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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

15. Murder in the Queen’s Presence

1133px lulvès murder of david rizzio — Lulvès Murder of David Rizzio. Wikimedia

Lord Darnley conspired with a cabal of aristocrats, including his father and other nobles, to effectively carry out a Protestant coup against Mary, with David Rizzio playing the role of scapegoat. On the evening of March 9^th, 1566, Darnley led a group of 80 armed men and forcibly seized Mary’s palace in Edinburgh, then burst into the queen’s dining room, where she was supping with her confidants, including David Rizzio.

Mary was publicly accused of dishonoring her husband by conducting a love affair with her secretary. In the ensuing fracas, which entailed the queen being held with a pistol pointed at her head while her secretary attempted to hide behind her, Darnley and his henchmen stabbed Rizzio to death. All in all, David Rizzio was stabbed 56 times, then his corpse was unceremoniously flung down the palace’s main stairs, and stripped of its jewels and fine clothes.

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.