Original subtitles

On a cold February morning in 1587,

after 19 years of house arrest,

and charged with plotting to overthrow her cousin,

Elizabeth I, Queen of England,

Mary Queen of Scots faces execution.

For now, I hope you shall put an end to all my troubles.

Mary's story is full of romance, espionage and murder.

And her final moments...

are no less dramatic.

She is one of history's most famous figures.

But the events that led her here are still cloaked in mystery.

They hold the secrets to the true Mary Queen of Scots.

I'm Dan Snow.

And I'm Professor Suzannah Lipscomb.

And together, we're investigating

the world of the Tudors in a whole new way,

by starting at the grizzly end.

In this turbulent time of shifting allegiances,

volatile politics and a clash of religions,

many of the key players end up with their heads on the block.

We're gonna uncover the critical moments

that led them to the executioner.

We'll discover fresh insights and examine new evidence.

As far as the people around her were concerned, she was innocent.

And challenge how we see these individuals

and this pivotal point in Europe's history.

-So Cecil is doctoring the evidence? -Absolutely.

Because understanding why these people

were convicted and killed

is to understand the Tudors.

We're starting our investigation here.

The remains of Fotheringhay Castle.

It was here, in the castle's Great Hall,

that Mary Queen of Scots was executed.

-Okay. -There you go. Isn't that a view?

So this would've been where she died.

I have a picture from Robert Beale, who's an eyewitness.

If you imagine this fireplace.

Of course, it would've been a cold February day.

Mary coming in,

and then there's her moment of disrobing.

And then we've got the moment of her execution here.

A big moment in English, Scottish, Tudor history.

Absolutely. This is a sovereign queen being executed.

19th-century male historians were down on her for being a silly woman.

And actually, I'm really interested in the idea

that we can look at her life through the lens of her downfall

and see what it reveals about her character and her decisions.

Strange standing here looking at where she was executed,

and thinking, was that moment inevitable?

Or was it avoidable?

Was it brought about by her enemies that just couldn't let her live,

or did she make mistakes that lead to that point?

That's exactly the question.

Was she a pawn or was she the creator of her own demise?

While Dan heads off to find out about her enemies,

I want to get inside Mary's head.

And to do that, I'm heading not to Scotland, but to France.

Mary was just six days old when she became Queen of Scotland,

after the death of her father James V.

Female rule in Scotland was unprecedented,

she was the country's first ever sovereign queen.

This made her vulnerable.

To keep her safe, her French mother sent her to the Loire Valley

to live under the protection of the King of France.

So were the seeds of her downfall there from the very start?

This is the amazing Chateau d'Amboise on the banks of the river Loire.

A jewel of the French Renaissance,

it's here that Mary spent much of her childhood.

The Chateau d'Amboise is pretty lovely today,

but when Mary came here, it was much grander.

The chapel there was part of a great range.

In fact, what we have left is about a fifth of what she saw.

And I think it must have had such an impact on her.

It was a world away from the land that she'd come from.

Mary was now in the care of King Henri II,

and promised in marriage to his young son, François.

Look at that. Really gives you a sense of going back in time.

Yeah.

I'm meeting Professor Armel Dubois-Nayt

to find out about Mary's upbringing.

She knew her future husband

François the Dauphin from a very early age?

Yeah. They grew up together, they were educated at the same time

and she followed a curriculum very similar to François.

So, what sort of education was that?

She studied Latin, Greek, history, philosophy, literature.

That was very unusual for an early modern girl.

And Mary herself was adamant

that elite girls should receive that type of education,

and when she was older, she gives an oration

defending women's access to the liberal education.

Wow. So she's outspoken

and she's speaking out for women's rights to education.

-That's amazing. -It is amazing.

So much of the story of Mary Queen of Scots

has been about characterizing her as impetuous or hysterical.

This is a very different Mary.

When Mary was 15, she married François.

She was now in line to become the next Queen of France.

But events in England were about to change the course of Mary's life.

For the past five years,

England had been ruled by Mary I, Henry VIII's eldest daughter.

She'd spent her reign returning the country to Catholicism,

undoing the split made by Henry

to enable him to marry his second wife, Anne Boleyn.

Now, Mary was gravely ill.

The big question was who would rule after she died?

The obvious candidate

was her 25-year-old protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.

But across Europe, Catholics saw her as illegitimate.

They favored Mary Queen of Scots

who also had a strong claim to the throne.

