The Secret Words of Mary, Queen of Scots

“When all else about an individual dies or is devoured,” writes Harvard PhD student Vanessa Braganza, “ciphered documents [those written in code] can preserve their identity beneath the calcified surface of history.” In this episode of the Harvard Horizons project, Braganza explains how the secret letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, written in code, upend our notions of the doomed royal as a woman with no agency, swept under by a powerful leader and the currents of history.