Book Launch Guest Post by Steven Veerapen, Author of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I

New on Amazon UK and Amazon US

James VI and I has long endured a mixed reputation. To many, he is the homosexual King, the inveterate witch-roaster, the smelly sovereign who never washed, the colourless man behind the authorised Bible bearing his name, the drooling fool whose speech could barely be understood. For too long, he has paled in comparison to his more celebrated – and analysed – Tudor and Stuart forebears. But who was he really? To what extent have myth, anecdote, and rumour obscured him?

One of the joys of writing a biography is coming to discover what drives a subject: what their overriding goals and motivations are. Through spending months and years with them, poring over their letters and seeking answers to their (sometimes odd) actions, it becomes possible to see them in a whole new light. It’s a wonderful experience – it’s communing, as far as is possible, with the dead.

What surprised me most in tackling James VI and I (the subject of “The Wisest Fool”) is just how much my pre-existing attitudes to this infamous and often-overlooked monarch shifted. In beginning my research, I confess I was massively biased against him. Here, I thought, was the pedantic, slobbering, humourless boor of legend: the man who appears in fictional treatments fiddling with his codpiece, obsessively hunting witches, and drooling over male lovers.

What I found instead was a man who wasn’t always likeable but who was very far from the stereotype created by caricaturists. James was, to my surprise, neither a fool nor, exclusively at least, an inflexible intellectual. Rather, he was a colourful, extravagant figure who managed to combine an innate intellectualism with a love of jewels and display, emotional neediness, an almost pathetic craving to be loved, and a sometimes catty sense of humour that refused to be tamed.

“The Wisest Fool” traces the king’s journey from birth until death: it investigates his reaction to (indeed, his complete rejection of) pedagogical attempts to fashion him as a classical republican prince whose power derived from the people; his curious relationship with his distant mother, who fascinated him (as she has fascinated millions of people down the centuries); his active bisexuality (which saw him prefer men romantically but pursue sexual relationships with men and women); his marriage to the politically astute Anna of Denmark; his successful attempts to raise the prestige of the Scottish Crown; and his laudable if ultimate unsuccessful peace policy in England. 

This is a James who could haughtily announce to parliament that he was ‘born to be begged of, not to beg’, who could dazzle in hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of jewels at his daughter’s wedding, and who could immure himself in the countryside dashing off tracts in favour of the royal supremacy. It is a king whose dreams centred on creating a perfect family, a perfect kingdom, and a perfect Christendom, little realising that he didn’t live in a perfect world.

A constant throughout this book – and the real pleasure of writing it – has been discovering James the man, in all his brash, arrogant, spendthrift glory. I hope that readers will enjoy discovering what made this misunderstood and much-derided king tick as much as I did.

Steven Veerapen

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About the Author

Steven Veerapen is a writer of fiction and nonfiction and a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde who specialises in sixteenth-century literature. His first novel was The Queen’s Consort, which focused on Mary Queen of Scots’ infamous husband, Lord Darnley. Steven’s other books include the Simon Danforth trilogy, the Queen’s Spies trilogy, and three non-fiction works: Blood Feud, Elizabeth and Essex, and Slander and Sedition in Elizabethan Law, Speech, and Writing. Find out more at https://www.stevenveerapen.com/ and you can follow Steven on Instagram @steven.veerapen.3 and on Goodreads and Twitter @ScrutinEye