Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens. Jane Dunn

reported, ‘in this court she is made a goddess’.⁴⁸ The eight-year-old Queen of Scots could only enjoy the pageantry and wonder at the magnificence of her family’s celebrations, but she would never know the daily struggles, danger and frustrations that were companions to her mother’s duties in Scotland. She was never to see at first hand the extent of the strategic planning, responsibility and diplomacy of government. Indulged within the hothouse of the royal nursery, flattered and celebrated more than was good for her outside it, Mary was given little chance to see any of the day-to-day workings of the French monarchy. In fact her Guise uncles encouraged the dauphin and their niece in their pursuit of pleasure, mostly in the form of the daily chase, rather than acquiring the arts of kingship. This was partly due to the fact that François was a physically weak and wilful child who showed little aptitude for study, but it also suited the Duc de Guise and the cardinal to maintain the dauphin’s fecklessness and indifference to matters of state. Thereby they assured the reins of power could be grasped by their ready hands when fate made François king.

      Mary was naturally more intelligent and competent than the dauphin and she was fortunate in being a central figure in a cultured court where education mattered. But she was educated to be an accomplished consort to a great nation’s king, rather than to be a ruler in her own right. She seemed naturally to excel at dancing and music making, playing the zither, the harp and the harpsicord, and able to accompany her own singing voice in songs. In the early part of 1553 when Mary was ten and staying with the royal children at the Château of Amboise, the cardinal found her a credit to his proud line and reported such to her mother:

      She has grown so much, and grows daily in height, goodness, beauty and virtue, that she has become the most perfect and accomplished person in all honest and virtuous things that it is possible to imagine … I can assure you that the King is so delighted with her that he passes much time talking with her, and for an hour together she amuses him with wise and witty conversation, as if she was a woman of twenty-five.⁴⁹

      It was not just her family members, however, who sang the young queen’s praises. Capello, the Venetian ambassador to France, described Mary when she was just into her teens: ‘she is most beautiful (bellissima), and so accomplished that she inspires with astonishment every one who witnesses her acquirements. The Dauphin, too, is very fond of her, and finds great pleasure in her company and conversation.’⁵⁰

      Mary was also a horsewoman of style and energy, and was as enthusiastic in the chase as even the most fanatical of the French court. She had arrived in France as a very young child, capable from the start of handling her own hunting hawk, much to the admiration of the French courtiers. She would continue to display her love of hunting and outdoor pursuits all her life, her energetic nature suffering keen frustration when she was constrained or thwarted in any way.