Rizzio: Darkland Tales

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After this violent struggle, Rizzio was dragged through the bed-chamber into the adjacent Audience Chamber and stabbed an alleged 57 times. His body was thrown down the main staircase nearby (now disused) and stripped of his jewels and fine clothes. [29] The location of Rizzio's murder is marked with a small plaque in the Audience Chamber, underneath which is a red mark on the floorboards, which reportedly was left when Rizzio was stabbed to death. [30] Mary doesn’t know that her Palace is surrounded – that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They’re coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her. Mary’s husband wants it done in front of her and he wants her to watch it done… About the Author The book seems like it is trying to be fiction and biographical account at the same time but succeeds in neither.

Rizzio knows his life is threatened. Of course it is, he’s a proxy for a queen. They resent her power, her sex, her religious devotion, her pregnancy which has the potential to carry on her Catholic line. They resent the compromise she represents, that there may not be a Protestant Europe, now and for ever. More than that, they hate her love match with Darnley because he’s Catholic and, almost worse, a Lennox. Irvine, Alex (2008), "John Constantine Hellblazer", in Dougall, Alastair (ed.), The Vertigo Encyclopedia, New York: Dorling Kindersley, pp.102–111, ISBN 0-7566-4122-5, OCLC 213309015 It was while researching a PhD thesis on the ascription of mental illness to female offenders, and teaching criminology and criminal law at Strathclyde University in the 1990s, that she decided to write her first novel Garnethill, published in 1998 by Transworld. Yair knows what is intended that night for Rizzio, and approves. So, obviously, does Darnley. He and Rizzio had been lovers, and that he can coolly play tennis with a man whose murder he has plotted, is a measure of his venality.

Rizzio: Darkland Tales

Mina’s foremost accomplishment is focusing on one singular event that generally fails to elicit primary attention and is often simply included in the queue of events in Mary’s life. “Rizzio” highlights several figures involved in the fateful evening and therefore truly provokes thought and alternative perspectives to those readers familiar with the history and additionally clarifies details. Rizzio was considered a good musician and excellent singer, which brought him to the attention of the cosmopolitan young queen. Towards the end of 1564, having grown wealthy under her patronage, he became the queen's secretary for relations with France, after the previous occupant of the post had retired. Rizzio was ambitious, controlling access to the queen and seeing himself as almost a Secretary of State. Other courtiers felt that as a Catholic and a foreigner he was too close to the queen. [9] Relationship with Darnley and with Mary [ edit ] Bibliography [ edit ] Denise Mina signing books at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2007 Novels [ edit ] Garnethill trilogy

Mary was a powerful woman whose gender made her vulnerable both physically and in terms of her hold on that power. Although Mina touches on this idea throughout, it feels at times as though this short novel is a step towards a longer work, one in which the predicament and point of view of the queen are explored in much greater depth. Perhaps she will write that book one day. Rizzio, meanwhile, is an intriguing sketch in blood. Lindsay, Elizabeth Blakesley (2007), Great Women Mystery Writers, Greenwood Press, 2nd edn, p. 178 ( ISBN 0-313-33428-5). Mary, Queen of Scots at the Palace of Holyroodhouse: A Creative Writing Resource for Teachers – Palace of Holyrood House Rizzio is the first in a series called Darkland Tales, “dramatic fictional retellings of stories from history” - but with a 21st century attitude. In 1566 David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered in her presence by a cabal of Scottish nobles hoping to overturn her rule. It’s a famous (or more rightly, infamous) story, the subject of another book I’ve read, The Italian Secretary.

Vengeance, skulduggery and a touch of farce: Rosemary Goring reviews Rizzio by Denise Mina

It is sometimes said that Rizzio was buried at the Canongate Kirk and burying ground. Holyroodhouse is within the old Canongate jurisdiction, and Rizzio's death was recorded in the Canongate registers. This pre-dated the building of the Canongate Kirk in 1688, and it is unlikely he could be buried there. [41] Representation in fiction [ edit ]

Henderson, Thomas Finlayson (1896). "Riccio, David". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol.48. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp.98–100. Joseph Bain, Calendar of State Papers Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), 269–270: Henry Ellis, Original Letters, series 1 vol. 2 (London, 1824), 220-222. At first glance, you might be forgiven for assuming that Denise Mina had jumped ship from the crime genre to join the ranks of bodice-rippers. Her recent novel, The Long Drop, about the 1950s serial killer Peter Manuel might, at a stretch, be called historical, but not in the way most of us understand it. With Rizzio, her retelling of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots’s Italian secretary, she has entered the territory of Hilary Mantel, Alison Weir, and innumerable others in the past, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Alison Uttley, who have turned the Tudors and Stuarts into literary gold. Hawkins, Sir John (1778). History and Character of Scots Music, including Anecdotes of the Celebrated David Rizzio. Universal Magazine, October 1778. A Drunk Woman Looks at the Thistle (2007), inspired by Hugh MacDiarmid's modernist poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, and first performed by Karen Dunbar.Buchanan, George, History of Scotland, book 17 chapter 65: James Aikman, History of Scotland, vol. 2 (Glasgow, 1827), p .483 & footnote: The Diary of Mr James Melville (Bannatyne Club, 1829), p. 86. Far more gory is the scene of Rizzio’s stabbing, by all who were party to the deed: “It takes quite a long time for everyone to have a go,” writes Mina, portraying some of the murderers as giggling. And although Darnley does not take part, his dagger is left in the corpse, so there is no doubt of his involvement. Ruefully, one of the lords later reflects: “They went a bit mad that night.”

Underneath that sloping roof is a man called Henry Yair. He’s watching the game, sitting on a bench built into the wall of the indoor court. He’s Lord Ruthven’s retainer, here to keep an eye on Darnley for the boss. I’m not sure where the idea came for Mina’s reimagining of the murder of David Rizzio (in her afterword she suggests Jamie Crawford from her publisher as having ‘commisisioned’ it), but from her pen, and in her very dark style, it works wonderfully well. But Rizzio has not fully understood the intricate disputational customs here. In Savonese courts a coup d’état is a hot fight, a charge and call to arms. It is not preceded by months spent drawing up legally binding contracts, negotiating the spoils, redrafting, getting their secretary to read over the proposals before they sign.Denise Mina had a peripatetic childhood following the career of her father who worked in the oil industry. Her family hail from Scotland, however, and it was in their native Glasgow that she returned to settle in 1986. Really, the most famous on this list. Capote is a god and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. He claimed to have invented the genre of the non-fiction novel but, for me, that discounts all autobiography. He immersed himself in the case, extensively interviewing the murderers of a family slaughtered at a small Kansas farm. The conflicting loyalty almost broke him. It’s one of those books that shouldn’t work but, once started, cannot be abandoned. James Crawford, editor-at-large at Polygon, commissioned the series. He says: “These books are sharp, provocative and darkly comic, mining that seam of sedition and psychological drama that has always featured in the best of Scottish literature.” It’s the evening of March 9, 1566 & Mary is hosting a small dinner party in her private chambers. In a couple of days, she will enact controversial laws that will consolidate her power. Then she can safely begin her confinement until she gives birth. Tonight is a chance to drop the facade & relax among friends, including Rizzio, her right-hand man.