The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom by Nancy Goldstone

 

Summary (from the publisher): The riveting true story of mother-and-daughter queens Catherine de' Medici and Marguerite de Valois, whose wildly divergent personalities and turbulent relationship changed the shape of their tempestuous and dangerous century.

Set in magnificent Renaissance France, this is the story of two remarkable women, a mother and daughter driven into opposition by a terrible betrayal that threatened to destroy the realm. Catherine de' Medici was a ruthless pragmatist and powerbroker who dominated the throne for thirty years. Her youngest daughter Marguerite, the glamorous "Queen Margot," was a passionate free spirit, the only adversary whom her mother could neither intimidate nor control.

When Catherine forces the Catholic Marguerite to marry her Protestant cousin Henry of Navarre against her will, and then uses her opulent Parisian wedding as a means of luring his followers to their deaths, she creates not only savage conflict within France but also a potent rival within her own family.

Rich in detail and vivid prose, Goldstone's narrative unfolds as a thrilling historical epic. Treacherous court politics, poisonings, international espionage, and adultery form the background to a story that includes such celebrated figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Nostradamus. The Rival Queens is a dangerous tale of love, betrayal, ambition, and the true nature of courage, the echoes of which still resonate.

Review: This book is a dual biography of Catherine de' Medici and her daughter Marguerite. Catherine married the younger son of the King of France and ended becoming queen when the heir died, leaving her husband to inherit the throne. Yet her position at court was marred by her husband's years' long affair. After years of infertility, Catherine finally began producing children, the youngest of which was Marguerite. Unlike her mother, who was ruthless and scheming, Marguerite was a passionate free spirit and surprisingly kindhearted, despite her upbringing and family history. Forced into an unhappy marriage to her cousin, Henry of Navarre, Marguerite became at odds to her mother. Their story is full of assassinations, violent murders, adultery, scheming for power, and all the opulence of Renaissance France. 

So much of this story was fascinating and horrifying. The details of Catherine's marriage were absolutely wild. It is rumored she watched her husband with his mistress through a hole in the floor. Later, in desparation for a child, she worked with the mistress to conceive. His msitress would "warm up her lover in her bed at night and at the optimal moment kick him out and send him upstairs to his wife, where Henri would do his manly duty in a few short minutes and then hop out of Catherine's bed to return to Diane's" (24). Marguerite's life wasn't quite so sordid, although her marriage was similarly complicated and unhappy, and littered with prominent infidelity. However, Marguerite shines through as a person of integrity and kindness in Goldstone's account. I was particularly struck by her generosity of spirit towards her husband. Even after their marriage was dissolved, she was kind and welcoming towards him and his new wife, to the point that she became a trusted friend and confidant to her former husband and his new family. 

The author did an awesome job at building suspense through the timing of chapter breaks at crucial moments. For example, after her oldest son's death, Catherine managed to quickly wrangle political control through her young son and heir. Goldstone teases at this great change by concluding the chapter with "When the kingdom of France awoke on the morning of December 6, 1560, its subjects discovered that its young sovereign had died in the night and been replaced by one even younger, and that Mother was now in charge" (49). Goldstone thus uses the intrigue of the history she is revealing to slowly unravel this tale. 

In some ways, the title given to this biography is a misnomer. It is true that Catherine was exceedingly cruel to her daughter, only wanted to use her as a political pawn for her own ends, and even plotted her death at times. But her daughter never plotted or reciprocated against her mother in any way, other than to try to escape the cruelty and house arrest that her mother placed her and her brothers in. So to term them rivals doesn't feel exactly right. Additionally, in many ways this book feels like two biographies bound in one volume. The first half of the book deals with Catherine and then then novel shifts to Marguerite, with relatively little details provided about Catherine, other than when she appears in Marguerite's life. A fascinating biography about two royal queens that I have read relatively little about before this book.

Stars: 4