History's Great Queens 2-Book Bundle: The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

by Gortner, C. W.

  A Capuchin monk allegedly hired by Guise’s vengeful sister stabbed Henri III to death in 1589. Before he died, Henri had concluded a truce with his Bourbon cousin, Henri of Navarre; whether his actions were prompted by a final exhortation by Catherine is speculative, but Navarre did ascend the throne as Henri IV and he became one of France’s most beloved, tolerant kings. It took him ten years, however, to take Paris. He eventually converted to Catholicism to win over the city, a decision that prompted his famous quip: “Paris is worth a mass.”

  Leadership of the Catholic League, established by the murdered duc de Guise, was taken over by another of Guise’s brothers; the League continued to exert significant influence over Catholic France until January of 1596, when Henri IV signed a treaty that put an end to it.

  The senior line of the Guise family became extinct in 1688.

  Margot was released from house arrest only after she agreed to an annulment. She returned to Paris, where she resided in increasingly corpulent splendor, a legend in her lifetime and author of her own rather fanciful memoirs. She died in 1615 at the age of sixty-one, outliving her former husband by five years.

  Henri IV took as his second wife Marie de Medici, descendant of a lesser family branch. In 1601, Marie bore the future Louis XIII. Like Catherine, she endured years of infidelity before rising to power as widowed queen regent for her underage son.

  Henri IV ruled France for twenty-one years. Despite his conversion, he still declared circumscribed toleration of the Huguenots and did everything he could to retain religious stability. At the age of fifty-six he was assassinated by a fanatical Catholic in the rue St. Honoré, while riding in his carriage. He bled to death. With his passing, France again plunged into religious tumult. His descendants continued the Bourbon dynasty until its overthrow in 1793. Persecution of the Huguenots ended when the Revolution of 1789 gave them equal rights under the law.

  To this day, Catherine de Medici remains shrouded in lurid myth. She’s been accused of some of the sixteenth century’s most heinous crimes, including the murders of Jeanne of Navarre and Gaspard de Coligny. Some allege she poisoned her husband’s elder brother and her two eldest sons, as well as a host of secondary figures at court who resisted or defied her.

  Is the myth true? Did Catherine ruthlessly eliminate anyone who stood in her way? Did she harbor “a passion for power”? Those who knew her personally expressed contradictory opinions; those who didn’t likewise disagreed. Elizabeth I once said that of all the rulers in Europe, Catherine was the one she most feared; had he been asked, Philip II of Spain certainly had cause to echo this sentiment. Oddly enough, when overhearing criticism of his late mother-in-law, it was Henri IV who retorted, “I ask you, what could the woman do, left by the death of her husband with five little children and two families who thought only of grasping the Crown—our own [the Bourbons] and the Guises? I am surprised she didn’t do worse.”

  To portray Catherine, I had to delve beyond the historical archetype of the black-clad widow, conspiring to wreak evil. Her surviving letters fill volumes, as do those of her contemporaries. I also consulted numerous modern and period sources to augment my understanding of her and of the times in which she lived.

  To my surprise, I discovered a brave young girl who survived a dangerous childhood and difficult marriage to become a humane woman with an astounding capacity for compromise. Catherine detested war and fought for peace; she was a queen and mother whose foremost goal was to ensure her dynasty’s survival. While she made grievous errors, I do not believe she planned the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; rather, she sought to eliminate Coligny, who can only be judged as a traitor by the standards of his era. In her haste and panic after her first anonymous attempt failed, Catherine failed to anticipate that sending Guise to kill Coligny and the other Huguenot leaders in his house would precipitate the slaughter of six thousand people in Paris and its environs and blacken her name for centuries to come. While not entirely a pacifist in matters of religion, her position was antithetical to that of the Guises, who advocated systematic persecution of heretics. Throughout her life Catherine abhorred the fiery fanaticism that prevailed in Spain and did everything she could to curb it in France. It was her misfortune that few of the men around her shared her commitment to conciliation.

