns and villages set ablaze

local drunk also known as Lord Darnley. At least she picked a tall one this time: he was known as “the long lad”. They were married in 1565 and, two years later, he was murdered and had his hoose blown up.

Shortly afterwards, Mary married the Earl of Bothwell, the bloke widely thought to have done for Darnley (though acquitted of the charge). So, three marriages by the age of 23. Wouldn’t have looked good on Ye Tinder.

I should record for homicidal posterity that Darnley and associates had previously murdered Mary’s private secretary David Rizzio, believing he was the father of the child she was expecting.

By this stage, the moralistic natives were restless and, eventually, Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, Big Jim. Bothwell was imprisoned in Denmark, where he went off his onion, while Mary was locked up in Leven Castle. With the aid of supporters, she escaped and legged it for England, expecting help from her first cousin, Elizabeth I (daughter of Henry VIII). Bad move.

Perceiving Mary as a threat to her sovereignty – she had a claim to the English throne and then there was the whole Catholic thing – Elizabeth had Mary incarcerated for 18 years (mostly with plenty of staff and a daily change of bedlinen; bit like a Premier Inn really).

At last, however, it seems she concluded, via charges of plotting treason, that there’d be less chance of Mary’s head being filled with thoughts of becoming queen of England if she didn’t have a head.

Accordingly, Mary was executed at Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, on February 8, 1587, at the age of 44. The rubbish executioner botched the grisly business twice and, after eventually getting it right (you had one job), held up Mary’s decapitated noggin by the hair, which turned out to be a wig, which he was left holding as her bonce bounced about on the deck.

Mary’s life has lessons for Scots today: don’t become a queen; don’t look to England for help; and, asked if you’re Protestant or a Catholic, say you’re a Buddhist. Oh, and go for a hair transplant rather than a wig, in case you find yourself being executed by beheading.