The Scottish throne was a blood-soaked inheritance. James I, topped at simply 11, was murdered in a sewer in 1437. His six-year-old son succeeded as James II and was killed by his personal malfunctioning cannon in 1460. Subsequent got here James III, aged eight, who died in battle in 1488, leaving the 15-year-old James IV to inherit the crown. He married Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder sister, solely to be killed throughout the Battle of Flodden in 1513 preventing the English. His 18-month-old son succeeded as James V however succumbed to illness aged 30, leaving a six-day-old child, Mary, as Queen of Scots. Her life was a tempest of intrigue and tragedy: pressured to abdicate in 1567, and executed 20 years later by order of her English cousin, Elizabeth. Mary’s 13-month-old son succeeded as king following her abdication, the sixth James to rule Scotland. Regardless of the load of his bloody and scandalous ancestry, a degree drilled into him by his abusive tutor George Buchanan, James escaped the brutal fates of his predecessors. He lived to the age of 59 and died not on a battlefield, sewer, or scaffold, however in his personal mattress, monarch of each Scotland and England: Britain’s first king. His ultimate moments have been marked not by violence, however by the heartbroken sobs of his lover, George Villiers – the final in an extended line of male favourites.
Gareth Russell’s Queen James masterfully illuminates James and the boys he cherished. The e book emotively explores the king’s relationships, providing a nuanced portrayal of James, the person, in a method that solely a biography which doesn’t discriminate towards his ardour for different males can. Russell’s exploration of James’ private life distinguishes itself by treating his sexual relationships with sensitivity, difficult the historic tendency to both dismiss, condemn, or ignore his same-sex want. Whereas some historians have beforehand claimed that the sexual component to James’ relationships with males is irrelevant, Russell’s biography demonstrates the other. The king had passionate bonds with males together with Patrick Grey, Alexander (Sandy) Lindsay, Robert Carr, and George Villiers. He argued with these males, kissed them publicly, wept when separated from them, and wrote them passionate letters. These letters, as Russell compellingly argues, solely make sense when learn as expressions of romantic and erotic love. Villiers’ suggestive longing to have the king’s ‘legs quickly in my arms’ and James’ personal concern that his want for Villiers would possibly devour him will resonate with any reader who has skilled love. The king couldn’t bear to be separated from his ‘sweetheart’ and ‘candy spouse’.
Russell skilfully exposes the double requirements utilized to historic accounts of sexuality. Historians have readily accepted proof of heterosexual royal affairs, typically based mostly on scant documentation, whereas demanding an impossibly excessive burden of proof for same-sex relationships. Mary Boleyn’s alleged affair with Henry VIII is extensively accepted regardless of being based mostly on restricted proof – just some sentences written by a Catholic prior, and an MP. The identical is true for dozens of different alleged royal affairs. This contradiction is compounded by the truth that many historic same-sex relationships, out of necessity, sought to obfuscate themselves from the file. As Russell highlights, James is an exception. As king, his life was by no means in danger due to his sexuality in the way in which it was for on a regular basis males, resembling John Lister and John Shaw, two blacksmiths who have been burned in Edinburgh in 1570. James’ place had the paradoxical impact of insulating him from these risks whereas exposing him to others.
James’ same-sex affairs have been typically accompanied by public scandal and mock, vividly recounted by Russell via occasions such because the Gowrie Conspiracy and Overbury Affair. The previous probably noticed Alexander Ruthven and James retreat to Gowrie Home to have intercourse, however led to Ruthven’s loss of life (and nearly the king’s) in 1600; the latter noticed the king pardon his erstwhile favorite, Robert Carr, an motion that appears stunning when in comparison with the readiness of his Tudor predecessors to execute their former favourites. Regardless of these affairs, reactions to James’ non-public life might be tolerant, if begrudgingly so. Nowhere is that this exhibited higher than the outlook of his spouse, the sensible Anna of Denmark, who emerges as a star of Russell’s narrative, the unique ‘dancing queen’. Russell captures Anna’s astuteness and readiness to play the sport of courtly intrigue. She was totally conscious of James’ intimacy with Carr and even promoted Villiers as his alternative – Villiers was her ‘pet canine’, a nickname the queen used to remind him that with out her, he wouldn’t have risen to the diploma that he did.
Queen James is greater than only a biography; it’s a reclamation. Gareth Russell masterfully items collectively the fragmented historic file, providing a nuanced and compassionate portrait of James VI and I, a king whose passions and complexities have typically been simplified or ignored. By giving voice to the total spectrum of his life and loves, Russell not solely illuminates James’ humanity but additionally challenges us to rethink the double requirements utilized to historic accounts of sexuality. James himself as soon as mentioned that sodomy was ‘a sin which ye are sure in conscience by no means to forgive’. But, in stark contradiction, in 1622 he intervened via the Lord Excessive Justice to spare the lifetime of a younger servant from the loss of life penalty after he was accused of sodomy, an overreach of his royal prerogative. These contradictions seize the historic multiplicity and intricacy of attitudes in the direction of same-sex love, complexities that formed James’ personal conflicted outlook. This e book is a crucial contribution to our understanding of James, his kingship, and the advanced tapestry of affection and energy in early trendy Britain.
Can we settle for that James, Britain’s first and arguably certainly one of its most profitable monarchs, was additionally a lover of males? Russell’s e book doesn’t simply present us that we will settle for this fact about James – it compels us to grasp it as important to his life, reign, and legacy.
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Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain’s First King
Gareth Russell
William Collins, 496pp, £25
Purchase from bookshop.org (affiliate hyperlink)
Jack Beesley is a PhD researcher at Manchester Metropolitan College.