  Catherine’s interest in the occult is well documented; like most Renaissance people she had a profound belief in hidden forces. Her instances of visions or “second sight” were recorded by her family and friends; several of the episodes I describe are drawn directly from their accounts. She patronized Nostradamus until his death; Cosimo Ruggieri was her personal astrologer and did in fact betray her. However, her reputed penchant for the dark arts and poison seems apocryphal; certainly, the legend that she kept a cabinet of poisons at Blois is an invention, the secret compartments still visible there today intended for personal documents, not potions. I found no concrete evidence that Catherine poisoned anyone or resorted to black magic, but many of the objects found at Chambord after his arrest indicate Cosimo Ruggieri may have. Catherine’s generosity toward her intimates, her lifelong friendships with her ladies and Birago, and her compassion for animals, unusual for her time, are corroborated by several contemporary sources.

  Catherine’s barrenness following her marriage to Henri is a subject of endless speculation. Some sources believe the fault was Henri’s, who had to submit to a delicate penile operation in order to correct a defect in his ability to ejaculate; others say Catherine herself had a thick hymen that required surgical piercing. Of course, such medical anomalies are impossible to verify, and I believe the obvious explanation is the most likely: Diane de Poitiers curtailed Henri’s conjugal visits until she could force Catherine into a situation of utter compliance and establish her own power over the royal marriage. The fact that Catherine suddenly became pregnant at a time in her life when bearing a child had become a matter of survival seems too coincidental. Catherine of course went on to bear seven surviving children; I do not include in this novel the death of a months-old son and her miscarriage of twin daughters in 1556.

  Catherine de Medici lived a complex life in a very complex age, and in the interest of sparing the reader a veritable labyrinth of events, names, and titles, I made some minor alterations. For example, I cite only three of her daughter Claude’s nine children; of these, the eldest son was named Henri and the second Charles. I switched their names to avoid confusion, given the plethora of Henrys populating the narrative. I also do not mention Charles IX’s illegitimate son by his mistress or François I’s second son, also named Charles, who died before François himself. And while Philip II of Spain loomed large in Catherine’s life, his meeting with her in Bayonne is fictional, though its context is not. Catherine had almost the same conversation with Philip’s exigent representative, the Duke of Alba.

  The sheer size of the Guise family poses particular challenges for a novelist; again, in the interest of clarity I kept family members to a minimum. A significant title alteration is that of le Balafré’s brother, Monsignor, who in reality was cardinal of Lorraine, not of Guise.

  I also reduced the role of the Bourbon princes. Antoine, king consort of Navarre and father of Henri IV, caused significant disruption during François II’s reign; he and his brother Condé died in battle within a few years of each other. To facilitate the story line, Antoine is briefly mentioned, but Condé is not.

  All other errors, alterations, and omissions, both deliberate and accidental, are my own.

  To learn more about Catherine and her times, I suggest the following selected bibliography:

  Castries, Duc de. The Lives of the Kings and Queens of France. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

  Chamberlain, E. R. Marguerite of Navarre. New York: Dial Press, 1974.

  Frieda, Leonie. Catherine de Medici. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

  Heritier, Jean. Catherine de’ Medici. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963.

  Knecht, R. J. The Rise and Fall of Renais
sance France. London: Fontana Press, 1996.

  Mahoney, Irene. Madame Catherine. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1975.

  Roeder, Ralph. Catherine de Medici and the Lost Revolution. New York: Garden City Publishing, 1939.

  Sedgwick, Dwight Henry. The House of Guise. New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1938.

  Seward, Desmond. François I: Renaissance Prince. New York: Macmillan, 1973.

