James VI and I: A life and reign in 10 parties

James VI and I, aka 'the Wisest Fool in Christendom', has not fared well historically. His unfortunate nickname disparages the man's intelligence, charisma, and success as a monarch. Although he stares out sadly in many of his portraits, he was one of the British Isles's most extravagant kings. James knew how to impress. His developing monarchical agenda was never so artfully expressed, and his sun never shone so brightly, than when it was played out on the glittering stages of his renaissance courts.

When James was born, Scotland cheered. The nation expressed its joy at the latest addition to the ancient Stuart (or Stewart) monarchy in celebratory bonfires and boisterous song. When his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, birthed an heir (something her rival Queen Elizabeth of England couldn’t), she chose to celebrate in more material terms.

Raising a special tax of £12,000 Scots, she turned Stirling Castle into a royal stage for the 1566 baptism. Fireworks blasted into the night sky, masques were performed, and foreign ambassadors treated to music and banqueting. Yet the glister was not gold.

Mary's marriage to the little Prince's father had soured. Moreover, by insisting on a Catholic baptism, the Queen had signalled her long-term intentions for her legally-Protestant country. Within months, her husband Lord Darnley had been murdered and the horrified Mary found herself accused.

On being forced into marriage with the likely murderer, the Earl of Bothwell, she was captured by her Protestant rebels and deposed. Her baby son was proclaimed king at thirteen months old. Mary, on escaping Scottish captivity, fled to England, only to find longer-lasting imprisonment.

Although a king, the young James met little joy in his early life and his upbringing was cold. His primary tutor, the classical scholar (and classical republican) George Buchanan, beat into him Latin, Greek, history, rhetoric, and logic. He succeeded, producing a young scholar. Meanwhile, the realm was governed by a series of ill-starred regents.

But one thing he could not instil in James was the contractual nature of kingship. To Buchanan, a monarch ruled by consent of the people. To James, power was deputised by God alone. Encouraging him in this was Esmé Stuart, James's older cousin, who arrived in Scotland in time for the first great royal party in the king's life.

The Royal Entry into Edinburgh had all the hallmarks of a Roman triumph, overlaid with stern religious moralising. The triumphal elements, such as displayed portraits of his ancestors, strewn flowers, and free wine were well received. The moralistic elements were not.

These had an added sting. By now, James's inherent bisexuality was obvious. Not least to Esmé, who groomed the young teenager. This raised the hackles of vitriolic Kirk ministers and jealous politicians disgusted at the favour being bestowed on the newly arrived Frenchman. The eventual solution would be to kidnap the king and force him to eject Esmé from Scotland.

In his teenage years, James had begun to take on a selection of bedfellows, but homosexuality was neither a lifestyle choice nor an identity in the sixteenth century. The king also had a developing sexual interest in women, which boded well for the succession. On marrying Anna of Denmark, he embarked on a chivalric journey to bring her home.

In preparation for her arrival, he refurbished that great symbol of Stuart monarchy, the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Lavish festivities were organised, mirroring his own Royal Entry. Prior to Anna's coronation, she was trundled through Edinburgh in her solid-silver coach, while a 'march of the Moors' danced and trumpeted its way ahead of her.

At the palace, the new Queen was entertained with the usual round of masques and dancing. The tricky part came was afterwards, as queens consort throughout history have known.

After several years of false rumours (of pregnancies that never were and of supposed flirtations), Anna proved her worth in the marriage game. Prince Henry was born on the 19th of February 1594. He would be followed by a parade of royal babies (sadly, only he, Elizabeth, and Charles would survive infancy).

James, ever the sixteenth-century autocrat, would find himself disappointed in his wife's endless capacity to think for herself and her refusal to be ruled by him. Nevertheless, the marriage was already proving a success. James, for the moment, appears to have been satisfied sexually (with the only rumours of an extramarital affair on his part concerning a dalliance with one Mistress Murray).

His people were certainly satisfied, if not by the £100,000 Scots tax he raised (inflation having run riot since his own baptism) then at least by the entertainments it was spent on.

Stirling Castle was the stage once again. In its magnificent hammerbeam-roofed great hall, an artificial ship sailed on undulating waves of blue tissue. A crew of merfolk and sea sprites showered attendees with mock seafood fashioned from sugar. James, the lavish and princely family man, was now the most attractive candidate for the ageing and still-childless Elizabeth I's throne.

James's arrival in England was one of the high points of his life. On receiving the news in March 1603 that his elderly cousin was dead and that he was her successor, he thanked God. As well as his own cunning in having schemed behind the late queen's back with her chief minister, Robert Cecil.

But possession was, as ever, nine tenths of the law. He couldn't leave Scotland fast enough, to plant himself firmly on his new throne. Leaving the Queen and children to follow, he embarked on a glittering progress southward. His train, already full when it left Edinburgh, swelled into a throng, and then into a vast, wildly exuberant army.

Place-seekers, local officers, and people unused to the sight of a sovereign (Elizabeth never having left the Home Counties) flocked to him. James (who would soon quadruple the royal wardrobe spending) was Lord Bountiful in titles, gifts, and cash.

The Stuarts had arrived in England. But what was James's reign to look like? His overriding agenda, as he saw it, was to put an end to Elizabeth I's Anglo-Spanish war. In the long-term, he wanted to promote peace and unity throughout Christendom. This was true not least in the British Isles, where he hoped (rather fruitlessly) to unite Scotland and England into a single state.

