Mary Of Guise

The eldest daughter of Claude, Duke Of Guise , head of the French House Of Guise , and his wife Antoinette Of Bourbon , Marie was born at Bar-le-Duc , Lorraine . On August 4 1534 , at the age of 18, she was married to Louis Of Orleans , Duke Of Longueville , at the Louvre . Their union was a happy one and on October 30 1535 her first son Francis was born. In the winter of 1536 , she attended the wedding of her future husband, James V Of Scotland , and the French King's eldest daughter, Madeleine De Valois , known as Princess Madeleine at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris .

On June 9 1537 , Louis died at Rouen and left her a widow at the age of 21. On August 4 , Marie gave birth to her second son, Louis. Later that year, James V, having lost his first bride Madeleine De Valois in July to tuberculosis, was intent on procuring himself another French bride to further the interests of the Franco-Scottish Alliance against England . Marie now became the focus of his marriage negotiations. His uncle Henry VIII Of England tried to prevent this dangerous union by asking for Marie's hand for himself. Francis I Of France accepted James's proposals over Henry's and conveyed his wishes to Marie's father. Marie received the news with shock and alarm. She did not rejoice at the prospect of leaving family and country, especially at a time when she had just lost her son, Louis, aged only four months. Her father was caught in a diplomatic wrangle. He tried to delay matters as much as he could until James, perhaps sensing her reluctance, wrote her a letter in which he appealed to her for advice and support. Marie accepted the offer and hurried plans for departure.

On , was born on December 8 , 1542 . King James died six days later, making Mary Queen Regent .

It was Marie de Guise who effectively ruled Scotland as Regent for Queen Mary, who was sent to France at age 5 to be raised with her husband-to-be, the son of the French king Henry II . Marie always consulted with her two powerful brothers in France - Charles, Cardinal Of Lorraine , and Francis, Duke Of Guise , both of whom held government positions - so that Scotland and France worked as allies in dealing with other nations.

Marie's regency was threatened, however, by the growing influence of the Scottish Protestant s, supported secretly by Elizabeth I Of England , and was effectively deposed on religious grounds. When Marie died in June 10 or 11 , 1560 at Edinburgh Castle , her body was taken back to France and interred at the church in the Convent Of Saint-Pierre in Reims , where Marie's sister Renée was the Abbess .

In modern times — both in the movie ''Elizabeth'' and in Philippa Gregory 's novel '' The Virgin's Lover '' — it has been suggested that Queen Elizabeth I Of England ordered Mary's assassination by Poison ing her. There is no evidence for this and Mary of Guise's death was one of the few royal deaths in the 16th century which wasn't attributed by her paranoid contemporaries to poison.

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Mary Of Guise