Margaret Tudor arrived in Scotland in 1503 as a bride of fourteen, entering a marriage that was supposed to seal a permanent peace between England and Scotland. Her father, Henry VII, had won his crown on the battlefield and could not claim divine right as other kings did. His best security lay in arranging royal marriages, and Margaret was a valuable piece on that diplomatic chessboard. Before she was six years old, she was betrothed to King James IV of Scotland, a man more than twenty years her senior.
Some councillors warned that the match could pave the way for the Scots to claim the English throne, but the wedding went ahead at Holyrood Abbey in August 1503, after a year that had already taken Margaret’s mother, Elizabeth of York, to the grave. Compared to what awaited her, James IV was a kind husband. He was charismatic, rich, and genuinely fond of his young queen, and Margaret bore six children during their marriage. Only one survived infancy, a son also named James.
Then, in April 1509, her father died, and her younger brother ascended the throne as Henry VIII. Almost immediately the peace between England and Scotland began to fall apart. England went to war with France, Scotland’s longtime ally, and Margaret found herself torn between her husband and her brother. When Henry threatened to disinherit her for siding with James, she held her ground, and James prepared to invade England.
In September 1513, Margaret waited at Linlithgow Palace for news from the enormous Battle of Flodden. According to legend, she had dreamed of her husband falling from a great height. The dream proved prophetic. James IV was killed alongside roughly ten thousand Scots, and Margaret’s sister-in-law Katherine of Aragon sent the dead king’s bloody coat back to Henry VIII as a token of victory.
Margaret’s world collapsed into a struggle for power. Her son was still a toddler, and James IV’s will had made her regent of Scotland until the boy came of age. But the Scottish court resented being ruled by a woman, especially one whose brother had just killed their king. While still grieving and pregnant with James IV’s last child, Margaret faced fierce opposition.
She gave birth to a son, Alexander, in the spring after her husband’s death. Then, in August 1514, she made a decision that would haunt her for the rest of her life: she eloped with Archibald Douglas, a Scottish nobleman her own family called a witless fool. The marriage cost her the crown. James IV’s will had allowed her to rule only as a widow, and by remarrying she forfeited the regency.
To make matters worse, Douglas had been engaged to another woman when he married her, a fact that would later become her key to freedom. The Scottish court demanded that she hand over her sons and let the Duke of Albany govern the country. Backed into a corner, Margaret surrendered her children and fled Scotland with the help of her brother, who had his own reasons for keeping her safe: at the time, she was his heir. Douglas refused to follow her, choosing instead to stay in Scotland and curry favor with the new ruler.
Margaret gave birth to his child alone and fell dangerously ill. Worse news followed when she learned that her baby son Alexander had died before his second birthday, and in her grief she publicly accused the Duke of Albany of poisoning the child. Margaret spent the next few years traveling, but Henry VIII wanted her back in Scotland, where she could influence her young son, the future king. By 1517 she returned, only to discover that her husband had taken up with an old mistress and was living lavishly at her expense.
She immediately began divorce proceedings, a slow and difficult process in the sixteenth century. Douglas, meanwhile, controlled her money, kept her from her lands, and worked with his allies to seize control of the Scottish government. He was not an easy man to discard. Margaret eventually found an unlikely ally in the Duke of Albany, the man she had once accused of murdering her son.
In November 1521 she waged a successful coup against her own husband, marching into Edinburgh side by side with Albany while Douglas was stripped of his titles. Rumors of an affair between Margaret and Albany followed, but she had larger problems. She had allowed a woman named Isabella Hoppringle, a nun and close companion, into her household. Isabella was secretly selling Scottish secrets to Henry VIII.
When angry Scottish nobles threatened to punish her, Margaret intervened and demanded loyalty, but the nun continued spying for England. England and Scotland spent years lurching between conflict and negotiation, with everyone double-crossing everyone else. Margaret’s son, James V, finally took the throne in 1524, but her personal battles continued. She still wanted to be rid of Archibald Douglas.
Henry VIII, however, insisted she reconcile with him and invited Douglas to come woo her back. When Margaret refused, her estranged husband marched on the Scottish Parliament in an attempt to seize control from her and her son. Margaret wrote to Albany, saying she would ally with him and fight England before she would take Douglas back. The letter was intercepted by her brother, who was so enraged that Margaret fearfully took back her words and began to play nice.
Whenever Douglas gained even a little power, he used it against her. In 1526 he was given guardianship of the fourteen-year-old James V and used the position to turn the boy against his mother and uncle, essentially kidnapping the king and refusing to return him. Margaret tried repeatedly to rescue her son, but all attempts failed. In the end, James escaped on his own after three years in his stepfather’s household.
When mother and son were finally reunited, Margaret had moved on. She had taken a new lover, a Scottish nobleman named Henry Stewart, whom she had elevated to Lord Methven. She shared a home with him and barely attended Parliament anymore, and whispering courtiers suspected she was hiding a pregnancy out of wedlock. Now more than ever she needed a divorce.
Douglas’s endless womanizing finally worked in her favor: she was granted the divorce on the grounds that he had been engaged to another woman when they married. Free at last, Margaret immediately married Lord Methven. He turned out to be even worse than Douglas, taking a mistress and draining her finances just as her second husband had done. Ten years into the marriage, she was petitioning for yet another divorce.
By 1528, James V was ruling for himself, but Margaret held no place in his government. Mother and son barely got along. James refused to let her divorce Methven, and she complained that he gave her too little money. The real rupture came when Margaret was caught leaking her son’s state secrets to Henry VIII.
For the rest of her life she petitioned her brother to return her daughter, Margaret Douglas, who had been raised in the English court and had followed her mother into scandal by taking a lover and spending time in the Tower of London. The young woman never saw her mother again. Margaret Tudor spent her later years alienating the powerful people around her, including her brother and her son. Though she and James eventually made peace, they had little time to enjoy it.
After a stroke, she died on October 18, 1541, at the age of fifty-one, with her son failing to reach her bedside in time. Her legacy proved stranger than her life. Henry VIII was appalled when his sister sought to treat the sacrament of marriage so lightly, and he once said no one could live a more shameful life than Margaret. But in the end, her descendants, not his, ended up on the throne.
Henry VIII died without grandchildren, while Margaret became the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and great-grandmother of James I, who succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne. Today’s British royal family descends through Margaret, the scandalous first Tudor princess who outlasted her infamous brother through her bloodline.