For Mary's father-in-law, King Henri,

she could be his ticket to an empire uniting Scotland,

France and England.

And he was quick to set out Mary's claim.

I have here a copy of the coat of arms

that was being circulated by the French Crown in July 1559.

It is amazing because it depicts the arms of France,

so the fleur de lis and the dauphins,

literally a dolphin, the heir of France.

It also has the Scottish lion rampant.

And it has the three lions of England.

And the fact that all of them are included in one coat of arms

is audacious.

In fact, it's downright cheeky.

This coat of arms was sent out around Europe,

and ushers would cry, "Make way for the Queen of England".

It's all designed to maneuver Mary onto the English throne.

That doesn't transpire, Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England.

But I think it fills Mary's head with ideas

she is the rightful heir to the English throne,

that sense of destiny,

and it also created for her in England a very dangerous enemy indeed.

Back in England, Mary Queen of Scots' claim to the throne was dismissed.

Elizabeth was here at her palace at Hatfield

when she was told of the death of her half-sister Mary Tudor.

She was now Elizabeth I, Queen of England.

One of her first acts was to call together her chief advisers,

her new privy council.

They would have their first meeting here at Hatfield in the Great Hall.

Look at that, still exists today.

What a place!

And to lead them, she would appoint

her most trusted advisor, Sir William Cecil.

Cecil had served as secretary to King Edward VI

and would now be Elizabeth's right-hand man

for most of her 45-year reign.

He'd also be instrumental in deciding the fate of Mary Queen of Scots.

Cecil, like Elizabeth, was Protestant,

and he was determined to return England to the Protestant faith.

Surrounded by Catholic nations,

he'd be constantly wary of threats to his queen and country

and there was one threat he'd become obsessed with...

Mary Queen of Scots.

And less than three years into Elizabeth's reign,

Mary was heading back to Scotland.

In the summer of 1561,

Mary arrived by ship here at Leith, near Edinburgh.

She left Scotland when she was five years old

and now she was 18.

She was effectively French

and she was returning to a land that was foreign to her.

Mary's next few years in Scotland would be some of the most turbulent

and troubled of her life and would lead directly to her death.

But Mary's role in the scandal,

the violence and betrayal of these years remains hotly debated.

I think we need to re-examine these pivotal moments

to understand why she went to the block.

I've come to Edinburgh, to the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

This was Mary's new home.

Holyrood has been the principle royal residence in Scotland

since the 16th century,

and it's still one of the King's palaces today.

That's the Northwest Tower,

it's the oldest surviving part of the palace

and it's almost completely unchanged since Mary lived here.

And I'm incredibly lucky

because filming inside is rarely allowed.

This is an amazing room, isn't it?

-It's the longest room in the palace. -Incredible.

Showing me round is curator, Emma Stead.

Wow, look at this space!

This is Mary Queen of Scot's bedchamber.

She slept here in this room

when she came back from France in 1561.

And there she is.

This beautiful portrait is one of the very few contemporary images

that we have of Mary made during her own lifetime.

She's wearing something called the deuil blanc,

in mourning for three members of her family.

So over the period of just 18 months,

she lost first her father-in-law, Henry II, King of France.

Then a year or so later, she loses her mother

and six months later, tragically, she loses her husband,

Francis II, King of France.

So Mary's entire world implodes in those 18 months.

Yes, absolutely.

Mary had briefly been Queen of France as well as Scotland

when her husband took the throne.

Now, still only 18, she was a widow without the French Crown.

It's important to say that she could have stayed in France

and let Scotland be run without her presence.

Chosen a cushy life, if you like

and it's a real testament to her personal character

that she wants to come back to Scotland

and take up her own personal rule.

But Scotland and France are very different countries.

Mary was returning as a Catholic queen,

but much of Scotland had converted to a zealous form of Protestantism.

What did the people of Scotland make of her?

Initially they adored her, you know.

We know there is a really rapturous reception

when she makes her triumphant entry through the city.

I suppose it didn't hurt that she was this beautiful young woman,

but it raised all sorts of questions about the future.

Yes, she's the first Queen Regnant of Scotland ever,

and is she gonna try and impose her religion,

the old faith back upon them?

But Mary didn't force Scotland back to Catholicism,

partly because she wanted her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth,

to name her as heir to the English throne...

and to that end, she embarked on a charm offensive.

We have a letter from Mary to Elizabeth,

talking about wanting to meet.

"Just one thought gives me pleasure and grief."

