Catherine de' Medici has gone down in history as The Serpent Queen, but did she really poison a queen with deadly gloves, practise the dark arts and keep a squad of seductive female spies?
On this day in Tudor history, 5 January 1589, Catherine de' Medici, Queen Consort and Queen Regent of France, passed away. Her legacy? A swirl of dark legends, court intrigues, and tales of power, ambition, and tragedy.
Recommended read: "Blood, Fire, and Gold" by Estelle Paranque #CatherineDeMedici #TudorHistory #OnThisDay #RoyalIntrigue #TheSerpentQueen #FlyingSquadron
Jean Plaidy once wrote of her that some say she was the most sinister woman in history, certainly she was intriguing mysterious and I should imagine, quite a formidable woman if you crossed her, she ruled in the mid stage of the 16th century and her sister queens were Elizabeth of England, and her one time daughter in law, Mary of Scotland, unusually these three realms were governed by women, although Salic law forbade a woman inheriting the French throne, there was no law against the weaker sex taking on the role of regency, and she proved she was a capable ruler, we can see how myths have arisen around this woman just like Elizabeth 1st, but we’re they justified? The Bartholomew day massacre shows her in a truly dreadful light and yet by the standards of her day she was no more bloody than Queen Mary Tudor, rulers had to be ruthless but it was an event that shocked the Protestant world, on a personal level it was also said of her that she had a hole bored into her husbands bedchamber and from there she watched him and his beautiful mistress en titre Diane De Poiter’s love making, Diane was bestowed with the Crown Jewels and as soon as King Henri died she had them promptly returned to her, the dowager queen, she had borne humiliation when her husband was alive as he had flaunted his mistress in front of her and Catherine must have seethed in fury, but did she really spy on him with his mistress, why lick your own wounds? Her portrait shows she was no beauty and was described as short and fat, especially in old age when so many of her countrywomen lost their waists, it seems her husband did her duty however and so did she as she gave him sons and daughters, who were used as bargaining tools, like many in the rest of Europe, her biography sounds a very absorbing piece of work, I may get a copy