  Strange, Mark. Women of Power. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WISH TO EXTEND MY HEARTFELT THANKS TO MY PARTNER, WHO has stood by my side throughout the many years it has taken me to find a publisher and never once told me to stop writing. My agent, Jennifer Weltz, of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, remains my champion and friend. I’m very fortunate in my editor, Susanna Porter, who has guided me through two books and always compels me to look beyond my original vision with her insightful revisions. My assistant editor, Jillian Quint, copy editor Jude Grant, proofreader Karen Ninnis, publicist Lisa Barnes, and the creative team at Ballantine Books have shown me singular passion and commitment. In the United Kingdom, I am also lucky to have my editor, Suzie Doore, and the team at Hodder & Stoughton on my side.

  I must thank all the marvelous bloggers who’ve featured my books on their sites and shown me such generosity and enthusiasm. Without you, promotion wouldn’t be half as fun.

  Last, I thank you, my reader. You inspire and challenge me every day and I hope I can continue to entertain you for many years to come. I’m always available for reader group chats.

  Please visit www.cwgortner.com for more information.

  A Conversation with

  C. W. GORTNER

  Who was Catherine de Medici?

  Anyone with an interest in famous women of history will have heard of Catherine de Medici: She’s the evil queen who allegedly poisoned her enemies and orchestrated a massacre. Or so the legend says. Of Italian birth, Catherine was the last scion of her legitimate Medici blood; she dominated France in the latter half of the sixteenth century, a contemporary of Elizabeth I of England and mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of Scots. Left a widow with small children and confronted by one of the most savage conflicts of her time, she fought to save France and her bloodline from destruction.

  Why did you decide to write about her?

  Initially, I was attracted to Catherine because of her legend. I figured that when someone has garnered such a reputation there has to be more to the story. I wanted to know who Catherine de Medici truly was, to search beyond the lurid accusations and hyperbole for the person she may have been. When I researched her, I found that my instincts were correct: As with most dark legends, there was far more to her than popular history tells us. I thought, how interesting it would be if Catherine herself could tell the story of her life. If she had the chance to explain herself, what would she say?

  How long did it take you to write this book and what special research was involved?

  It took about two years to write this book in its present form. The research itself began several years before that; I actually first began researching Catherine de Medici while in college, as she was part of my master’s thesis on women of power. For the novel, I took several trips to France, including one during which I visited the beautiful Loire Valley châteaux where Catherine resided and I re-created the two-year progress she undertook to visit her eldest daughter on the border with Spain (though I did my trip by rail and car!). A friend of mine in Paris also guided me on marvelous evening walks through the city, showing me specific sites associated with Catherine, including a lone tower she built as an observatory. I also read her volumes of letters, contemporary accounts of her and her court, and memoirs written by several of her associates and intimates, including the fanciful memoirs of her daughter, Marguerite, better known to history as la reine Margot.

  What did Catherine’s letters reveal?

  Catherine’s surviving letters constitute one of those rare treasure troves for a novelist. Letters offer an invaluable glimpse into a person’s thoughts and personality, and I found some of Catherine’s letters to be particularly poignant. Her unassailable love for her children, her despair over the chaos wrought by war, her pragmatism and her discomfort with overt fanaticism, as well as her compassion for animals—unusual for her time—all point to a woman who was very different from the archetypal Medici queen with her arsenal of poisons. Her letters helped me to envision the flesh-and-blood woman behind the legend and understand the challenges she faced as a person and a ruler.

  What is one of the greatest misconceptions about Catherine de Medici?

  Without doubt, it has to be the accusation that she nurtured a “passion for power.” Catherine was not raised to be a queen, true, and she did in fact rule as regent for her sons until they came of age; but it is unfair to accuse her of a ruthless drive to retain power at any cost. She faced a unique set of circumstances that would have challenged even the most skilled ruler: underage children to protect and a kingdom being torn apart, literally, by the nobility. The clash between Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation became especially intense in France; it was Catherine’s great misfortune to be caught up in it. Her alleged passion for power was in truth an attempt to retain control over the destiny of her adopted realm and safeguard the throne—both of which may have suffered far more had she not been there. I find it quite sad that to this day Catherine remains tainted by actions that in essence she did not take of her own volition. She made serious errors in judgment, without a doubt, but she was motivated most often by the urgent need to salvage a crisis rather than by some cold-blooded urge to eliminate those who stood in her way.