"My heart fills first with bitterness and then sweetness,

therefore, dear sister, if this verse brings you the desire to meet

that also moves me,

I can only be left in pain and sadness if the meeting doesn't happen soon."

And Elizabeth responds to Mary in October 1562,

calling her "My very dear sister,

for whom I long for all the good that can be desired."

But Elizabeth stopped short of naming Mary as her heir,

concerned it could spark Catholic plots to overthrow her.

And while a meeting was arranged,

it was canceled by none other than William Cecil.

Cecil always advised against the two meeting.

I suspect he thought that if the two women met,

he wouldn't be able to control the narrative.

Cecil got his way and in fact, Mary and Elizabeth would never meet.

And that's a shame,

because both were grappling with the same challenge:

how to rule as a woman.

While Elizabeth chose never to marry to retain her power,

Mary did the opposite, choosing to marry again,

this time to her own cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley.

He had his own claim to the English throne.

Mary hoped their union would shore up her reign

and produce an heir with a watertight claim

to both Scotland and England.

But for Elizabeth and Cecil, Darnley was unacceptable.

Like Mary, he was a Catholic,

so their marriage would only increase the threat.

Mary ignored their objections.

She and Darnley were married

and in June 1566, Mary gave birth to a son, James.

It might seem like everything was going Mary's way.

There's only one problem, Darnley was a nightmare.

Vain, arrogant, frequently unfaithful, power-hungry,

and with a violent streak that was aggravated by drinking.

For a year and a half Mary endured Darnley's abuse

and his plots to seize control of her throne.

Then, in the early hours of the 10th February 1567,

Edinburgh was rocked by a massive explosion.

A house Darnley was staying in was destroyed,

and he was found dead.

Everyone is asking the same questions.

Who did it and was Mary involved?

Following Darnley's murder,

no one was more desperate to know if Mary was involved

than William Cecil.

-Look at that! -Here it is. The map of Kirk o' Field.

Wow.

Dr. Euan Roger from the National Archives

has been studying this amazing illustration.

Sent to William Cecil by his agents within days,

it records the crime scene in incredible detail.

-This is the explosion... -Yeah!

...being depicted.

You can see here there's heads and bodies and bits of furniture,

bits of the building utterly destroyed.

And we've got two bodies. One is Darnley, one is his servant.

And you can see they're both in states of undress

and various items around them.

Just as we take pictures at a crime scene, this is the equivalent.

Yes. He's described as not having any wounds on him when he's found.

He's possibly strangled.

This is asking more questions than it's solving.

Exactly. It's a bit of a murder mystery.

Cecil wants to know who is responsible

and one name stands out, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell.

Known for being violent and reckless,

as Lord High Admiral of Scotland, he has access to explosives.

He's also close to Mary Queen of Scots.

While Mary should be mourning Darnley,

she's seen several times with Bothwell

even gifting him Darnley's clothes and horse,

and Euan also has evidence of how Elizabeth reacted.

Elizabeth says, "My ears have been so astounded

and my heart so frightened to hear of the horrible

and abominable murder of your husband that I have scarcely spirit to write."

"I can't conceal that I grieve more for you than for him."

Wow. So she's expressing quite a lot of empathy for her.

But she says, "I urge you to preserve your honor,

rather than look through your fingers at revenge."

As in, "Don't hide away."

"By doing nothing, you'll potentially be seen to be guilty."

-Bring them to justice. -Exactly.

Otherwise, it looks like you were behind it all.

Elizabeth's letter is really revealing.

It shows that whatever Cecil might want,

Mary's fate is not yet set in stone.

She's saying, "Look, you're free of Darnley,

all you've got to do now is steer clear of Bothwell

and the future could be bright, but you have to make wise decisions."

Back in Scotland, I'm on the trail of Mary's next move.

The prudent course of action would be to distance herself

from the prime suspect, Lord Bothwell.

Instead, just three months after Darnley's murder,

Mary marries him.

A decision that would bring her closer to her ultimate fate.

For centuries, we've been told this was another reckless move

by a besotted and foolish woman.

But was it?

I've come to Dunbar on Scotland's windswept east coast

to the ruins of Bothwell's Castle.

Bothwell brought Mary here shortly after Darnley's murder,

saying it was for her own protection.

They were in there for 12 days.

When they emerged, they went quickly to Holyrood

and then were married.

So, the question is, what happened during those 12 days?

Dr. Amy Blakeway has been investigating

this crucial moment in Mary's demise.

