Stirling Castle and expanded his father's building programme, creating the centrepiece of the castle, the Royal Palace, built under the direction of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart and masons brought from France. James V also died young, leaving unfinished work to be completed by his widow, Mary of Guise. His infant daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, was brought to Stirling Castle for safety, and crowned in the chapel royal on 9 September 1543. She too was brought up here, until she was sent to Inchmahome Priory, and then to France in 1548. In the 1550s, during the Regency of Mary of Guise,
Cultural depictions of Mary, Queen of Scots The subject of Mary, Queen of Scots was a common one. Usually the operas dealt with the section of her life when she was being persecuted by Elizabeth I of England. She was considered a sympathetic character in southern Europe due to her Catholicism. Mary's story proved popular among liberals and revolutionaries in 19th-century Italy. These were especially attracted by the various plots made to save her as well as her death as a political martyr, both of which they interpreted as comparable to their own struggle. The Carbonari took their name from a mythical ring of English coal-burners, supposedly