Mary, Queen of Scots might be one of the most popular and well-known monarchs in Scottish history, but who was she really?

Orphaned and the new Scottish Queen by the absurdly young age of six days old, Mary was marked by tragedy right from the start. From Henry VIII’s “Rough Wooing” of Scotland to Mary’s early years in France under the watchful eyes of her powerful Guise uncles and her headstrong mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici, Mary outshines her perpetually sickly and sniveling French husband and stakes a claim for the English throne. All before the age of seventeen.