The line, traditionally,

has been that Mary colluded with Bothwell in her abduction.

She came here, they had passionate sex,

and this then allowed her to marry him.

But when we look at where that originates,

it's quite clear that it's propaganda produced by Mary's enemies,

suggesting that Mary was impulsive,

ruled by her heart rather than her head.

These men were playing into something

that they knew people would find easy to believe

because it mapped on to what they already thought about women

and their unsuitability to govern.

A woman who colludes with murderers, how can she be ruling a country?

And that's still the story that's normally told, isn't it?

That's absolutely right,

and I think the reason is that it's crafted by intelligent men

who know how to make a narrative stick.

And it also sticks around

because it's very useful to the English, to William Cecil.

But one account suggests the truth is very different.

It's written by one of Mary's courtiers, Sir James Melville,

who was brought to Dunbar along with Mary.

Melville describes them as being taken prisoner.

Mary was isolated from the courtiers who were accompanying her,

and he says that Bothwell ravished her,

he laid with her against her will

and these are the 16th-century terms to describe rape.

And it's supported by other evidence.

Shortly before, Bothwell had proposed marriage to Mary.

Mary rejected that.

I think that's pretty strong proof

that Mary did not wish to have

an intimate relationship with Bothwell.

How should we understand the fact that they go and get married?

For a woman in this period, particularly one of Mary's status,

to admit to having been raped, very sadly,

would've brought a huge amount of shame,

that would've compromised Mary as a political figure.

So Bothwell's ploy worked.

Bothwell used the rape to force her into a position

where there was no other option.

Mary's marriage to Bothwell was disastrous.

Not only were Elizabeth and Cecil horrified,

worse was to come.

The Scottish nobility turned against her.

They took Mary prisoner and forced her to abdicate.

Mary was no longer Queen of Scots.

Bothwell brought Mary here because it was so isolated,

and it's pretty grim to consider that just over there, Mary was raped.

I also think it's horrifying that the story we tell about Mary

is of her being reckless, an adulterer,

complicit in her husband's murder.

We perpetuate the injustice against her when we tell these lies.

Mary is held captive for nearly a year

but, ever resourceful, disguised as a servant, she escapes.

Mary has two options,

flee to France, and live out the rest of her life in exile,

or throw herself on the mercy of her cousin, Elizabeth,

in the hope of regaining her crown.

In one of the most fateful decisions of her life,

she boards a boat to England.

Mary doesn't know it,

but she is walking into the hands of her enemy, William Cecil.

She will never set foot on Scottish soil again.

Mary Queen of Scots' arrival in England

is a major problem for Elizabeth's government.

Cecil knows she'll be a magnet for Catholic plotters,

so keeps her far from London, under house arrest.

Sure enough, 18 months later,

Catholic lords launch a failed attempt

to free Mary and put her on the throne.

And shortly afterwards, the Pope excommunicates Elizabeth,

effectively giving Catholics permission to depose her.

From now on, Elizabeth would face

frequent plots and assassination attempts.

And the man tasked with keeping her alive?

William Cecil.

Cecil suspects Mary is involved in the plots,

and resolves to get rid of her,

but persuading Elizabeth will not be easy.

Mary is Elizabeth's own cousin

and killing an anointed queen could set a dangerous precedent.

Cecil knows that if he's gonna convince Elizabeth

to get rid of Mary once and for all, he needs to have rock-solid evidence.

He needs to catch Mary red handed.

That won't be easy

because Cecil isn't the only one adept in spy craft.

I'm back in France, in Paris, on the trail of new evidence.

In 2021, a group of amateur code breakers

stumbled across 57 encrypted letters,

filed with Italian documents in the French National Library.

-George, hello! -Hello!

So, tell me about this amazing find.

I started to work under the assumption that the letters are in Italian.

It took computer scientist, Dr. George Lasry and his team

months of painstaking work.

And suddenly, I see fragmented words in French.

I was astonished. "Oh, that's fantastic."

But finally they cracked the code.

Now, armed with their results,

I've come to the place the letters were discovered,

to see the originals for myself.

This book contains the ciphered letters.

My goodness, they're absolutely tiny.

Faced with these bewildering symbols,

their first priority was to work out who the letters were from.

To help me look for that, I've got George's cipher key,

listing the meaning of every symbol.

Okay, here we go.

At the bottom, it repeats this symbol that looks like a number four,

which means, according to Georges' guide,

repeat the preceding symbol.

