Crowned at nine months, married at sixteen, widowed at eighteen, implicated in the murder of her second husband, and executed for treason, Mary Stuart lived a life that could not havebeen better imagined by any Hollywood screen writer. Mary, Queen of Scots, lived during one of the most fascinatingperiods in history. Grahamrs"s epic work paints a unique picture ofthis controversial woman, showing her to be neither a Catholicmartyr nor murdering adulteress but an innocent young womancaught up in the ruthless sea of sixteenth-century politics, someone who lacked the shrewdness and empowerment of her contemporaries: Catherine de Medici, Diane de Poitiers and ElizabethTudor. Instead, she relied on her beauty and charm and tragicallyallowed herself to be a victim of circumstance. When she did finally attempt to control her future, she set inmotion the events that would lead her to the executionerrs"s block,sentenced to die by none other than her cousin Queen Elizabeth.