18th October 2016
Margaret Tudor died today in 1541 at Methven Castle after a stroke. She was 51, and her life had been a dramatic mix of success and tragic disappointment. Her son James V was 29, and King of Scotland – a triumph that she must have feared in his minority would never happen. But he had no legitimate children – earlier that year Margaret had comforted him and his queen Mary of Guise when their two baby sons died. Her daughter Margaret Douglas she hadn't seen since the girl had been taken to England by her father in 1528. Now 26, Margaret Douglas had good prospects at her uncle Henry VIII's court – she had been returned to favour after a forbidden love affair that landed her in the Tower. Margaret Tudor's own personal life had continued to scandalise – when her third husband Henry Stewart was unfaithful she pursued a second divorce, though they later reconciled. Again she had struggled with a husband holding all her property, and had had to look to her brother for funds.
James didn't arrive to his mother's deathbed in time, but in her last words she asked him to be gracious to his loathed former stepfather Archibald Douglas Earl of Angus, saying that she asked God's mercy for having offended the earl. I found her a fascinating character to write Three Sisters, Three Queens from the point of view of – her relationships were so complex, particularly with Douglas. This quote from the novel is during her attempts to divorce him:
I wonder if James will find me much changed. I am thirty-six years old, no longer a young woman, and I am finding a few silver hairs at my temples. I pluck them out and wonder if Mary has silver among the gold yet? Sometimes I think I look as if I have had a hard life, a life of continual struggle, and then at other times I catch a glimpse of myself in a looking glass laughing and I think that I am still a beautiful woman, and if I could only marry the man that I love and see my son on the throne of Scotland then I could be a happy woman and a good wife.
http://www.philippagregory.com/b…/three-sisters-three-queens
Images: Margaret Tudor by Daniel Mytens, painted c.1620–38, Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015 (cropped); Methven Castle, by Arthur Bruce, via Wikimedia Commons