Catherine de’ Medici: birth, loss of parents, and Italian politics

Caterina Maria Romula de’ Medici, who was destined to become Queen of France as wife of King Henri II of France, was born at around 11 o’clock on the 13th of April 1519 in Florence. Her father was a Italian nobleman and scion of the ruling Medici House of Florence...

Marriage of Catherine de’ Medici and Prince Henri, Duke d’Orléans

Royal weddings were rarely fascinating fairytales of love – they aimed to foster allegiances and cement alliances.  Soon after his return home, Prince Henri, Duke d’Orléans (future King Henri II of France), found himself at the center of his father King François I’s marial plans for him.  Henri and his...

Intricacies of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

On the night of the 23 and 24th of August 1572, the sanguineous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre was carried out in Paris.  It was the cold-blooded murder of thousands of French Protestants called ‘Huguenots’, which appears to have been orchestrated by the formidable mother of King Charles IX of France...

The religious catastrophe in France preceding the marriage of Henri III of Navarre and Marguerite de Valois

On the 18th of August 1572, a fateful wedding took place in Paris, France.  King Henri III of Navarre, a Huguenot monarch and the future Henri IV of France, married Princess Marguerite de Valois.  Henri was the only surviving son of Jeanne d’Albret, or Queen Jeanne III of Navarre, and...

Dauphin François of France: poisoned or died of natural causes?

Duke François III of Brittany, who was also Dauphin of France and an heir apparent, was the eldest son of King François I of France and his first wife, Queen Claude of France, who also was his cousin as daughter of King Louise XII and his second spouse, Anne de...

Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria: a Queen of France who never remarried

Archduchess Elisabeth of Austria, one of the daughters of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, and his wife, Maria of Spain, was born on the 5th of July 1554.  A member of the House of Habsburg, she seems to have been her father’s favorite child and resembled him not only in...