Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots

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A fascinating and revealing new biography of Mary Queen of Scots, drawing on dozens of newly decoded letters.

For almost two decades before her execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was a prisoner. From her chambers, she wrote countless letters, many encrypted using complex ciphers to prevent her communications from being intercepted. In this way, she used language to exert her will and her influence, even while incarcerated.

More than 400 years after her death, fifty-seven of these encoded letters were unearthed in a French archive and decoded, a discovery described by experts as a literary and historical sensation and the most important new find on Mary for more than a century.

In Captive Queen: The Decrypted History of Mary, Queen of Scots, Jade Scott, a historian and expert on Marys correspondence, draws on these ground-breaking letters to paint a vivid portrait of one of historys most compelling figures. She interrogates Marys complex relationships with friends and enemies throughout her imprisonment, illuminating her strategic expertise and bringing Marys captivity to life like never before, in her own words.

Author Bio

Dr Jade Scott is a historian specializing in Mary Queen of Scots and an expert on her letters. She is a lecturer in historical linguistics at the University of Glasgow and an associate fellow of the Royal Historical Society, researching early modern Scottish women and their correspondence. Fascinated by Mary her entire life, Jade was reached out to by George Lasry of the DECRYPT Project to consult on the translations of Marys newly decoded letters, providing key contextual details and context on linguistic features. She lives in Glasgow.