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In this must-read prequel to Kendare Blake’s New York Times bestselling Three Dark Crowns, the queens’ origin story is revealed. It’s a pre-crown lowdown of Fennbirn’s ruling class.Mirabella, Arsinoe, and Katharine weren't always scheming to murde... The Medici had faltered somewhat in the sixteenth century, their starry ascendance hampered by political rivals in Florence, weak leadership among the descendants of Il Magnifico, and the bald fact that the senior branch of the Medici was dying out. The family pinned its hopes on young Lorenzo, the only legitimate male heir of Il Magnifico. Pope Leo tried to fashion Lorenzo, a notorious profligate, into an aristocrat. In 1517, shortly before Francis I sent his marriage proposal, Leo named his nephew the Duke of Urbino. But as Francis well knew, the Medici were parvenus in a world that put more stake in bloodlines than wealth. The Medici were still commoners, not a single drop of blue blood coursing through their veins. That would change if Lorenzo de’ Medici married the French noblewoman Francis offered, and if she bore a child. The Valois dynasty of France and the Medici of Florence would be united. The alliance would secure Medici control over Florence and put the force of the French crown behind Medici enterprises in Europe. The children of the marriage would be French aristocrats, the Medici now a hair’s breadth from royalty. In a way, Catherine de’ Medici’s story begins not at her birth but rather on those waters, under those Mediterranean skies, the sails of her ship whipping against a late summer breeze. This was the moment of her crossing from Italy to France, from maiden to bride, from the Medici family to a royal French one, from girlhood to young womanhood. Already, she had assumed a new importance as those who observed the pendulum of Renaissance politics now took note of her, measuring her looks, her bearing, her potential to give birth; from this moment forward, the traces of Catherine will appear more prominently in the archives. At fourteen, she was barely in her teens, ignorant of what the coming years would bring. And yet, to the sixteenth-century world, this part of her story was nothing new. A wealthy girl leaves her homeland to marry a prince, neither for love nor looks but for the dowry and value she brings? This had been the path charted for Catherine’s mother, for countless girls of Catherine’s time and place. A path that, to a girl like Catherine, must have seemed as ancient and predictable as the rising sun. Victoria was another teenage queen, just 18 at her accession in 1837. Her uncle, William IV, supposedly was determined to hang on long enough to avoid a royal minority council governing for Victoria until she came of age.
The Queen’s reign has also been laced with happy memories, including many weddings. The most recent was her granddaughter Princess Beatrice’s in 2020, which took place amid the coronavirus pandemic, with the Queen and Philip having to stand socially distanced away from the happy couple. Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in the garden of their wartime country residence (Windsor) in January 1941 Credit: PA Mary, Queen of Scots' story begins in Scotland and ends in England. A queen turned traitor, from the confines of her English prison she longs for the idyll of her childhood in France. She left behind neither mother nor father in Italy. Catherine had been an orphan almost since birth. Her father had been Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence. The scion of the Medici family’s senior branch, Lorenzo was the grandson and namesake of the great fifteenth-century Florentine banker and patron Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as Il Magnifico.
