Long portrayed as one of history's tragic figures, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots was devious yet naïve, sexually voracious yet often highly principled; she secured the Scottish throne and became ruler of a land whose importance was greater than its size might suggest. Laying aside the romanticized legends of the beautiful, ill-fated heroine, Jenny Wormald looks for the historical Mary, and finds a gifted woman whose outsized flaws left her at the mercy of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, who had her executed—not for political revenge—but out of sheer exasperation.