Denise Mina (2021) Rizzio.

Here’s the remit. Denise Mina was commissioned to write about Mary Queen of Scots through a contemporary fictional lens. A very short novel in which the major characters of the Scottish aristocracy appear in a plot against the Crown. She focused on the murder of David Rizzio aged 33, at Holyrood, on Saturday the 9^th March 1566.

Rizzio came from an area we now call Italy. A commoner that could speak four languages and acted as the Queen’s personal secretary. With Protestant England a superpower on Scotland’s doorstep and the Queen a Catholic, alliances had to be forged with other sympathetic monarchs abroad. Rizzio is gay in lots of ways. He dresses well and sings well. He shared a bed with the Queen’s husband.

The first chapter is titled ‘David Rizzio Plays Tennis with His Assassins’. Bats and balls were different, it was made of cork. I’m not sure how the scoring went with all that love-love. Rizzio is still in love with his former master. There’s another game being played. Darnley wants to see his wife and child die. But he doesn’t want to kill her, not directly. He does want to be King. His role as the Queen’s consort is not enough. He wants to rule as men do over their wife and a monarch acts as little gods over their subjects. But he’s not really sure what he wants because he’s a bit of ditherer and dunce being manipulated by the other Scottish Lords including his father, Lennox. He hopes the insurrection and murder of Rizzio in front of Mary will cause her to miscarry their child (James VI and I) and die. Scottish, Game of Thrones. Read on.     

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