Yet, no matter his big political goals, key in his monarchical arsenal was the projection of majesty. Assisting him in this were a bevy of gorgeously clad young male courtiers. For apparently the first time in his marriage, James's eye began to wander back towards men.

One of these early favourites in England was James Hay, later ennobled as the Earl of Carlisle. James, habitually, would publicly kiss and embrace his male lovers. He would use them as decorative objects and, when they wished or when he tired of them, he would assist them in finding suitably wealthy brides.

In 1607, Hay was married off to Honora Denny, with the festivities including Campion's 'Lord Hay's Masque'. This was not a masque in the old sense but a Stuart innovation. Something between a Broadway musical, an opera, and a political manifesto. Lord Hay, like his more successful successor, Robert Carr, would prove himself a dandy. And the Stuart court would start to receive a reputation for excess, corruption, and vice.

Human sexuality, like human relationships, is an endlessly fascinating area of study. When Robert Carr, later Earl of Somerset, rose in her husband's affections, Queen Anna showed her first and only signs of irritation at James's infidelities. With Carr, he gave every impression of being genuinely smitten. And of listening to his lover more than his wife.

Anna's indignation was not due to any modern notions of an embarrassed or ashamed wife of a husband who prefers men. It was entirely because Carr openly treated her with disrespect.

Her reaction was suitably theatrical. In the opulent 'Masque of Queens', Anna took to the stage as Bel-Anna, leading a parade of ladies playing historically powerful women. James was probably nonplussed. Until Carr's fall from power (when he married his own powerful – and scandalous – woman, Frances Howard), the king did not identify as homosexual or bisexual. He identified as King, and kings outranked queen's consort.

It is a matter of historical irony that today it is his sexuality that sparks a great deal of modern interest in his life. His bisexuality, a concept which did not exist in his day (although the activities and romantic and sexual fluidity it involved certainly did), makes him an unwitting but fascinating representative for a sexuality which even in modern media is largely ignored.

For all the tension Carr raised between King and Queen, the family saga had to take centre stage. This happened in 1610's 'Tethys' Festival', when James appeared at Whitehall, its hall lavishly outfitted in an approximation of Milford Haven. James came as Oceanus, King of the Ocean. At his side was Anna, as the sea-goddess Tethys. Little Prince Charles played an angel-winged Zephyrus.

Yet the centre of the pageantry was Prince Henry, rapidly growing into anyone's ideal of a militant Protestant hero. As the masque was part of his investiture as Prince of Wales, this was a very British project. Its themes were love, amity, and unity between the kingdoms. Sadly, the hopes placed in Prince Henry would be dashed. He would die suddenly in 1612, leaving his nations, and future historians, wondering what might have been.

When Carr made the mistake of actually loving his wife and stopped dancing attendance on his emotionally needy monarch, James was looked elsewhere. A coterie of courtiers lost no time in ousting him. They trained up the athletic (and reputedly impossibly handsome) George Villiers, son of an obscure knight, as the king's next lover.

Even Anna, whose seething resentment of Carr had only deepened, joined in. The event chosen to launch Villiers into James's affections (and his bed) was 1615's 'Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists'. The young man did his job with aplomb, leaping, dancing, and twirling. The king's own dancing days were over (thanks to recurring ill health), but he appreciated the skill in others, and appreciated as much a finely turned calf.

Though at first a little slow to take the bait, James was encouraged by his wife. Soon, Villiers was in the royal bedchamber (and, one assumes, the royal bed). In future years, the new favourite (who would reach his zenith as Duke of Buckingham, the main character in the recent Sky drama, 'Mary & George') would promise the King that once he had "hold of your bedpost again, never to quit it."

James, in an endearingly modern move, had once more fallen in love regardless of the gender of the object of his deep and lasting affections.

The genius of George Villiers, a sweet-natured man instilled with a deep well of ambition, was to conform himself to the King's wishes. James's reliance on him, which increased after Anna's death in 1619, only grew. Eventually he was wearing the young man's portrait on a blue ribbon at his heart and addressing him in letters as "my sweet child and wife".

After a rocky start, Villiers also managed to befriend the prickly Prince Charles, thus giving the king what he'd sought since childhood: a happy, if unconventional, family. Sadly, it would be his two 'sweet boys' who parted with him.

They rode off on a hare-brained scheme to match Charles with the Spanish infanta (a match which James much favoured but preferred to leave to professional diplomats). But they succeeded only in complicating Anglo-Spanish relations and returned full of fury at what they considered untrustworthy Spaniards. Soon, they were openly stoking the war party in England's parliament, much to the old King's chagrin.

Yet Charles and Villiers were both looking to the future. As they arrived in England from their Spanish misadventure, the country erupted in joy. More than 300 bonfires apparently bloomed to life between Whitehall and Temple Bar in celebration of the country's future ruler's safe return.

James, by contrast, was old, tired, and very much against military ventures in his dotage. He preferred diplomacy as a weapon against the flames of conflict already engulfing Europe in what would become the Thirty Years War. Yet he made his peace with both son and lover before his death. A death that came after several mini-strokes and the gruesome ministrations of numerous doctors, licit and illicit, in March 1625.

Steven Veerapen is an author born in Glasgow. Fascinated by the glamour and ghastliness of life in the 1500s, his books show a penchant for myths, mysteries and murders in an age in which the law was as slippery as those who defied it. He has a Masters in Renaissance studies and a Ph.D. investigating Elizabethan slander. When not writing, he teaches English Literature at the University of Strathclyde.