So we've got an O, and then a C, looks like a W, but it's a C.

Then four, meaning repeat that C,

then U, P, E, repeat that E.

So that's the French word "occupée" and that is really important.

Not because of the word, but because in the French language,

when a woman is speaking, there will be a double E at the end.

So this gives away that the writer is female.

At the top here, it looks like it says, "Yay, Dan."

But, Dan, it is not about you.

It actually says, "mon fils," "my son."

Now in this one here, it says, "ma,"

and then it spells out, L-I-B-E-R-T-E,

"ma liberté."

"Ma liberté" means "my freedom."

That indicated that the woman who was writing this was in captivity.

But the real breakthrough came when they found a name.

V-V-A-L

S-A-N-G-H-A M,

Walsingham.

Walsingham was William Cecil's right-hand man.

His spymaster.

And as soon as George saw that name,

he knew who was behind these incredible letters.

A woman in captivity with a son who's having dealings with Walsingham.

It could only be Mary Queen of Scots.

While we've long known Mary used ciphers,

these letters had been lost, for centuries.

And as George and his team continued to decode them

they revealed amazing new insights.

One really powerful theme is her hatred of Walsingham.

And she talks about whom at the court should be bribed

in order to advance their cause.

She also suggests that there might be a mole in the French embassy

and she's absolutely right.

It suggests that she's not, as we're so often told,

sitting around in captivity moaning about her conditions.

Instead, she's identifying her chief enemy,

those who might be betraying her.

She's thinking about ways of handling the situation.

This is a deft political operator, who's astute, who has agency

and who is trying to break free from her captivity.

These letters have been described as the most significant discovery

about Mary in a century,

and they reveal just how involved she was

in what was going on beyond her captivity.

But Mary's ciphers would also lead to her downfall.

Unbeknownst to Mary,

Cecil and Walsingham had intercepted and deciphered

some of her secret letters and were using them to set a trap.

After 17 years under house arrest, Mary was moved to a new residence

and cut-off entirely from the outside world.

Mary could still get coded messages out.

She used a brewer who smuggled them out

in the bungs of beer barrels,

and in the summer of 1586,

she received a message from another plotter,

a young English Catholic called Anthony Babington.

He told her that he had troops ready,

not just to free Mary, but to assassinate Elizabeth.

What Mary didn't know was that every message was being decoded

and read by Cecil and Walsingham.

The brewer was a double agent.

For days, they waited for Mary to reply, watching a baited trap.

Now everything rested in the symbols and ciphers she chose

and the message she decided to hide.

A week passes before Mary Queen of Scots

replies to the plotters.

The message is quickly intercepted and deciphered by Cecil's agents.

Three decades since Mary first laid claim to the English throne,

Cecil finally has what he's been looking for.

The letter instructs Babington

to go ahead with the plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

Mary is moved to Fotheringhay Castle.

Within a month, she's put on trial,

found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death.

But it's not over yet.

Elizabeth still refuses to sign her cousin's death warrant.

This is actually where Elizabeth took her lessons when she was a child.

-Really? -In this room.

Wow, that's so cool.

Back at Hatfield, Archivist Vannis Jones Rahi

has evidence of Cecil's next move.

So here we have William Cecil's draft of the execution warrant

-for Mary Queen of Scots. -Wow.

So this is his own handwriting.

And you can see the trouble that he's gone to.

There are lots of deletions and additions throughout.

He was creating the perfect wording

that Elizabeth might consider actually signing her name to.

He's not editing the text to make it more palatable to the public.

-He's got to convince Elizabeth? -Yes.

In here he has inserted the actual reason.

"They can by no device find any means for the surety of our person

and the state of the realm."

Parliament is saying, "We're out of options."

"The only way we can protect the Queen and ourselves

-is kill Mary Queen of Scots." -Yes. Exactly.

And they go on to say that this decision to execute Mary

is against Elizabeth's own natural disposition

and she's been compelled to yield to Parliament.

I think that's been inserted as well

so that the legal record effectively says

that Elizabeth didn't want to do it,

because otherwise it sets a precedent that queens can kill queens.

Although she'll later claim it was a mistake,

on the 1st February 1587, Elizabeth signed Mary's death warrant.

Cecil had finally got his way.

After all the violence and wars, marriages and betrayal,

and almost two decades, nearly half her life in captivity,

Mary's fate was finally decided.

There's one last piece of evidence I want to check out.

Something so delicate and important

that it's kept here at the National Library of Scotland,

under lock and key, protected from daylight.

