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The riveting true story of mother-and-daughter queens Catherine de' Medici and Marguerite de Valois, whose wildly divergent personalities and turbulent relationship changed the shape of their tempestuous and dangerous century.
Set in magnificent Renaissance France, this is the story of two remarkable women, a mother and daughter driven into opposition by a terrible betrayal that threatened to destroy the realm.
Catherine de' Medici was a ruthless pragmatist and powerbroker who dominated the throne for thirty years. Her youngest daughter Marguerite, the glamorous "Queen Margot," was a passionate free spirit, the only adversary whom her mother could neither intimidate nor control.
When Catherine forces the Catholic Marguerite to marry her Protestant cousin Henry of Navarre against her will, and then uses her opulent Parisian wedding as a means of luring his followers to their deaths, she creates not only savage conflict within France but also a potent rival within her own family.
Rich in detail and vivid prose, Goldstone's narrative unfolds as a thrilling historical epic. Treacherous court politics, poisonings, inter-national espionage, and adultery form the background to a story that includes such celebrated figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Nostradamus. The Rival Queens is a dangerous tale of love, betrayal, ambition, and the true nature of courage, the echoes of which still resonate.
- Sales Rank: #99560 in Books
- Published on: 2016-04-19
- Released on: 2016-04-19
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.13" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 448 pages
Review
"A highly dramatic dual biography.... If serious history readers believe that Tudor England is the only place where family and religious conflict at the highest level makes riveting reading matter, those folks need to take a close look across the English Channel and see what was transpiring at the same time in the French court.... The French contemporary to Elizabeth I was Queen Catherine de' Medici, widow of King Henri II and mother to three kings after him.... Tudor struggles pale in comparison! Read this along with Antonia Fraser's classic Mary Queen of Scots."
―Brad Hooper, Booklist (Starred Review)
"This is a story of espionage, assassination, intrigue, and chicanery but also one that poignantly reminds readers of the vulnerabilities faced by women of the age....Readers are sure to be captivated by the lush details of these women's lives."―Library Journal
"Goldstone's witty comments make this historical family drama as easy to read as the best fiction, but it's all the more tragic for being true.... Goldstone upends conventional thought with this well-researched and well-written book."―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"A thrilling tale packed with historical details and shocking revelations. Nancy Goldstone writes with cinematic clarity and eloquently brings to life two indomitable women whose ambitions changed the course of European history."―Ivana Lowell, author of Why Not Say What Happened?
"Nancy Goldstone leads her reader with a very sure hand through the most dramatic events of Renaissance France. Her narrative is so gripping that The Rival Queens unfolds like a thriller."―Anka Muhlstein, author of Monsieur Proust's Library
"The Rival Queens is a gripping tale of royal feuds and divided kingdoms. Goldstone has lovingly restored the reputation of Marguerite de Valois; revealing her to be a woman of passion and drive whose fierce loyalties burned bright until the day she died."―Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire and Georgiana
"[Goldstone] spins a tangled tale of rivalry, ambition, and, especially--for the rare women leaders of the time--sheer self-preservation...Goldstone has a remarkable handle on these often Byzantine royal machinations. History brought to vivid life in the characters of these women of purpose."―Kirkus Reviews
PRAISE FOR THE MAID AND THE QUEEN:
"A dual biography of two fascinating medieval women with the descriptive energy of a novel."―USA Today
"Attention, 'Game of Thrones' fans: The most enjoyably sensational aspects of medieval politics---double-crosses, ambushes, bizarre personal obsessions, lunacy and naked self-interest-are in abundant evidence."―Laura Miller, Salon
"A lively, fast-paced and fascinating account of Joan's story, weaving together the labyrinthine intrigues of medieval politics, the real story behind a medieval fairy tale and the astonishing events that led a young peasant girl from the command of an army to a fiery death at the hands of the English."
―BookPage
"With compelling storytelling, Goldstone colorfully weaves together the tales of these two women...whose powerful personalities and deep allegiance to France helped shape the country's future."
―Publishers Weekly
"Vivid...astounding....as gripping as ever . . . [A] knowledgeable and accessible account of a turning point in French history."
