I started off this book by being surprised at how much I liked it. Weir is so often criticised for coming to unsubstantiated conclusions that I was surprised to begin reading a clear exposition of the events leading up to Kirk O' Field. Her writing is vividly descriptive and best of all, Bothwell is presented as anything but a power-crazed letch. Instead he is 'a cultivated, literate man, interested in science and warfare, [who] spoke fluent French and some Latin and Greek.' Well, OK, there is a point where she does give the tiniest bit of credence to the tales of sodomy, but hey, compared to Antonia Fraser, she is positively generous in her initial portrayal. She also understands Bothwell's importance in Scotland during the early part of Mary's reign, which makes a nice change from his usual sudden appearance just prior to Darnley's murder.
What was refreshing about the book was that she seemed to have Moray's measure from the start, mentioning his attempted kidnapping of Darnley and Mary, and correctly deducing that his Chaseabout rebellion was nothing to do with anything other than his own thwarted ambition. She goes on to recognise him as the author of the Riccio murder plan, and uniquely credits him with putting about rumours that Riccio and the King were plotting against him, in order to deflect suspicion.
She clearly lays out Darnley's motives for participating in Riccio's murder, pointing out that he needed the Crown Matrimonial in order to succeed should Mary and their baby die during labour. This doesn't gain Darnley any sympathy from the reader, but does make his actions more understandable.
On the other hand, despite quoting Randolph's warning to his masters never to underestimate Mary as she had the "best practised cunning of France combined with the subtle brains of Scotland," Weir depicts Mary herself as the poor, simple, warm-hearted and emotional girly, totally preoccupied with the English crown, that we are all so familiar with. This premise, acceptable at first, when she is utterly governed by Moray, becomes more and more difficult to sustain as the book progresses. Even Weir is forced to recognise such things as 'This declaration of innocence [of the murder of Riccio] on Darnley's part was not just for his own benefit, but also to protect Mary's reputation. For, if her husband had not instigated or approved Riccio's murder, there would be no grounds for suspecting Riccio of any impropriety with the Queen.'
Where Mary's actions may leave grounds for suspicion, Weir dismisses them, sometimes with the mosy unlikely explanations. After all, it is rather strange that Mary's 1566 will includes a bequest to Bothwell of a jewel depicting a mermaid - a symbol of a prostitute. Weir however decides that this 'bore a subtle warning about Bothwell's involvement with Bessie Crawford and other women who might lead him astray'! She also assumes that this bequest means that Bothwell couldn't POSSIBLY be the recipient of either of Mary's secret bequests.
Of course, it's to be expected that a certain pro-England bias will be present, and it is. Weir says that with Mary's marriage she 'in a single stroke....put in jeopardy the amity that Elizabeth, Cecil, Randolph and the Protestant Lords in Scotland had worked for over the past years'. This is after she has detailed the money sent by Elizabeth to rebels and spies in Scotland during Mary's early reign.
Mary herself 'displayed an alarming lack of awareness of aristocratic sensibilities and of the scandal to which she was laying herself open by her conduct, which suggests she was indeed infatuated with the Italian.' One would like to assume that Elizabeth's relationship with Dudley would lead Weir to a similar judgement about her, but somehow it is doubtful.
Similarly, 'there can be little doubt that [Mary and Darnley] hoped, with Spanish aid to overthrow Elizabeth and establish Mary as the Queen if a united Catholic Britain.' As little doubt as that Elizabeth and Cecil hoped, with Moray's aid, to overthrow Mary and establish Elizabeth as the Queen of a united Protestant Britain, perhaps.
Then there is the usual problem of the references. Those she gives are not full enough to make checking them an easy matter, and some of her more startling assertions go completely unreferenced. For example, she expects her reader to take it on her say-so that Lord James (later Earl of Moray) tried unsuccessfully to have the union of his parents (James V and Margaret Erskine) legalised retrospectively. There is no reference given for her important supposition that Sir James Balfour left Edinburgh by Februaury 9th 1567, even though this discounts Drury's reports. Equally she appears to have no reason to assert that Douglas men were positioned in cottages in the south garden at Kirk o' Field. Where references do appear they should be treated with caution - she gives Knox as a reference for Bothwell's escape from Edinburgh Castle by climbing down Castle rock, when in fact Knox asserts that he got "easy passage by the gate". At other times, references which appear to apply to a contentious statement actually apply to a well-established fact stated somewhere nearby.
Weir seems to be a bit obsessed with court gossip, which makes for an entertaining book, but does lead her into giving perhaps more credence than she should to tales of buggery (half of Scotland appear to have enjoyed this - the male half, that is), and stories of incest between Mary and Moray.
Despite good insight into the motivations of characters and events leading up to Kirk o' Field, the book really falls down when it comes to dealing with the event itself. Weir relies heavily on 'The Protestation of Huntly and Argyll' in her description of the 'Craigmillar Conference', stating that 'the information in it must have come from Huntly or Bothwell.' In fact, it could easily have come from Mary herself. She goes on to claim that Mary 'can hardly have expected Huntly and Argyll to put their signatures to a blatant distortion of the facts', when it is clear from the preceding narrative that the majority of the Scottish nobility would sign anything that might be in their own interests - and Huntly and Argyll would benefit from Mary's return to power. However, she has already decided that Huntly and Argyll were certainly involved in the conspiracy against Darnley, although the only evidence she gives for this is Morton's confession and Paris' deposition.
