Nobody but his mother thinks that the Queen of Scots will take the handsome youth seriously; Elizabeth never would. But Cecil thinks that Henry Stuart and his father, the Earl of Lennox, befriending all the Scots lords, irritating the powerful preacher John Knox, stirring up old rivalries, and claiming his wife’s Douglas family lands will confuse matters in Edinburgh beyond Mary’s management. The fiercely Protestant Scots lords will hate the effete papist French-speaking English boy and will conspire against him, breaking the fragile support that Mary has won.

Robert Dudley, for his part, is desperate not to be banished to Scotland and married off to a woman who must despise him as an adulterer and a wife murderer. He knows that, whatever she says now, Elizabeth would never forgive him marrying another woman. He is gambling everything on her inability to let him go. He urges her to send Henry Stuart to take his place, as a diversion in Mary’s court—nothing more.

Nobody suggests that pretty Henry Stuart Lord Darnley might be a suitable husband and advisor for Queen Mary, that he might hold her loyal to England and serve as an English ambassador and wise advisor. He’s not yet twenty years old and he has spent his life under the heavy hoof of his papist mother, alternately indulged and scolded by her. He has been raised as a courtier; he is charming and pleasing and amusing and good company. But nobody thinks he can act like a skilled diplomat with his first loyalty to England. Everyone believes he is nothing more than a time-wasting folly.

I think that they underrate him. I believe his sweet face hides an avaricious heart, and his fair looks might charm the lonely French queen, surrounded as she is with hearty loud men of action, insisting on their rights. We are not all Elizabeths: desiring a man who looks more like a horse thief than a nobleman. But neither Cecil (though he has studied her likes and dislikes since she was a girl) nor the dark Robert (who has been her preference for as long) can make the flight of fancy to imagine that another woman might find a different sort of man far superior. I think young Henry has great charm, if you like a pretty doll—but as something of a pretty doll myself, that is not surprising.

Even I cannot say I am an admirer of Lord Darnley, and I see him leave court without regret. He is so excited by his freedom that he forgets his mother’s rivalry with mine, and smiles at me for the first time ever. “As my star rises, I will remember your sister,” he says sweetly enough. “Who can doubt the favor that the queen is showing our side of the family? You and your sister will become unimportant and I will speak for you.”