Young Queens

From French literature and culture scholar Leah Redmond Chang, Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power is the riveting intertwined story of three sovereigns as they exercise power in a world dominated by men.

Orphaned from infancy, Catherine de Medici endured a tumultuous childhood. Married to the French king, she was widowed by forty, only to become the power behind the French throne during a period of intense civil strife. In 1546, Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, who would become Queen of Spain. Two years later, Catherine welcomed to her nursery the beguiling young Mary, Queen of Scots, who would later become her daughter-in-law.

Together, Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary lived through the sea-changes that rocked sixteenth-century Europe: a time of expanding empires, religious discord, and populist revolt, as concepts of nationhood began to emerge and ideas of sovereignty inched closer to absolutism. They would learn that to rule as a queen was to wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched misogyny of their time. A royal crown could exalt a young woman-equally, it could destroy her.

Following the three women from girlhood through young adulthood, and drawing from understudied archival materials, Young Queens illuminates the fierce bonds, rivalries, hopes, and desires that shaped their lives and changed the course of history. Their intertwined stories paint a larger picture of a world in which a woman could wield power at the highest level yet remain at the mercy of the state, her body serving as the currency of empire and dynasty, sacrificed to the will of husband, family, kingdom.

Includes color images