structural:summarization
Legacy

Assessments of Mary in the 16th century divided between Protestant reformers such as George Buchanan and John Knox, who vilified her mercilessly, and Catholic apologists such as Adam Blackwood, who praised, defended and eulogised her. After the accession of James I in England, historian William Camden wrote an officially sanctioned biography that drew from original documents. It condemned Buchanan's work as an invention, and "emphasized Mary's evil fortunes rather than her evil character". Differing interpretations persisted into the 18th century: William Robertson and David Hume argued that the casket letters were genuine and that Mary was guilty of adultery and murder, while William Tytler argued the reverse. In the latter half of the 20th century, the work of Antonia Fraser was acclaimed as "more objective... free from the excesses of adulation or attack" that had characterised older biographies, and her contemporaries Gordon Donaldson and Ian B. Cowan also produced more balanced works.

Historian Jenny Wormald concluded that Mary was a tragic failure, who was unable to cope with the demands placed on her, but hers was a rare dissenting view in a post-Fraser tradition that Mary was a pawn in the hands of scheming noblemen. There is no concrete proof of her complicity in Darnley's murder or of a conspiracy with Bothwell. Such accusations rest on assumptions, and Buchanan's biography is today discredited as "almost complete fantasy". Mary's courage at her execution helped establish her popular image as the heroic victim in a dramatic tragedy.