Malicious Life Podcast: The Doomed Queen’s Secret Ciphers

Researcher George Lasry and collaborators deciphered 57 encrypted French letters (about 50,000 words) of Mary, Queen of Scots stored in the French National Library by transcribing symbols and applying hill-climbing with n-gram scoring while identifying special function symbols and a nomenclator within a sophisticated homophonic cipher, revealing Mary as an active strategist who sought influence and intelligence while imprisoned, and situating her communications within Francis Walsingham’s expansive espionage apparatus, ultimately illustrating how secure ciphers but insecure channels (as in the Babington plot) contributed to her exposure and execution in 1587.