So High a Blood: The Story of Margaret Douglas, the Tudor that Time Forgot

While doing my PhD work in English Literature I would constantly wonder why academic sources had to be so unbearably boring. Why couldn’t the authors manage to portray the historical figures in a readable but credible way using solid research? I am beyond happy to have discovered Morgan Ring’s So High A Blood, which explores previously unexamined archival sources but translates the findings into a novel that is engaging while still being scholarly.

In this book, Ring’s focus is Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox and the daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret and her second husband, Archibald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus. We follow her from her arrival at her uncle’s court at the age of fifteen until her death in 1578. As was the fate of women at that time, her life was never her own. She was always daughter, wife, or mother. She was married off as benefited the family, even more so because she was royal, and when her own hopes to be a queen diminished, she replaced them with trying to put her son on the throne of Scotland. She always believed that her family would serve to unite the British kingdoms under one ruler.
This is a fascinating look at one of Tudor England’s forgotten women.