Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Royal Road to Fotheringhay / Mary, Queen of Scotland: The Triumphant Year | 1955 | Eleanor Burford / Hibbert | Buy |
| 2 | The Captive Queen of Scots | 1963 | Eleanor Burford / Hibbert | Buy |
The Mary Stuart duology by Eleanor Burford Hibbert, writing as Jean Plaidy, covers the life of Scotland’s most famous queen. The Royal Road to Fotheringhay begins with Mary’s childhood at the French court, where she was raised as the future queen of France. After her young husband’s death, she returns to Scotland and faces the challenge of ruling a Protestant country as a Catholic monarch. Her marriages to Lord Darnley and then the Earl of Bothwell bring scandal and rebellion.
The Captive Queen of Scots picks up with Mary’s flight to England, where she spent nearly twenty years as a prisoner of her cousin Elizabeth I. The novel covers her various plots and the political maneuvering that finally led to her execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. Plaidy also wrote about the early life of Mary Stuart in The Young Mary Queen of Scots, a book for younger readers, and Mary’s story intersects with the broader Tudor period covered in the Tudor Saga.