From the cradle, Mary had a turbulent life. Her mother, Mary of Guise, was a foreigner in an alien land, and her father, King James V of Scotland, was dead within a week of her birth. A little girl, fatherless, with a foreign mother, was extremely vulnerable in 16th-century Scotland, which was seething with rival tribes, clans, lords all jostling for power, and little Mary was in the way. And then there was the danger over the border. In England, the bloated tyrant King Henry VIII wanted Scotland for himself. Whatever it took. Henry VIII was a brute, not only in his foreign relations, but in his internal relations, in his marriages and in everything else. And if people resisted him, his instinct was to beat them about the head until they gave in. He wanted to marry his son to the infant Mary Queen of Scots.


从襁褓开始，玛丽一生动荡不定。她妈妈玛丽德吉斯是外国人，爸爸是苏格兰王詹姆斯五世。在她出世未满一周便驾崩，父王去世、母后是外国人的处境十分严峻。 16世纪的苏格兰正值多事之秋，部落、氏族、王公大臣都想夺权。小小的玛丽挡在他们面前，而边境外又有另一危机。 英格兰暴君亨利八世，也想吞并苏格兰，不择手段。 ， 亨利八世残暴不仁，对内对外、对妻子、所有人皆如是，，有谁反抗，他就想出手痛殴，直至对方屈服为止，他想安排儿子迎娶苏格兰的小女皇