  How do you strike a balance between depicting the reality of the times and modern-day sensibilities?

  The balance is always a fine one. It can become even more tenuous when you are confronting issues of religion, race, sexuality, and gender. That said, I always consider the needs of my reader to be engaged by the story. While historical accuracy remains a primary obligation—in that the writer should not deliberately alter or distort known facts or have characters behave in an overtly modernized way—I do sanitize certain aspects of the reality of life in the sixteenth century. We tend to romanticize the past; we forget about the lack of adequate hygiene, antibiotics, etc. While I strive to retain the flavor of the past in my work and avoid the tendency to convert a brutal, quixotic era into a costume drama, my books are novels; their principal function is to entertain.

  Do you think issues Catherine faced in her era still resonate today?

  Many of the freedoms we take for granted today were unknown to people in the sixteenth century. Religious divisiveness in particular was a brutal part of daily life during Catherine’s time; Catholics and Protestants were willing to martyr themselves for their cause, destroying countless others in the process. This is something that many of us, much like Catherine, may find difficult to comprehend. Yet that type of extreme righteousness remains very much a part of our modern landscape, as evidenced by acts of terrorism and genocide in several parts of the world. While we are in many ways a more enlightened society, we still carry vestiges of the past with us, and leaders throughout the world grapple with some of the same issues that Catherine did, in terms of placating anger and restoring harmony among people whose lives have been affected by war.

  What is one of the secrets that Catherine “confesses” in this novel?

  For one, the truth behind her relationship with the Protestant leader Admiral Coligny. I have always found it intriguing that so few of Catherine’s biographers have examined more closely this most enigmatic of friendships. Coligny was at court when Catherine arrived from Italy as a teenage bride; he was the nephew of the Constable of France, a powerful and important man, and therefore she and Coligny must have met long before they assumed their respective political roles. They were close to each other in age; they shared a history, as Coligny later served her husband, King Henri II; they probably
witnessed to a certain extent each other’s trials and triumphs, before circumstances arose for them to join forces during the Wars of Religion. Coligny and Catherine could not have been more different, in both upbringing and outlook, yet for a time they shared a united response to the conflict threatening France and a mutual desire for accord. In her confessions, Catherine tells us what brought them together, and what led to the definitive tragedy between them.

  What do you hope readers take away from your work?

  I seek to reveal secret histories and in some small way restore humanity to people whose legends have overshadowed them. I also hope readers will come away from my work with the experience that they’ve been on an emotional journey. I want them to feel the way these people lived, their hardships and joys, and differences from and similarities to us. Though a Renaissance queen faced issues we don’t, love, hatred, power, intolerance, passion, and the quest for personal liberty remain universal themes.

  What is your latest project?

  I’m currently writing a historical novel about Isabella of Castile, tracing her life from her dramatic youth to her accession as queen of Castile and the early years of her controversial reign. I covered the latter years of Isabella’s life in my previous novel The Last Queen, which is about her daughter Juana; while researching that book, however, I realized I had a solid grounding in the facts of Isabella’s life but had not truly considered how she evolved as a monarch and a woman. She’s been lauded as a saint by some and labeled a fanatic by others; she set in motion the horrors of the Inquisition yet also financed Columbus’s voyages and united Spain after centuries of internal strife. Isabella is truly the first queen of the Renaissance, a ruler who was more powerful than her husband; yet few people know the incredible story of her tumultuous rise to the throne, her forbidden love with Fernando of Aragón, or the events that led to that most climactic of years—1492. Isabella was fallible and, like so many controversial figures in history, often misunderstood. I hope to bring to life for readers her incredible will, vision, and strength, as well as shed light on some of her less comprehensible actions.