Mary and her Hate Club: History meets Creative Writing

As I discussed in my post about categorizing and relationships, many skills are sharpened doing any variety of activity.  Learning happens on a curve, not in a straight line.

On that note I want to share something fun from our personal adventures in learning and living.

We enjoy Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer.  We usually read aloud and then talk about what we've read or sometimes journal a summary.  Once in a while when inspired, one of the children will write an entire essay on a particular event or person that they found to be especially interesting.  We don't rely entirely on SOW but we do enjoy reading through the summarized accounts in these wonderfully written volumes.

Today, we read a bit about Mary Queen of Scotland.  We've been talking a whole lot lately about variances in religion and specifically, variances within Christianity itself and how humanity has been affected, socially and politically over time and still is today.  The account of Queen Mary was timely.

My daughter, J enjoys writing.  She often journals summaries of what we read aloud.  Sometimes, J adds a little flair and creative spin to jazz up the story.  The creative spin deviates from the historical account, but she has a good time.

(To satisfy that need in us Moms and Dads to tally the subjects covered, we've got history, politics, religion, social studies, technology (J used Evernote) and of course creative writing. ;) )

Since I mention it... Here I shall share the very abridged, very brief and swift account of Mary... with plenty of creative liberty.

Mary, the queen of Scotland, inherited the throne when she was only five days old.  Her mother, Mary of Guise, ruled in her place.  Mary of Guise was a good queen, but she was Catholic, and the Protestant noblemen didn't like that, oh no they didn't like it AT ALL.

So the Protestant noblemen created a hate-club-council against Mary of Guise.  Mary of Guise was afraid that the noblemen's hate-club would try to turn her daughter, Little Mary, into a Protestant.  So Mary of Guise sent Little Mary to France, where she would learn to be a good little Catholic, and always, always, always listen to the church.  Mary of Guise died a few years later, without ever seeing her daughter again.

Little Mary lived in France for the next thirteen years, while the Protestant noblemen hate-club grew stronger and stronger.  When Mary was eighteen, she returned to Scotland to take her throne back.  But when the hate-club met Mary, they where charmed by her hypnotizing stare, and decided to turn their hate-club into a raving fan-club.  Mary told the fan-club that she respected the Protestant ways, and decided to marry one of the fan-club members, Lord Darnley.

Lord Darnley and Mary lived happily ruling Scotland...for a little while.  Lord Darnley missed the assortment of trolls he had in his hate-club, and he decided he wanted more power.  Mary found out that Lord Darnley was getting the hate-club together, so she snuck away and began to gather herself an army.

When the hate-club found out that Mary was getting together an army, the members screamed and ran away, dispatching the hate-club.  Lord Darnley decided the blame the whole hate-club scheme on the Lords who fled already. Queen Elizabeth of England found out about the hate-club, and was surprised Mary didn't stab him on the spot.  Mary pardoned her husband because she was pregnant, and couldn't raise a baby with the constant threat of the evil Protestants.

After Mary's baby was born, she was staying in a castle, and across the town, Lord Darnley was in a separate castle.  The castle that Lord Darnley was in blew up, and Lord Darnley was strangled. Everyone thought that Mary did it, so Queen Elizabeth sent her to live far, far away from civilization.

Mary sent her lots of needlepoint, but Queen Elizabeth threw them all in the trash.  Mary was plotting to escape, so Elizabeth sent her to be beheaded.  Mary's head was disconnected from her body, and the executioner revealed that her hair had turned white.  Everybody cried.  The end.

Note: More humorous was the fast paced "Journalist" tone of voice J used to read it out loud.

Point?  History matters, but have fun with it!