Mary Queen of Scots – Parlez-Vous Français?
Mary, Queen of Scots was the daughter of James V & Mary of Guise. During the Rough Wooing when Henry VIII of England invaded Scotland & tried to use force to get James to marry of the young Mary to him, she was sent to France for her own safety. There she married the young French Prince, who later became King of Frace but died at a tragically young age. Given that most of her early years were spent in France she spoke French fluently & probably did speak with a French accent, but she was Scots through & through. So your girlfriend is a little incorrect. I wouldn’t want to see Elizabeth I – the Golden Age anyway. For a start she wasn’t Elizabeth I of Scotland, the current monarch bearing the name Elizabeth is.
Born in Scotland (Linlithgow Palace, just down the road from me) and raised predominantly in France from the age of five. So it’s highly unlikely she’d have spoken with Glaswegian accent (I said the same about the kid playing young William Wallace at the start of Braveheart…. another film that cheerfully rewrote history a little more ‘Hollywood….’ but it’s very likely she could speak English. Probably Latin as well. Nah, the most ridiculous thing in that film is worse than that. Elizabeth on the cliffs in a suit of armour delivering a rousing speech. Did that happen in the real world? Did it f*ck. Most of the rest of it is conjecture as well, but at least most of the major facts were correct.
