Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots and Dowager Queen of France, wept as she held her little boy in her arms. The only thing of her late husband, Francis II, which she still had left to her. Once again she cursed her mother-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, for not allowing her to be by her husband's bedside as he died. She wept harder when she remembered that his final words had supposedly been to call out for her. Well, it wasn't the first time she had been refusing access to a Valois king of France as he died calling out for another woman.
Her son would be Francis-James. King of France and Scotland. That was sure enough. But Marie herself needed allies - her uncles lost a lot of authority now. And while the queens of France did not remarry, the queens of Scotland certainly did. And her crown was Scotland's. Not France's. If she played her cards right, she could even add England's to her head, considering that her English cousins had been bastards...