Indeed, contrary to her assertion thay she began her investigations believing Mary to be guilty, Weir appears to have tried to fit the facts around a pre-existing belief in Mary's innocence. This causes her to overlook evidence against Mary. She herself states that Mary's letter to Archbishop Beaton on the eve of her journey to fetch the ailing Darnley from Glasgow showed no evidence of a planned reconciliation. She states that '[Mary] would have had to be a duplicitous character indeed to have constantly rejected all suggestions of assassination, and to have sent her own doctor to [Darnley], had she secretly been planning to have him murdered' without even allowing the possibility that this could indeed have been the truth.
She takes Nau's version of Mary commenting on French Paris' dirtiness at face value - 'Had she been aware that Paris had been helping to shift gunpowder, she would hardly have drawn attention to the fact, so her remark must have been made in genuine innocence'. Or, since Nau's account is the nearest we have to an account by Mary herelf, she may have had him insert the reference specifically to give that impression. Had Mary genuinely wondered about Paris' appearance, her fears that Darnley was plotting against her would have led to him being questioned in a far more methodical manner.
She discounts what Buchanan has to say about Mary, whilst believing what he says about Bothwell.
This method of handling the evidence to suit herself continues throughout. She takes at face value much of what French Paris has to say, even though she calls those parts she doesn't like 'ludicrous' and recognises that his evidence was obtained via torture. She says that the Douglases couldn't have been seen coming up Blackfriars Wynd after the murder 'because they would have no reason to go along that street'. Yet why should Bothwell have any more reason? She decides that Morton's confession was probably the truth but gives no reason for this, or for preferring his version to Bothwell's.
She also only reads one interpretation into any act of Mary's that might indicate innocence. On 8th February 1567, Mary announced she would ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, and sent Melville to England. Weir says she cannot have been contemplating murdering Darnley at this time. However, this willingness to ratify a treaty she had objected to for years could also be seen as an attempt to curry favour with England and its supporters in Scotland.
This inability to detect motivations is also apparent in the way she stubbornly refuses to believe that Moray and Maitland would ever conspire to bring about Mary's death; 'had that been so, they would have had her executed when they had the power to do so.' She doesn't consider what actions Elizabeth might have taken had rebel subjects executed an anointed Queen or eventhe way that Elizabeth's own ambassador feared for Mary's life during her Lochleven imprisonment. If Moray and Maitland had thought they could have got away with it, they would surely have executed Mary. Blowing her up in an explosion would not have worried them in the slightest.
Weir rubbishes the 'Darnley did it theory' for much the same underlying reason -her inability to consider other possibilities to that which she has divined to be truth. She says he couldn't be sure that his intended targets would visit him. Presumably this is why he didn't actually blow up the gunpowder. Although the scene certainly indicated haste and surprise on Darnley's part, to reason, as Weir does, that this exonerates him is to confuse plot and execution. Darnley could easily have hidden the gunpowder with the intention of using it even if he wasn't the one who actually did. She also thinks that he had no way to consolidate his position post-coup, even though he could have ridden to Linlithgow to meet his father and his considerable forces. Her final reason for disbelieving these theories is that no-one suspected him for four centuries!
Her own suppositions at times become ludicrous. She says that Bothwell's description of the gunpowder being placed 'under his (Darnley's) bed' would 'probably' mean that it was positioned two floors below. She has to admit that since the Prebendaries Chamber was destroyed by the explosion 'it is possible' that the vaults were 'also' mined (as stated by many sources). Why not 'only'?
And then of course, after Kirk o' Field, Bothwell transforms, werewolf-like, into a monster. He is to be her scapegoat for Mary, and so Weir now turns on him with a vengeance. He becomes a man capable of poisoning his wife if it meant he could get a divorce from her. After all, that could have been Jean's only possible motive in agreeing to one. He goes on to intimidate the Queen, even bullying her into ratifying the Acts of the Reformed Parliament of 1560, since Mary would never have done this in an attempt to appease her Protestant subjects, oh no. And then, of course, he abducted and raped her. So how come Bothwell only reached Linlithgow at midnight on the night before the 'abduction'?. If she had not been taken ill with a pain in her side, she would have been in Edinburgh by then.
Also annoying is the leaping about in chronology that occurs. Some of this has the effect of distorting events: she discusses an incident when Darnley is supposed to have threatened to break down Mary's bedroom door as though it happened in October 1566, when in fact it had happened the previous March. But his finding Riccio hiding in a closet wouldn't have had so much meaning then. At other times the reader is left with a feeling of deja vue due to repetition - this is a hefty book and it would have been shorter and simpler without the jumping back and forth in time.
But the most startling things are the contradictions within the book, sometimes within a few pages. At one point she writes that Mary and the lords 'stated, in letters written only a day later, that she left [Kirk o' Field] around midnight...... Mary and the lords were probably correct.' Then later 'At around midnight she retired to her apartments'. Thus her appearance at Bastien's wedding must have been VERY brief. Let's hope the happy couple didn't blink. On page 273 we have already heard how the men coming up Blackfriars Wynd were not Douglases, yet by page 275 the men running up Blackfriars Wynd 'were probably the Douglas party.' On page 247 Bothwell and Traquair's meeting with the Queen after Bastien's wedding 'was urgent and... was crucial to Mary's security.' By page 287 this meeting was merely 'to discuss the security of the Prince now that his father was returning to Holyrood' because the Queen had been busy all day!
These contradictions and repetitions, along with the transformation of Bothwell, make this book appear to have been written by at least two people. The book might have been as good as it thinks it is if the first writer had stuck with it all the way through. As it is, it is an entertaining read, but it doesn't live up to its initial promise. Reserve it from your library before you rush out to buy it.