Young Queens
Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Biography)
One of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023
One of BookRiot's Best Biographies of 2023
Longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize in Nonfiction
The boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots—three queens exercising 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 transformed 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.
Following the intertwined stories of the three women from girlhood through young adulthood, Leah Redmond Chang's Young Queens paints a 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Chang (Portraits of the Queen Mother) highlights complicated mother-daughter relationships in this sympathetic study of the 16th-century French queen Catherine de' Medici; her daughter, Elisabeth de Valois; and her daughter-in-law, Mary, Queen of Scots. Following Mary's betrothal at the age of five to Elisabeth's brother, Francis II, the three women bonded while living in the same household for 13 years. Elisabeth married Spain's king, Philip II, in 1559; two years later, Mary, recently widowed, returned to Scotland to rule in her own right, having inherited the throne when she was six days old. Meanwhile, Catherine strove to influence both young women to benefit France. Relations between the queens devolved when Catherine blocked Mary's remarriage to Philip II's heir, his son by an earlier marriage. Still, the Scottish queen begged both Catherine and Elisabeth for help after she was imprisoned by Elizabeth I of England in 1568. Chang wisely adds context by also delving into the motivations of Elizabeth I and Philip II, but ignores previous examples of powerful medieval queen mothers whose experiences may have emboldened Catherine's far-ranging ambitions. Nevertheless, this sheds valuable light on interpersonal feelings and familial relations often missed in more traditional accounts of political power.
