Mary Stuart, commonly referred to as the Queen of Scots, was born in Scotland in 1542 and quickly became the Queen after the death of her father, James V. Queen Mary was a devout Catholic and emphasized her Catholic faith, and claimed to never become "a Protestant heretic" at the expense of her succession to the English crown (Phillips 111). Elizabeth presented Mary with the choice to gain the English crown or to remain a Catholic, and Mary chose her faith. Consequently, Elizabeth saw to it that Mary would be put to death for her choice, meaning that Mary willingly chose the path of the Catholic martyr over the Protestant monarch. She carried with her "her crucifix, rosary, and prayerbook" into the execution chamber, all relics of her Catholic faith for which she was executed (Phillips 138). In Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando, Orlando and Shel are married together using words from "Queen Mary's prayer book" (Woolf 191). This scene is pivotal as one of the climactic moments of gender performativity and identification in the novel. Adding the significance of Mary's death with her prayer book connects Orlando's moment of marriage to a moment of death, but a noble death. One could interpret Orlando's marriage as a similar martyrdom, a submission to one's gender identity. (214 words)

 Phillips, James Emerson. Images of a Queen; Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature. University of California Press, 1964.