―Kirkus Reviews
"Goldstone's entertaining narrative will intrigue general readers interested in the Middle Ages...or biographies of royal figures or women in history."
―Library Journal
"Goldstone adds an enlightening new chapter to a legendary saga and rescues another unjustly neglected woman from the dust pile of conventional history."
―Booklist
About the Author
Nancy Goldstone's previous books include The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc; Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe; and The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily. She has also coauthored five books with her husband, Lawrence Goldstone. She lives in Sagaponack, New York.
Most helpful customer reviews
65 of 68 people found the following review helpful.
Drops Reader Into Middle of 16th-Century French Court Politics
By Lynne E.
What really sets THE RIVAL QUEENS apart, is the readability. Far too many historical biographers write plodding, strictly chronological narratives that leave out nary a discovered fact. Not so with biographer Nancy Goldstone! Her introduction drops the reader immediately into the middle of 16th-Century French politics, by describing the arranged marriage of Marguerite de Valois, a devout Catholic, to Henry de Bourbon, a Huguenot; and by hinting at the assassinations of many members of the wedding party that are only days away.
This biography really explains--quite painlessly--how court politics worked in the 16th century. It brings home to the reader just how hard it was, even for those of royal status (e.g., Queen of France Catherine de' Medici; Princess Marguerite de Valois) to maintain any semblance of power, or even to stay alive, amidst the constant espionage and intrigues of the French wars of religion. Even members of the royal family--brothers and sisters, parents and children--spied on and turned against one another on the basis of spies' reports, both true and false. Marguerite, in particular, suffered from a false report of her liaison with a courtier that ruined her reputation shortly after she left the royal nursery to attend the French court.
Despite the importance of religion (Catholic or Protestant) to the devout rulers and populace of France, the 16th century French court was quite permissive about morality. Thus this dual biography entertains with accounts of various influential royal mistresses (e.g., Diane de Poitiers). Dianne de Poitiers actually coached Catherine de' Medici to help her provide King Henry II with the requisite heirs. The biography also shows with clarity what it was like to be a female member of a ruling family, a woman whose only perceived value lay in her ability to be married off in an advantageous-to-the-family political union. Only the most extraordinary women, like Queen Catherine and Queen Marguerite, managed to escape that role and actually wield political power.
This is a biography that makes you care about the characters, and about the unfolding nonfiction "plot". The writing is excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The fully-footnoted dual biography is supplemented by a useful map of France circa 1572, by a genealogical chart of the French royals, and by an excellent set of illustrations of paintings that depict the most important members of the French court, including the kings' mistresses.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Utterly Fascinating
By Iris of Ohio
This book was exceptionally well written. The royal characters were brought to life, and I wanted to keep reading to discover what happened next. I enjoyed Ms. Goldstone's style and am looking forward to her next book.
44 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
Queens, Kings, Flings and Religious Turmoil
By Billz
The book opens with the Queen mother inviting her son-in-law-to-be and all of his friends to the royal wedding in Paris. Then has them all murdered. So begins Nancy Goldstone's The Rival Queens.
This book is a summer treat that should be read with patience and awe—not a book to be gobbled up on a cross-country flight. While many Americans are familiar with Elizabeth I of England (mostly from films), very few know much about Catherine de' Medici or her daughter Marguerite de Valois (Queen Margot) who reigned in France during the 16th Century—part of a period generally known as the Renaissance. The mores of France during this period, and I suspect most royalty if not society at large, were ones seeped in both religious dogma and a happy hypocrisy. The religious dogma was such that adherents of one belief routinely murdered anyone of a different belief. In France, the schism was between the Catholics and French Protestants, knows as the "Huguenots." (For those unfamiliar with the term "Huguenot," it was the name given early Calvinists—who were something like the Puritans who sailed on the Mayflower to New England in the following century.) The happy hypocrisy lay in the fact that the kings of that period generally had extra-marital lovers—not just flings, but live-in lovers while the wives had to grimly suffer the humiliation and bear children. (Of course, most queens had lovers as well.)