Wow!

In here is the last letter Mary ever wrote,

written shortly before she died.

Look at that!

It's been out of public view for almost a decade.

That is amazing. Thank you.

Wow.

I always find it completely thrilling to have these encounters

with documents like this,

because the last person who wrote on it,

more or less, was Mary herself.

It's written to her brother-in-law, Henri III, King of France.

"Monsieur mon beau frère, it was by God's will for my sins

that I threw myself into the arms of this queen."

"I am at last by her and her estates condemned to death."

And she goes on to say that she receives death,

innocent of all crimes.

The only crime that she could be found guilty of is

"la religion Catholic,"

that she is Catholic.

This is the truth that she's trying to get out in this letter,

that she's dying as a Catholic martyr,

but the English won't allow her to say that because...

So, because of their fear of damage to their faith.

And then at the end here...

It says, "Ce mercredi a deux heur après minuit,"

"this Wednesday at two o'clock after midnight."

So that's two o'clock in the morning.

So she wrote this six hours before her death.

She signs it off "Mari," and then an R for Regina.

You know, I am struck by the fact that she is writing something

that is so emotional, so heartfelt and sincere.

But it's also so strategic.

She's very much shaping this narrative that she dies as a Catholic martyr,

"innocent of all crimes."

And it's not quite true, I mean,

you know, she has plotted Elizabeth's death.

But in her version of events,

she is innocent and she's dying for her faith.

That is what comes out so powerfully from this document

that she's choosing the story

that will be told about her after her death.

After everything we've discovered, it's time to meet up.

And where better than here?

This is Burghley House in Lincolnshire,

built by Lord Burghley, also known as William Cecil.

What an extraordinary house.

And can you believe, this is actually Cecil's smaller house.

-Really? -Yes.

His amazing mansion was completed the very same year

Mary Queen of Scots was executed.

-Wow, look at this. -What a room. My goodness me.

-Isn't it wonderful? -That is extraordinary.

That ceiling is from the 1580s.

So where have you ended up? Is she pretty much innocent?

Is she a victim? Is she passive? Or did she bring this on herself?

I don't think she's involved in Darnley's murder.

I think that it's coercion and rape when it comes to Bothwell.

But then in the end,

she does sign her name to a document that is acting against Elizabeth.

And so it's on that basis that she's executed.

I think it could've turned out differently

if she and Elizabeth had met.

Yeah. It's amazing they never meet.

They would have had so much in common.

They've been pitted against each other as one being unmarried,

one being married, one Protestant, one Catholic

but they're both very strong, they're formidable women.

They could've worked something out if they got the men out of the room.

I've ended up in a strange place. I wonder if it was inevitable.

When you get two crowned monarchs inside one kingdom,

if you look at other periods, other places,

surprise, one is dead pretty quick.

The amazing thing is Elizabeth lets her live that long.

Elizabeth bends over backwards not to kill her,

but there's forces pushing them towards conflict,

a conflict that only one of them can survive.

With all that we've learned, it's time to look again at Mary's final moments.

At eight o'clock in the morning,

Mary is led into the Great Hall at Fotheringhay Castle.

Inside, nobles are gathered,

here to bear witness to an execution of an anointed queen.

The executioner begs her forgiveness.

I forgive you with all my heart.

For now, I hope you shall put an end to all my troubles.

Cecil wasn't there, but he'd carefully choreographed the scene.

Or so he thought.

Never have I had such grooms to make me unready,

nor ever put off my clothes before such a company.

Mary had planned one last bold statement.

The reveal of a red gown. The color of Catholic martyrdom.

As her final letter declared, she was dying for her faith.

This was Mary reclaiming control, writing her own story.

Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

She may not have won in life, but in death, she would triumph.

As Elizabeth tried to manage the fallout from Mary's execution,

William Cecil was briefly expelled from Elizabeth's court,

but was soon back at the queen's side.

With his help, Elizabeth I would become

one of England's most celebrated monarchs,

establishing England as a major power,

and fostering a golden age of art and exploration.

It may seem like Elizabeth was the winner,

but arguably Mary had the last word.

When Elizabeth died childless,

it was Mary's son, James, who became King of England as well as Scotland.

He moved his mother's body to a grand tomb at Westminster Abbey,

a stone's throw from that of Elizabeth.

And he ensured that every subsequent British monarch

carries the blood of Mary Queen of Scots.

Translated by: Quyen Nguyen