What If Mary Queen of Scots Was Never Executed?
About this episode
This episode explores the hypothetical scenario of Mary Queen of Scots not being executed and its implications on history.
Mary, Queen of Scots was executed on February 8th, 1587, on the strength of a decoded letter and a forged postscript that Elizabeth's spymaster slipped into her own secret code. But what if that letter never got decoded at all? In this episode I pull that one thread and follow it all the way out. No execution means no closure for Elizabeth, a murkier justification for the Spanish Armada, and a genuinely messier road to the Union of the Crowns in 1603, the moment that eventually gives us the United Kingdom as we know it. One coded letter in a beer barrel, and everything after it tips sideways.This is part of my ongoing What If series, where I take real Tudor history and nudge it just slightly off its actual path to see what breaks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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- The Priest Who Escaped the Tower of London
- Henry VIII Got Six Tries. Could His Wives Get One?
- Edward VI vs. The Dragon: A Protestant Boy King Who Tried to Rewrite England's Most Elite Knighthood
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