You don't come across a lot of sympathetic portraits of
Catherine de Medici. She's generally thought of as one of
the great villainess of history. Blamed for the St.
Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Catherine also is remembered
for her fondness for poisons and as a dabbler in sorcery.
As a woman of the 16th century, Catherine was the pawn of
men and politics. Like all women of the time, she was bound
by God, duty, the law and her father to be used in whatever
way circumstance warranted. As the wife of a king and the
mother of three others, Catherine enjoyed power and
privilege. As an outsider in the French court, she was
humiliated by her husband and his mistress and lived in an
age of treachery and political intrigue where assignation
was a very real threat.
Kalogridis presents a Catherine, or Caterina, who loves her
husband and children and is determined to protect her
family and her sons' birthrights no matter the
consequences. To Catherine, the end always justifies the
means. To the casual reader, the events of history seem to
be well-researched. Still, I was bored by the narrative, at
times. The story didn't draw me in. I much preferred the
more melodramatic potboilers that Jean Plaidy wrote
about Catherine decades ago which I remember as being a lot
more lively.
From Jeanne Kalogridis, the bestselling author of I,
Mona Lisa and The Borgia Bride, comes a new
novel that tells the passionate story of a queen who loved
not wisely . . . but all too well.
Confidante of
Nostradamus, scheming mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of
Scots, and architect of the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day
Massacre, Catherine de Medici is one of the most maligned
monarchs in history. In her latest historical fiction,
Jeanne Kalogridis tells Catherine’s story—that of a tender
young girl, destined to be a pawn in Machiavellian games.
Born into one of Florence’s most powerful families,
Catherine was soon left a fabulously rich heiress by the
early deaths of her parents. Violent conflict rent the
city state and she found herself imprisoned and threatened
by her family’s enemies before finally being released and
married off to the handsome Prince Henry of France.
Overshadowed by her husband’s mistress, the
gorgeous, conniving Diane de Poitiers, and unable to bear
children, Catherine resorted to the dark arts of sorcery
to win Henry’s love and enhance her fertility—for which
she would pay a price. Against the lavish and decadent
backdrop of the French court, and Catherine’s blood-soaked
visions of the future, Kalogridis reveals the great love
and desire Catherine bore for her husband, Henry, and her
stark determination to keep her sons on the throne.
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