How history remembers the lives and loves of James VI

This book review first appeared in The National (February 2026).

“Just so are women all by nature vain/ They cannot keep a secret unrevealed…They are fulfilled by gossip without worth; They let the smallest crime consume their earth.” And so concludes King James VI and I in his poem ‘A Satire Against Women’, penned when he was a young man in the 1580s. It is not surprising that James is often remembered by historians of Scottish women’s history for his misogyny in his writing. As a gender historian who prefers researching the lives of ordinary women in early modern Scotland, you will forgive me in admitting that I initially approached Gareth Russell’s new book Queen James: The Life and Loves of Britain’s First King with a level of hesitancy.

Before I started the book, I certainly held some prejudices about James Stuart – as a man and a ruler. His relationship with his mother Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots) is often characterised as cold, distant and fraught with political tension. His relationship with Queen Elizabeth I during their thirty-year correspondence is remembered as similarly complex and calculated, with James repeatedly ignoring her advice on governance. Most famously, James is widely remembered for deeply influencing the Scottish witch hunts by fuelling a moral panic resulting in thousands of executions, the majority of whom were women.

I gladly admit that Russell, in writing Queen James, has challenged many of my personal views about James’s legacy. What I was confronted with was a much more multifaceted and richer imagination of James’s life story than expected. Russell’s ability to recover nuance and inject humanity into James’s story is what makes this book a real page turner. I simply couldn’t put it down. In the end I felt a deep level of compassion towards James. His youth was marred by tragedy – at the age of five he witnessed the death of his grandfather, Matthew Stuart, 4th Earl of Lennox, and at 16 he was abducted from Ruthven Castle by Protestant Nobles. His mother was beheaded by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, when James was 21. As an adult he survived multiple assassination attempts – Guy Fawkes and the Gunpower Plot being the most memorable. The grief that James experienced following the deaths of five of his children – particularly after losing his eldest son Prince Henry, at the age of 18 – reduced me to tears. I think it is fair to say that James’s life was far from easy.

Aside from James’s relationships with his male ‘favourites’ – many of whom I was left convinced were indeed romantic and sexual – I mainly enjoyed reading about his relationships with the women in his life. His closeness to Lady Mar – his governess since he was a baby and whom he privately addressed as “Lady Minny” – is depicted as deeply affectionate and mutually loving. Lady Mar was devoted to James, and she reportedly did her best to shield the young James from the fury of his tutor, Geroge Buchanan. James was also a devoted and affectionate father, and his relationship with his eldest daughter Elizabeth was particularly touching. Before Elizabeth embarked on a ship to set sail with her new husband, Frederick V, Count Palatine of the Rhine, she sent a letter to James in which she expressed grief at the thought that “I shall, perhaps, never see again the flower of princes, the king of fathers, the best and most amiable father that the Sun will ever see”, but promised no matter the geographical distance between them, she would always love him (p. 295). In his last meeting with Frederick, James reiterated that he expected his daughter to be cherished privately and honoured publicly, and that no member of Frederick’s court, including his mother, should ever be granted precedence above her.

The depiction of James’s wife, Queen Anne of Denmark, was the highlight of the book. In popular history, Anne’s story often starts and ends following her marriage and a stormy journey from Denmark, which is often attributed to inspiring James’s strong belief in witchcraft. But Anne’s life story deserves much more study and interest, as she is certainly one of the most remarkable Queens in British history. Politically astute and emotionally intelligent, Anne held her own amongst the Scottish nobility. She used fashion, courtly entertainments and patronage of the arts to define her own social and political identity in Scotland. Her thirty-year marriage with James was filled with love, humour, respect, anger and regret.

Out of all of James’s male ‘favourites’, I was captivated by his relationship with Geroge Villers, whom he affectionally referred to as “my only sweet wife” after the death of his actual wife Queen Anne in 1619.  In the face of parliamentary criticism of George, James even told him that he would “rather live banished in any part of the earth with you than live a sorrowful widow’s life without you.” (p365). Despite the presence of ample, compelling evidence, Russell is acutely aware that the burden of proof to confidently label James’s relationships with his male ‘favourites’ as sexual is impossibly high. There is no doubt that some Scottish historians will query his retelling of James’s intimate relationships with men, particularly as it was common for aristocrats to write to each other in emotional language that might be construed as romantic to the modern reader. But James readily exceeded the credibly platonic in his letters.

To fully uncover same-sex relationships, it is the duty of historians to read against the grain and challenge our preconceptions about how people experienced attraction, love and intimacy in the past. Thanks to recent methodological developments in gender history, the history of sexuality and the history of emotions, it is now widely accepted that same-sex attraction and acts of same-sex sexual intimacy were increasingly common throughout history. James clearly held romantic feelings for many of his male ‘favourites’, many of whom clearly reciprocated such emotions through words and physical acts of intimacy, regardless of their true motive.

Russell’s humane biography of James Stuart is deserving of scholarly and public attention. The book is rich in detail, and Russell treats his James and his contemporaries with sensitivity and rigour. King James VI and I was, indeed, “deeply flawed – a hypocrite, a genius, a liar, a royal friend, a pedant, a loving father, a spendthrift, and a man who was capable of great vindictiveness and great kindness.” (p.389). Despite many bumps in the road, James was an incredibly successful, astute monarch who deserves to be remembered for his many triumphs, as well as his flaws.