Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley, Alison Weir

One of my coworkers picked this book up and went, "What is this, like, a Phillipa Gregory book?" I kind of rolled my eyes and said, "Actually it's a 600 page non-fiction book about the murder of the King of Scotland." She shrugged and said, "I didn't like 'The Other Boleyn Girl' that much," and walked away. 

I am definitely the sort of person who enjoys a 600 page exploration of the evidence about who killed someone 400 years ago (even though most of that evidence has vanished or was a forgery to begin with). The process of trying to solve a mystery hundreds of years after the fact is so INTERESTING. I'm not particularly invested in who killed Lord Darnley, so I'm happy to go along with Weir's opinion on Mary's guilt. And it as a super interesting contrast to her book on Elizabeth, which wasn't sympathetic to Mary at all.

Grade: B

Originally posted 2010