On 4 September 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots met John Knox for the first time. Three years before, he had written the book widely known as the Monstrous Regiment, formally The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. In it, he had declared women ‘weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish … cruel and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment’. He claimed its target had been the English and Catholic Mary Tudor. The Queen of Scotland was sceptical.

At the time of this meeting, Mary was just 18 to Knox’s 45. Her experience as a young queen navigating power, along with that of her first mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France, and Catherine’s daughter Elisabeth Valois, Queen of Spain, is the subject of Leah Redmond Chang’s book. It explores a 40-year period stretching from the young Catherine’s years as a hostage of Florence’s last republican government, to Elisabeth’s untimely death and Mary’s imprisonment. Catherine, the longest-lived of the three, is a presence throughout, switching from young queen to sometimes-overbearing mother figure. This is an intriguing approach to 16th-century queenship, an area that is hardly short of studies, and all the more so for its choice of subjects.

It is the nature of hereditary monarchy that the suitability of royal children as rulers or consorts is a lottery. Elizabeth I went her own determined way as the Virgin Queen, with remarkable success. In the 17th century, Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated and exiled herself to Rome where she became a patron of the arts and enjoyed multiple affairs. In the 18th, going one better, Queen Caroline didn’t abdicate, swanned off to the Med, hooked up with the low-born Milanese Bartolomeo Pergami, and still retained such popularity in England that George IV could not remove her title. These three young queens, however, are not the sort to tear up the rule book. Catherine, consort and regent of France, her daughter Elisabeth and daughter-in-law Mary dutifully marry and try their best (in trying circumstances) to bear the necessary children. As Chang admits, neither Elisabeth nor Mary had Elizabeth Tudor’s brilliance. Nor did they match Marguerite of Navarre’s literary accomplishments or Renée de France’s important patronage of Calvin. That does, however, give us a chance to find out what it was like to be a rather average woman thrust into a role for which you had to develop the aptitude swiftly or face trouble.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Catherine Fletcher is the author of The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020).

Born into the powerful Medici family of Florence young Catherine experiences upsets but is sent away to marry at a young age. Her husband is the King of France and after some conception issues Catherine presents her country with several children. On his death Catherine assumes the regency for her son and his young bride, Mary. Mary is the Queen of Scotland but has been resident in France since and early age. Catherine's daughter Elizabeth is then married to Philip of Spain. Therefore by the 1560s these three woman are at the head of affairs in three major powers.
I really enjoyed this book as it portrayed three women I have long heard about but only was familiar with the story of Mary in detail. Catherine de Medici lived a long life, outliving most of her children and oversaw a lot of turmoil in France including war and religious conflict. She used her influence via her daughter in Spain to build alliances to protect her country. Elizabeth is a figure of whom little is known beside official records and the letters she shared with her mother, here she is given life. The book is very readable for a scholarly biography and hits a gap by not focusing on the Tudors, but looking at the bigger European picture. ( )

I recieved a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the story of three Queens all linked by their attachment to France: Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth de Valois Queen of Spain and Mary Queen of Scots. I have long been fascinated with the women who helped shape the late sixteenth century but most of my reading had been on the women of the British Isles, including Mary. Catherine was a familiar name but I did not know much about her history, she was obviously a key figure in Anglo-French relations. Of the three Elizabeth was the one I knew least about.

I would not expect a comprehensive biography of the each of the three Queens, but I do not think that is what the author is intending. This instead is a book about the relationship dynamics which shaped the women, their relationships, their decisions, and arguably the direction of European politics. Through their letters, in the case of Catherine a truly voluminous correspondance, we can get a closer sense of the character of each and their motivations.

Having read biographies of Mary previously, I was most suprised by how much more I learnt in this book. Understanding more about those formative years in France, growing up alongside the French royal children, the impact of her Guise relatives and the adoration she recieved as an important political pawn. These events now make her later decisions once she returned to Scotland more explicable, she had been groomed to be a queen consort and to follow the advise of her male relatives; Mary had been taught not to think for herself and to rely on her tightly knit french family. Even by the time she fled to England she was still politically and emotionally a child. I have much more empathy for Mary the woman, she was hopelessly ill prepared to govern.

Catherine de Medici has had many charges laid against her door to the extent that she has become almost a characture, a symptom of which can been seen in Dumas's novel La Reine Margot. In returning to Catherines highly troubled childhood we understand more clearly her drivers both in enduring what must have been a humiliating marriage and her unwavering devotion to her children. This book definately shifted some perceptions, she was much more of an advocate for compromise and conciliation than I had been led to believe. A consumate politician who ended up guiding three kings of France through the tumultuous period of religious upheavel.

Poor Elizabeth, she was not so nearly important as the other Queens. However her story highlights the conflicts which must have beset many young princesses married off the cement dynastic and political alliences. Who does one support? The country and family of one's birth or the country and husband you married? Through her letters with her mother we see how she tries to find a balance. It is all the more impressive since she was married off at 13/14 and by her early twenties was dead.

I very much enjoyed this book and it should be read by anyone interested in the role of women in early modern politics.

I have not given it five stars because the copy I recieved was very poorly formatted for kindle, hopefully something they have subsequently resolved. ( )