7. Wrong: While Mary undoubtedly considered Elizabeth to be her inferior, the Queen of Scotland would never have expressed this belief directly to her English cousin
In the climatic face-to-face meeting between Mary and Elizabeth in Mary, Queen of Scots, the dethroned Scottish Queen denounced her English cousin’s criticisms. Responding that she would not be “scolded by her inferior”, moving beyond the already considered historical reality that the pair never, in fact, met in person, Mary’s behavior in this scene would never have transpired in real life. Not only was Elizabeth at this time Mary’s salvation, fleeing from imprisonment in Scotland and hoping the English Queen might assist her in reclaiming her lost crown and child, but Mary would have felt no need to explicitly state something so impolitely which she believed to be true.
However, that Mary did indeed regard herself as Elizabeth’s better is incontrovertibly accurate. Along with the bulk of her Catholic contemporaries across Europe, Mary was considered the rightful ruler of England due to Elizabeth’s heretical Protestantism, as well as a treasonous mother, invalidating her claim. Mary repeatedly sought to contest the throne of England, strongly opposing the Treaty of Edinburgh in 1560 – which declared Elizabeth the official monarch and denied Mary the right to use the arms of signs of England and Ireland in her heraldry – successfully blocking its ratification.