We three queens
JOANNE PAUL delights in a portrait of a trio of royal women who negotiated the treacherous terrain of 16th-century European courts
On a hot, sunny day in late June 1559, the king of France rode out in full armour, his horse trimmed with black and white, to participate in a joust. The preceding week had been spent celebrating the wedding of his daughter to the king of Spain and the hard-won treaty that their marriage represented. Fatigued, overheated and suffering from occasional bouts of vertigo, Henry II demanded one more run at the lists. He and his opponent thundered towards each other and struck. A lance splintered, and a large piece of wood became embedded in the king’s skull, just above his eye. He died in agony two weeks later.
The story told by Leah Redmond Chang, however, is not about kings, their wars, their deaths or their rivalries. Young Queens shifts the focus from these well-known histories to the less-well-known stories of three women of this period – queens for whom the demise of Henry II represented a momentous change in their lives and relationships to each other.
For Catherine de Medici, the death of her husband marked the beginning of a new life, not as queen consort but as queen mother. It was a title she used with unprecedented effect in the controlling of French – and, occasionally, pan-European – politics. Her daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, then just 14, would look to her new spouse – the 32-year-old Philip II – to be both husband and father as she travelled to reign in a new, unknown country. And Henry’s death saw his young son take the throne as Francis II – with his similarly youthful wife, Mary, Queen of Scots, alongside him. These events set Catherine, Elisabeth and Mary, who had until this time been a close family unit, on very different – occasionally opposing – trajectories. Soon afterwards, these women, who had spent much of their lives together, would part ways, never to see each other again.
Young Queens is an exquisitely written biography of these three queens, tracing their stories from Renaissance Italy through Reformation France to war-torn Scotland and beyond. This is not just a parallel biography but a study of relationships, offering a deeper understanding than a focus on just one of these women could provide.
Chang tells a vivid, visual and compelling story, furnished with stirring details from the countless letters penned by and about these women. 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.
Perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is in the treatment of women’s bodies, and their relationship to political power. Topics such as menstruation, illness, sex and rape are subjected to deep analysis, as is their connection to the politics of the time on both a practical and conceptual level. Chang is at her strongest when she is weaving together the threads of emotional motivations, the realities of female bodies and complex European politics into a vibrant tapestry. Maintaining these themes, with three subjects to represent fully, does require some jumping forward and backward in time in a way that some readers might find a bit confusing. Stick with it, though – this is a masterful, compelling and significant book.
Joanne Paul is a writer, historian and broadcaster whose latest book is The House of Dudley (Michael Joseph, 2022)
Topics such as menstruation, illness, sex and rape are subjected to deep analysis, as is their connection to politics