On Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 7:19:34 PM UTC-7, samsloan wrote:

Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles
by Stefan Zweig
Foreword by Sam Sloan
She was born to be Queen of Scotland, she was briefly the Queen of
France and she had a claim to being Queen of England, which resulted
in her having her head chopped off.
They chopped off her head after she was found guilty of conspiring to
have Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) assassinated so that she could take
power. Had she not been executed she would eventually have become
Queen of England when Elizabeth died.
That was only one of the many controversies in which she was involved.
Her first husband, who became the King of France, making her the
Queen, died shortly thereafter and her second husband was found
murdered, apparently strangled. Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) was
believed to have been complicit in that murder. Her Father, King James
V of Scotland (1512-1542), had many, many mistresses and possibly as
many as twenty illegitimate children. His father too, King James IV of Scotland (1473-1513), had a similar number of mistresses and a similar
number of illegitimate children. This has left, to this day, the
problem genealogists have in sorting out all of these bastard kids.
I have this problem in my own family too. I have a presumed ancestor
named Mary Stuart, born 1729 in Gabinheough, Tyrone, Ireland. She was
said to have been descended from one of the bastard offspring of King
James IV or King James V of Scotland, but nobody has found evidence
for this relationship, and many have searched.
When father of Mary Queen of Scots, King James V of Scotland
(1512-1542), died just after a battle when Mary was only six days old,
Mary became Queen, not by being the eldest child but by being the only legitimate child, as her mother Marie de Guise (1515-1560) was the
only legal wife of the King. The bastard children of King James V,
although older, did not get to rule.
Later, her only son, who became King James I of England as well as
King James VI of Scotland (1566-1625), thereby uniting England and
Scotland into one kingdom, was taken away from her shortly after his
birth and she never saw him again.
This widely acclaimed biography by Stefan Zweig is regarded as the
best of the many biographies of this famous woman.
The great thing about the author, Stefan Zweig, is that his
biographies are smooth and easy to read. By contrast, there is a
weighty tome with exactly the same title but 880 pages long. Here in
356 easy to read pages you can learn everything about Mary Queen of
Scots that you will probably ever want to know.
The way I remember the confusing but important facts of this
tumultuous period is that I remember that King James I was a
Protestant, because under him the King James Version of the Bible was authorized and composed. The King James Version is a Protestant Bible.
The Catholics have a different Bible. Therefore, King James I must
have been a Protestant. I remember his era because Jamestown, the
First Permanent Settlement in North America, was established during
his rule.
His mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was a Catholic. Since Catholics do
not recognize divorce, she was the rightful Queen of England under the Catholic System of counting. Therefore, her rival, Queen Elizabeth,
had to be Protestant if she wanted to remain Queen. The mother of
Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn (1501-1536), had her head chopped off because
her husband, King Henry VIII (1491-1547), wanted another wife.
However, when he again tired of the next wife too, he decided that it
would be bloody inconvenient to chop her head off too, so he changed
the Religion of England, abolishing Catholicism and establishing the
Church of England in its place. This change in religion enabled King
Henry VIII simply to divorce his next wife. He did not have to kill
that one.
The author, Stefan Zweig (born November 28, 1881, Vienna, Austria –
died February 22, 1942, Petrópolis, Brazil), was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer was one of the most successful
and popular authors of the 20th Century. Although he wrote in German,
his works were translated into English and several other languages.
Zweig was a prolific writer. In the 1930s he was one of the most
widely translated authors in the world. His extensive travels led him
to India, Africa, North and Central America, and Russia.
This book was first published in 1935 in Frankfurt, Germany in German
as Maria Stuart.
There is a tragedy associated with this book, because the author and
his wife died by suicide. He left a suicide note stating that he and
his wife were killing themselves because he was in despair because his
native country, Austria, had been overrun by the Nazis.
However, that was not a good reason for suicide, as he was safely in
Brazil and Austria had been taken by the Nazis years earlier.
Perhaps another reason for his suicide was he had lost his royalty
income due to the “Trading with the Enemies Act”. His books were all first published in Germany. Under the Trading with the Enemies Act, it
was illegal for any US company to pay money to any German company.
Austria had by then been annexed by Germany and was therefore part of Germany. Therefore, the distributors of his books were prohibited from
paying money to his publishers who, in turn, could not pay him.
This seems monumentally unfair to Zweig, as Zweig was Jewish. Life is
unfair.
Although one can sort-of understand why Stefan Zweig might commit
suicide, one cannot understand why he entered into a suicide pact with
his new wife so that they would both die together. She was only 33
years old and had everything to live for. He was 27 years older. They
had a nice apartment and a good life in Brazil. They took poison
together and dead bodies were found by a housekeeper with their arms
wrapped around each other.
Strangely, at the peak of his popularity and having just completed his autobiography while still working on four other books, Zweig committed suicide in Brazil with his new wife by them both taking poison. In
1939, he had married Charlotte Altmann, his secretary from 1933. She
was twenty-seven years his junior.
Zweig left a suicide note stating that he had done so because of the
Nazi takeover of his country of Austria and because Europe was
destroying itself with World War II that was taking place.
This does not seem like a good reason for suicide and why did he take
his new wife, aged only 33, with him?
Sam Sloan
New York NY
May 21, 2010
ISBN 4-87187-858-9
978-4-87187-858-6 http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=4871878589 http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871878589

(Recent Youtube upload):

How did MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS DIE | Famous royal executions | How did Mary Stuart die. History Calling

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