Rizzio: Darkland Tales

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Mary remains one of the most intriguing & divisive characters in royal history. There was no shortage of drama in her short life but one of the most compelling incidents was the murder of her private secretary David Rizzio. Maybe because one of the ringleaders behind the plot was her snivelling weasel of a husband, Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley). Underneath that sloping roof is a man called Henry Yair. He’s watching the game, sitting on a bench built into the wall of the indoor court. He’s Lord Ruthven’s retainer, here to keep an eye on Darnley for the boss.

Rizzio was played by John Carradine in the 1936 RKO picture Mary of Scotland; by Ian Holm in the 1971 movie Mary, Queen of Scots; by Tadeusz Pasternak in the BBC mini-series Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot; by Andrew Shaver in The CW network television show Reign; and by Ismael Cruz Córdova in the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots.

Table of Contents

I loved what Denise Mina did with the insane Henry Yair, and the 'afterwards' section, when we read what happened to Mary in the years to follow and, most interesting of all, what happened to the Queen's apartments at Holyrood Palace. Fascinating. I have to look up more about this! In fact, Rizzio has more to hide than Darnley. At one time Rizzio shared Darnley’s bed, lay at his feet and called him master. He loved Darnley then and he still loves him. This yearning is his great secret, the one thing he will never tell anyone. He can hardly admit it to himself because Darnley is handsome and rich and charismatic, but he’s also a braggart and a liar, a hoormaister, a weak, weeping, drunken fool who screams demands at the Queen in public. Once he hit her at a dinner, served her a smarting slap across the face as if she were a maid come late with the wine. But Rizzio loves him. He would have served him for ever but Darnley got used to him, came to trust him and grew disinhibited in front of him. He let Rizzio see who he really was. It pains Rizzio to admit it, but Darnley is a poor prince.

So I felt the basic story Mina sets out to tell is as likely to be true as any other. However, the novella is part of a series called Darkland Tales from Polygon, an imprint of independent Scottish publisher, Birlinn. The publishers say: “In Darkland Tales, the best modern Scottish authors offer dramatic retellings of stories from the nation’s history, myth and legend. These are landmark moments from the past, viewed through a modern lens and alive to modern sensibilities.” The “modern sensibility” Mina has used is the idea of misogyny and the subjugation of women to the control of powerful men. Again, I have no problem with this – all of the Queens of that Queenly era had to navigate the patriarchal society with great care to hold onto their power. Some did it by marrying powerful men, like Bloody Mary; some by remaining unmarried, like the Virgin Queen; and it is generally agreed that a lot of Mary QOS’s problems arose from her penchant for marrying unsuitable men. Irvine, Alex (2008), "John Constantine Hellblazer", in Dougall, Alastair (ed.), The Vertigo Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp.102–111, ISBN 0-7566-4122-5, OCLC 213309015 Of course her modesty is utterly misplaced and her talent and affinity with the written word resulted in Garnethill, which won the CWA Dagger for Best First Crime Novel. Rizzio reads like a classic crime novel. Not just the violence and the act but the way she uses it as lens to look at the time and place. Very true-crime--no thees, thous or privies. yet it's totally of the moment and set over Saturday evening, 9 March, 1566. Mary’s palace is surrounded. All action takes places over that day and night. I had no idea Rizzio and Darnley were 'involved'! And Mina properly centres the women--even though the book is called Rizzio. I won't give away the spoiler! I’ve read much of what Mina has written, and always enjoyed it, but this format brings out the very best of her, the grizzly and the gruesome stirred in with occasional pinches of dark humour.It was while researching a PhD thesis on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, and teaching criminology and criminal law at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, that she decided to write her first novel Garnethill, published in 1998 by Transworld. Mary doesn’t know that her Palace is surrounded – that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They’re coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her. Mary’s husband wants it done in front of her and he wants her to watch it done… About the Author After the marriage, rumours became rife that Mary was having an adulterous affair with Rizzio. [15] It was said (in 1568) that Mary and Darnley's love decayed after they returned from the Chaseabout Raid, "she using the said David more like a lover than a servant, forsaking her husband's bed". [16] According to a French diplomat's report, Darnley had discovered Rizzio in the closet of Mary's bedchamber at Holyroodhouse in the middle of the night dressed only in a fur gown over his shirt. [17] Wealth, possessions and costume [ edit ] A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle (2007), inspired by Hugh MacDiarmid's modernist poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and first performed by Karen Dunbar.

At Holyrood Palace on the evening of 9th March 1566, David Rizzio, private secretary of Mary Queen of Scots and one of her closest friends, was enjoying supper with his pregnant queen when the Queen's husband and other Scottish nobles entered the room and stabbed Rizzio a total of fifty six times. Denise Mina's new novella Rizzio tells the story of that evening and the events leading up to it in a breathtakingly fast-paced historical thriller. There is a modern-take to “Rizzio” with some contemporary literary devices, descriptors and even an omnipresent narrator but this ‘works’, as well. Mina’s writing is intricately-woven and perfectly-balanced allowing her to get away with more than the typical author. This novella is a fictionalised re-telling of the real-life murder of David Rizzio, a favourite of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1566. The event is well known in Scotland and most tourists to Edinburgh will have shivered over the “bloodstains” in Mary’s chambers in Holyrood Palace. However the reasons for the murder were murky even at the time and different theories have been put forward ever since. One of the many rumours was that Rizzio was Mary’s lover and that the child with which she was pregnant, who later became James VI of Scotland and I of England, was Rizzio’s rather than her husband, Darnley’s. Mina absolves Mary of this charge (I’m no expert, but I think most historians agree that it was a false rumour), and weaves a political conspiracy that the murder was done by the Protestant Lords to usurp power from the Catholic Mary and set Darnley up as a puppet King in her stead. I’d think that’s more likely than the jealous lover theory, myself. Mina also goes along with the theory that in fact Darnley and Rizzio had been lovers, a theory agreed to, I believe, by eminent historian and biographer of Mary, John Guy.

The book seems like it is trying to be fiction and biographical account at the same time but succeeds in neither.

Rizzio knows his life is threatened. Of course it is, he’s a proxy for a queen. They resent her power, her sex, her religious devotion, her pregnancy which has the potential to carry on her Catholic line. They resent the compromise she represents, that there may not be a Protestant Europe, now and for ever. More than that, they hate her love match with Darnley because he’s Catholic and, almost worse, a Lennox.

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Gordon Donaldson, Scotland's History: Approaches and Reflections (Scottish Academic Press, 1995), p. 63: Charles Rogers, History of the Chapel Royal of Scotland (London, 1882), p. lxiv: Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. 19 (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 338. But Rizzio is from Milan. He has worked in the Court of Savoy – his father was a secretary to a grand court in Italy – and he’s seen far worse. ‘They’re all talk,’ he says when he hears the rumours of threats on his life. ‘The Scots threaten all the time, but they never do anything.’ Nothing surprises him and, if it does, he doesn’t react. Denise Mina (born 21 August 1966) is a Scottish crime writer and playwright. She has written the Garnethill trilogy and another three novels featuring the character Patricia "Paddy" Meehan, a Glasgow journalist. Described as an author of Tartan Noir, she has also written for comic books, including 13 issues of Hellblazer. [1]