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Historic Love and Marriages From Hell

Khalid Elhassan September 22, 2020 31 min

Jerry Lee Lewis - Myra Gale Brown — Jerry Lee Lewis and his child bride, back home after a disastrous overseas trip. The Commercial Appeal

18. The Queen Falls in Love

Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. National Galleries of Scotland

Whatever the truth about an affair between the queen and her private secretary, Mary’s affections were soon captured by another beau. Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545 – 1567) was Mary’s cousin. A handsome and well-proportioned young man, Darnley was nineteen when he first met Mary in 1565. The queen was captivated by her cousin, and soon fell head over heels in love with him. In addition to the attraction, a marriage made dynastic sense: it would unite two branches of the Stuart line, and thus strengthen the Scottish royal family.

A marriage was swiftly arranged, and Darnley ascended the throne of Scotland as king consort. Soon after the wedding, however, Mary discovered that her second husband was a spoiled brat, with an excessive sense of entitlement. Darnley grew livid when Mary refused to grant him the Crown Matrimonial, which would have allowed him to continue ruling after her death. When his wife got pregnant, instead of being pleased, Darnley worried that an heir would push him that much further from the throne.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.