Put in a larger context, the Renaissance occurred about the same time that the Ottoman Empire, fueled by Islamic proselytizing, was reaching its nadir in eastern Europe, western Asia and north Africa. The Spanish had just rid the Iberian peninsula of the Moors (and Islam) in 1492, and had instituted the Spanish Inquisition (1478) that made sure that any left-over Muslims converted to Catholic Christianity. (The Jews were also thrown into the same pot, even though they had no doctrinal ties to Islam.) Exploration and military conquests had made Spain the richest and most powerful nation in Europe controlling most of modern day Holland and Belgium as well as Spain. They were staunchly Catholic. However, since this period also spawned the Reformation begun when Martin Luther released "The Ninety-Five Theses" and fostered by theologians such as John Calvin (Jean Calvin)—not to mention the nascent printing press to distribute these new ideas—there was bound to be turmoil. Europe was a big Northern Ireland during The Troubles when the Unionist [Protestants] and Republicans [Catholics] were murdering each other—so it's not something the world has not seen since the Renaissance; just not on the same scale.
It would be an understatement to say that during this period people were touchy about their religious beliefs. Certain regions (or even towns), were Catholic and others were Huguenot. Most of France, especially Paris, were predominately Catholic, but regions like the Kingdom of Navarre, were Huguenot. In some ways the Renaissance in France looked more like the Dark Ages, Part II than the re-awakening associated with the Renaissance. The wars within and around France were chiefly religious ones, and costly to all concerned. However, as devout as they were to their religious beliefs, both Catholics and Protestants routinely had lovers, and as was the case with Queen Margot, forced a marriage between members of the opposite version of Christianity.
Often the Huguenots are depicted as somewhat dour in their fundamental version of Christianity, dressing in all-black; likened to crows. (H. L Mencken described the American Puritans—painted with the same Calvinist brush as the Huguenots— as people who were troubled by the "...haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.") That's not exactly right, but compared to the wild and crazy Catholics who made up the French court, there's some truth to it. We learn that as Queen, Catherine de' Medici, surrounded herself with a "flying squadron" of beautiful young women who were instructed on entertaining, spying and enlivening the French court. When on a visit to Navarre, a kingdom ruled by the Huguenot King Henry, Catherine's L'escadron volant ably and easily snatches the "black crows' " virtue. Catherine's Machiavellian plans are crafted by more by marrying off her children for political gain than for religious compatibility. Included in her plans are Queen Elizabeth (Protestant) of England to one of her sons, and Margot in the Spanish royal family (Catholic), among others.
The overall appeal of the book lies in the way that the author depicts a period of French royal history with care and what appears to be fairness (not balance—but dismissal of what appears to be gossip in favor of contextual facts). For example, La Reine Margot a novel by Alexandre Dumas (1845) suggests that Margot was introduced to sex by her brothers. (In the 1994 film, available on Netflix as "Queen Margot", the same insinuation was also made.) Goldstone refuses to credit those claims as nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors. Throughout the book the author takes care to be accurate. The focus is clearly on what the women in court had to endure during this period and how they rose to occasions beyond their posts.
Queen Catherine comes off as a survivor—at all costs. From the beginning of her life at a time when her family's fortunes were on the downswing until her death, she put up with a lot and did the best she could. She manipulated her children and French politics; sometimes with disastrous results. She comes off as a Machiavellian, but in reality Goldstone depicts many of her attempts as clumsy or even ridiculous. She was in a game where everyone had read Machiavelli, and their plans were just as devious as hers.
Queen Margot, on the other hand, who is in a loveless marriage to the King of Navarre, is beset by a series of betrayals her entire life but comes out (in the book at least) as the savvy player, the talented spy and the resourceful planner and woman of action. Her problems, in no small part, are due to her mother Catherine and brothers. (If you think you have mother-daughter issues; you won't after reading this book.) Alliances between warring parties outside of the court are one thing that Margot is adapt at handling; within the family the relations between herself and her brother(s) the King(s) and her mother are an impossible rat's nest of intrigue, paranoia and greed.
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