Six days a princess, a lifetime a queen
Mary Stuart was born at Linlithgow Palace on 8 December 1542, the daughter of King James V of Scotland and his French queen, Mary of Guise. Her father lay dying at Falkland Palace, 50 miles away, and when news reached him that his wife had borne a daughter rather than a son, he reportedly turned his face to the wall and said, "It came with a lass, it will pass with a lass" — referring to the Stuart dynasty, which had come to the throne through Marjorie Bruce. James died six days later. Mary was queen at less than a week old.
Mary's birth at Linlithgow set the stage for one of the most dramatic lives in European history. The palace where she was born was one of the finest royal residences in Scotland — a magnificent stone fortress on the shore of Linlithgow Loch, with a great hall, a chapel, and pleasure gardens. It had been the favourite residence of the Stewart kings for over a century. The fountain in the courtyard, which tradition says once ran with wine, still stands.
The infant queen was immediately a prize in the great game of European politics. Henry VIII of England demanded that Mary be betrothed to his son Edward — when Scotland refused, he launched the devastating military campaign known as the Rough Wooing. To protect her, Mary was sent to France at the age of five, where she was raised at the French court, educated as a French princess, and married the French Dauphin, Francis. She became Queen of France at sixteen.
Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 as a widow, a Catholic queen in an increasingly Protestant country. What followed — her marriages to Darnley and Bothwell, the murder of Rizzio, the explosion at Kirk o' Field, her forced abdication, her flight to England, nineteen years of imprisonment, and her execution at Fotheringhay — is the most written-about royal story in Scottish history. Linlithgow Palace, where it all began, stands in elegant ruin on its loch, one of the most beautiful and evocative historic sites in Scotland.