Mary Stuart and her husband Lord Darnley
The Queen of France and Scotland Maria Stuarda (1542-1587) was an intelligent and passionate woman, but not exactly a model mother.
Why?
Probably by nature, or for other reasons that it will be impossible to discover.
What is certain is that the sovereign had a son, Giacomo, born in 1566, future king of England, which he never took care of personally, and who instead preferred to entrust to the counts of Var, who raised him with love and dedication.
On the figure of James, who certainly as a child suffered from the lack of a true relationship with his august mother, there are various mysteries, almost certainly destined to remain unsolved.
The first concerns his real paternity : whose son was the boy ?
James I Stuart as a child
Officially of Enrico Stuart Lord Darnley , consort of Maria, a rough and despotic man whom the woman soon regretted having married, but the gossips at court believed that the real father was instead the Italian musician Davide Rizzio (or Hedgehog ), the Queen's personal secretary, killed in a brutal ambush orchestrated by Darnley himself.
Obviously, only the protagonists of the story could know the truth, but according to one of the greatest biographers of all time, the Austrian Stefan Zweig , it was in all likelihood only chatter, arising from the close relationship of great trust actually established between the Stuarda and the composer, but which according to him, never resulted in a relationship.
But that's not all.
The usual gossips of the time insinuated that little James had died as soon as he was born and literally replaced with one of the sons of the counts of Var:possible?
We do not know, but a rather disturbing fact, which could be linked to the event, occurred in 1830 , when, during some renovations in the royal apartments, the intact skeleton of an infant was found wrapped in the finest linen with the Stuarts' monogram stamped on it:who was it? .