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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

11. The Queen Abandoned by Her Latest Love

Queen Mary and the Earl of Bothwell raised an army against their opponents. However, before any battle was fought, the royal couple’s forces evaporated, as their men deserted them. Bothwell was allowed to leave, provided he left Mary behind. Whatever love he might have felt for Mary, it was not greater than his love for his own life. Bothwell jumped at the chance to save his skin, and abandoned his wife to the tender mercies of her enemies.

Mary was taken captive to Edinburgh, where she was denounced as an adulteress and murderess, and imprisoned. On July 24^th, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, James. She fled to England, where she got involved in further political intrigues, which ended with her beheading two decades later.

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.