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Tall and square-shouldered, John Stewart, Duke of Albany, was a Scotsman who was also a Frenchman. Born in France to a French duchess and a royal Scottish prince, Albany was a grandson of King James II of Scotland. He was also a cousin to Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne and her older sister Anne. Albany had been raised with them, spending a happy childhood hunting and hawking in the wooded hills of Auvergne. Although his birth placed him in line to the Scottish throne, Albany spent much of his adulthood in the service of King Francis, to whom he demonstrated an irreproachable fidelity. If Albany’s title belonged to Scotland, his heart belonged to France. French was his first language, and for his entire life, he always preferred to sign his name the French way: Jehan Stuart instead of John Stewart. When did the child Caterina learn of this exalted inheritance? What did she ask about her mother? An Italian diplomat once gushed that Madeleine was “beautiful and wise … gracious and very worthy,” words that extol and yet say very little.11 No doubt the young Caterina learned of Madeleine’s wealth, of her vast, rolling estates in Auvergne. Perhaps she saw a portrait. As with so much of Madeleine’s life, we can’t be sure of what she looked like. One painting now hanging in the Uffizi is sometimes said to be of Madeleine. A slim girl, straight and stylish in her dark velvet bodice and opulent red sleeves, looks out from under a French hood. Her hair is auburn and her cheeks round. Her eyes are blue. Mary, Queen of Scots’ story begins in Scotland and ends in England. A queen turned traitor, from the confines of her English prison she longs for the idyll of her childhood in France. Leo X wept upon hearing of Lorenzo’s death, then raced to shore up the Medici inheritance. He claimed the duchy of Urbino for the infant Caterina, and sent his cousin, Giulio de’ Medici, to guarantee Medici stewardship of Florence. There remained the problem of what to do with the baby girl herself. King Francis had offered to raise Caterina at the French court, but Leo politely refused, unwilling to give the French control over his bargaining chip. Instead, the pope sent the baby to live with her Medici aunt Clarice, who lived with her Strozzi husband and growing clutch of Strozzi children in Rome.
Her son Charles is now experiencing that same combination of mourning for the loss of a beloved parent while simultaneously being catapulted into the role of monarch and head of state. King Charles III had 70 years to prepare for this moment and a lifetime to act with the greater freedom of the heir. His name was John Stewart, Duke of Albany. He was Caterina’s maternal uncle. Sent by King Francis to Rome, he arrived at the Strozzi villa sometime in 1525, when Caterina was just about six years old. Leah Redmond Chang on Young Queens “I want readers to relate to these queens as women, to get lost in the story of Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary”It was a lifetime of loyalty to her realm that defined her reign, with the Queen touring the UK, the Commonwealth and overseas hundreds of times.
In September 1517, he wrote to the young Lorenzo II de’ Medici, scion of the Florentine banking clan and the pope’s nephew. “I hope … to marry you to some beautiful and great lady,” he ventured, “one who would be a relative of mine and of great lineage so that the love I bear you would grow and strengthen even more.” “I would have no greater desire,” replied a coy Lorenzo, “than to take this lady from Your Majesty’s hand.”*2 February 6, 1952 was the day that changed Queen Elizabeth’s life forever: her father, King George VI, suddenly died at their Norfolk home of Sandringham. With his passing came a transfer of power to his daughter. She was only 25 years old. Men’s fertility also declines with age — here’s what to know if you’re planning to wait to have kids Well-written, detailed . . . [ Young Queens] brings these women to life with insight and empathy, skillfully revealing ‘patterns about women and power’ . . . By centering these queens’ reigns and their relationships with one another, Chang gives readers new insight into their lives and legacies." — Rebecca Hopman, Booklist 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.
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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.
Elizabeth I reigned for 44 years, Victoria for 63 and Elizabeth II is Britain’s longest reigning monarch with her 70-year reign. They all faced the challenge of assuming power at a young age and in very challenging circumstances. Elizabeth I had to cope with stabilising the realm after decades of religious and political turbulence under her father and siblings. Bauer Consumer Media Ltd, Company number 01176085; Bauer Radio Limited, Company number: 1394141; Registered office: Media House, Peterborough Business Park, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA and H Bauer Publishing, Company number: LP003328; Registered office: The Lantern, 75 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PL Elena Woodacre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. PartnersIf love for his deceased wife bolstered Albany’s attention to Caterina, his primary mission in Rome was to promote King Francis’s political interests. Though Caterina was still young, Francis already saw her as the key to future Italian conquests. Dutifully, Albany would keep watch over his niece from afar during the coming years. It would be her first public speech to the world, in which she remarked “and when peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.” Young Queens takes us into the hearts and minds of three extraordinary women. Leah Redmond Chang's meticulous research and engaging prose gives each of them their due, providing a rich and nuanced perspective on the challenges they faced and the remarkable legacies they left behind
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