If you missed the news, letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots prior to her death have finally been decoded, according to reports released last week.
Where did the letters come from? When did Mary write the letters? What do the letters say?
Here’s everything we know so far.
When and where did Mary write the letters? In 1567, Mary fled to England after losing her throne and was taken in by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, according to the Smithsonian.
After Mary’s arrival at the court, Elizabeth imprisoned her for 20 years before deciding upon her execution in 1587.
The UK’s Historical Association said that Mary’s execution was ordered when Elizabeth found out Mary had conspired to have Elizabeth assassinated.
In the 20 years that Mary was held captive, she wrote thousands of letters in code so that her true messages wouldn’t be discovered by Elizabeth’s spies.
Those letters have finally been decoded and help give the public today a little peek into what her life was like during the time leading up to her death.
What do the letters say? The letters detailed Mary plotting for her freedom by writing ambassadors, government officials, other monarchs and anyone who could possibly help her escape, according to the Smithsonian.
The last letter Mary wrote before her execution said, “Sire, my brother-in-law, having by God’s will, for my sins I think, thrown my self into the power of the Queen my cousin, at whose hands I have suffered much for almost twenty years, I have finally been condemned to death by her and her Estates.”
NPR reported that George Lasry of Israel, Norbert Biermann of Germany and Satoshi Tomokyo of Japan were part of the code breakers and scholars who worked to decode the thousands of letters Mary coded.
Why did the letters have to be decoded? “Due to the sheer amount of deciphered material, about 50,000 words in total and enough to fill a book, we have only provided preliminary summaries of the letters, as well as the full reproduction of a few of them, hoping to provide enough incentive to historians with the relevant expertise to engage in in-depth analysis of their contents, to extract insights that would enrich our perspective on Mary’s captivity during the years 1578-1584,” the codebreakers wrote in an article published in the journal Cryptologia.
CNN reported that Mary used a technique called “spiral locking” to code her messages so her enemies wouldn’t understand the content contained within.