Thread by @JudithFlanders

Wow, this @guardian article on Mary Stuart is wild. This is well out of my period, and even I know it's bollocks (klaxon: historian technical term). Mini thread.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/j…

1) Mary Stuart's 'exquisite gifts of statecraft'? Whenever Mary was presented with a political choice, you could absolutely bet she'd make the wrong one.
2) Her 'ruthless expediency'? Interesting new way of saying 'flailed wildly from crisis to crisis.

3) Her 'sexual allure'? She was over 1.80 meters tall, and had a face disfigured by dropsy. I'm not against either, but usually you don't get described as a sex kitten....

4) 'Helen of Troy, another queen who toyed with the affections of great men'. An even stranger way of describing abduction and rape, but hey, Kevs, you do you.

5) The 1895 film of her beheading 'was so realistic audiences believed the actor playing Mary had been beheaded'. The clue is in the date: audiences watching a train were also afraid of being mowed down, because film was new, & they didn't know how it worked.

For those who care, the 'horrifying' film is on YouTube: . It's about what you'd expect.

6) 'Mary began an affair with her bisexual secretary David Rizzio'. This sentence is a masterpiece of positively Trumpian levels, since precisely none of these statements are known to be facts. They might be, but they might not be, too.

7) Darnley was 'burned to death' by Bothwell. His house was blown up, but he was found in the garden, dead by, it is thought, strangulation.

8) 'Elizabeth quickly showed the ruthlessness and conviction that defeated the Spanish Armada...[and] duly had her cousin beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire in 1587': if 'quickly' means, 19 years later, you betcha.

As I say, this is entirely out of my period, and i'm sure others will find far more in this, erm, fascinating article. Or maybe, who knows, the @guardian might even commission a 17th-c. historian to write a piece for them next time. Just a thought.