Margaret Tudor – queen, regent and hapless intermediary

The history of princesses and queens has become well-trodden ground in the women’s history genre, particularly the Tudors. Linda Porter’s The Thistle and the Rose, a life of Margaret Tudor, queen consort to James IV and mother of James V, provides a refreshing change in subject.

Margaret has had to share the stage with some of the most famous names and voices of the 16th century: Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York; Henry VIII and his wives; and, of course, her namesake, Margaret Beaufort, the formidable Tudor matriarch who deftly helped place her son, the victor of Bosworth, on the throne. Margaret Tudor, though less considered in popular history, held equal if not greater sway in her contribution to history, as Porter demonstrates in her meticulously detailed biography of the English princess turned queen of Scotland.

The relationship between England and Scotland was fraught, with two centuries of war played out in the borderlands, a frontier zone peppered with garrisons.