Anglo-Scottish monarch King James I and VI of England and Scotland was BOTD in 1566. Born in Edinburgh Castle, he was the only son of Mary Queen of Scots and her second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He became King of Scotland when he was 13 months old, after Mary was forced to abdicate in his favour and was imprisoned for the rest of her life. The infant James was raised by Protestant nobles who governed on his behalf, never seeing his mother again. At 15, he became adult ruler of Scotland, and his early reign was dominated by his favourite and lover Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox. Concerned that Lennox was “about to draw the King to carnal lust”, a group of earls imprisoned James in 1582 and banished Lennox from Scotland. James escaped the following year and resumed his reign. His mother was executed in 1587 on the orders of her cousin and political rival Queen Elizabeth I of England. The childless Elizabeth named James as her successor. On her death in 1603, he was crowned King of England and Ireland, becoming the first monarch to unite the English and Scottish crowns. James continued the peace and prosperity of Elizabeth’s reign, keeping taxes low, encouraging literature and the arts, sponsoring an English translation of the Bible and overseeing the colonisation of Ulster and the Americas. He married Anne of Denmark in 1589, having seven children together, while expressing open affection for his favourite George Villiers, whom he raised to the peerage and created 1st Duke of Buckingham. The diarist John Oglander wrote that James “loved young men, his favourites, better than women, loving them beyond the love of men to women. I never saw any fond husband make so much or so great dalliance over his beautiful spouse as I have seen King James over his favourites, especially the Duke of Buckingham.” Following his break with Buckingham, James transferred his affections to Robert Carr, later the 1st Earl of Somerset. James’ misogyny manifested into an obsession with witchcraft, writing several volumes on the occult and personally overseeing the trials of suspected witches. He also published pamphlets setting out a Biblical justification for monarchy and his defence of the divine right of kings, though noted “the highest bench is the sliddriest to sit upon.” After years of ill health, he died in 1625, aged 58. James’ relationship with Buckingham was portrayed in the 2024 TV series Mary and George, directed by Oliver Hermanus and starring Tony Curran as an insatiably horny James.