Young Queens: The gripping, intertwined story of Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots

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No doubt the young Caterina learned of Madeleine’s wealth, of her vast, rolling estates in Auvergne.

He began to court Elizabeth in earnest, taking supper with her and Margaret in the nursery and taking the sisters out to restaurants or shows. He was charmed by her admiration and what he described as the “simple pleasure” of family life, so unlike his own unhappy childhood. Even her conception had been political, her flesh and blood plotted by ambitious relatives who anticipated her birth with both delight and greed. In this must-read prequel to Kendare Blake’s New York Times bestselling Three Dark Crowns, the queens’ origin story is revealed.Not everyone can make such sources sing as this author does, providing not only emotional charge but subtle psychological insights into these women and the dramatic choices they made . She spent years as a shadowy heir who was considered a threat to her half-sister and was briefly held prisoner at the Tower, before finally coming to the throne in 1558 on the death of Mary I.

If, that is, she lived—and it was a big if, given that sixteenth-century parents half-expected their children to die before the age of seven, no matter how wealthy the family or how tenderly their babies were loved. Catherine de’ Medici’s story begins in a convent stormed by soldiers intent on seizing the key to power in Florence – Catherine herself, a girl barely 11 years old. years later, Queen Elizabeth II has become the longest reigning British monarch in history, surpassing her great-grandmother Queen Victoria.Sent by King Francis to Rome, he arrived at the Strozzi villa sometime in 1525, when Caterina was just about six years old. Say, Annie Leibovitz’s portraits of the Queen, which very few missed when it was published by Vanity Fair in 2016. But as Francis well knew, the Medici were parvenus in a world that put more stake in bloodlines than wealth.