When Mary, Queen of Scots was aged four she was sent to live in France - twenty years later she was deposed. How did her supporters try to leverage the connections she made as a child in the fight to regain the adult Queen's throne?

In 1548 Mary, Queen of Scots departed her native realm for France. Her experiences there have long been pored over with historians, novelists and filmmakers searching her life in Paris to understand her downfall in 1567. This lecture will take a lesser-known angle on Mary’s relationship with France – after her fall, how far did her supporters and opponents try to persuade and prompt sympathy for her cause in France?

Drawing on primary sources held in the National Library of Scotland as well as in London and Paris, we will see how history and myth were skillfully combined in the service of urgent dynastic politics.

Dr Amy Blakeway is a lecturer in Scottish History at the University of St Andrews. She is an expert on sixteenth-century Scotland and her second book, 'Parliament and Convention in the Personal Rule of James V, 1528-42', is due to be published this year. She is now working on a third book on the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 1540s.

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