Catherine De Medici Part 2

Summary

The History Chicks: Catherine de Medici, Part 2 – Episode Summary

Podcast: The History Chicks: A Women’s History Podcast
Episode: Catherine de Medici Part 2
Release Date: September 11, 2025
Hosts: Becca and Susan

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Overview

Part 2 of The History Chicks' exploration of Catherine de Medici’s life delves into her transformation from dowager queen to the central, often controversial, power in 16th-century French politics. Amidst religious turmoil, political challenges, and family rivalries, Catherine emerges as a complex ruler contending with misogyny, rebellion, dynastic instability, and a long-standing taint of villainy. The hosts unpack myths, realpolitik, Catherine’s strategies for survival, her fashion and cultural legacies, and the pivotal tragedies that marked her reign and shaped European history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Aftermath of King Henry II’s Death (03:21–07:05)

• Catherine’s political standing shifted instantly: from queen to dowager queen, but, critically, as the mother of the king(s).
• The ascension of her 15-year-old son, Francis II, married to Mary, Queen of Scots, changed court dynamics dramatically.
• Catherine’s first moves:
  • Forced Diane de Poitiers (Henry’s influential mistress) to return the crown jewels and give up her prized château—yet, Catherine showed restraint, allowing Diane a comfortable exile rather than ruin.
  • This episode signals Catherine’s political savvy and personal restraint, undercutting her reputation as a vengeful figure.

Quote:
“Already a person completely capable of revenge does not exercise it. …perhaps the rumors aren’t as true…that she’s a cold-blooded killer.”
— Susan (06:32)

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2. Rise of Factionalism and Religious Turmoil (07:05–17:27)

• The Guise family (Mary’s uncles) seized power in a bloodless coup, sidelining Catherine initially but needing her support.
• Intermarriage intertwined political factions, complicating Catherine’s influence.
• The court was divided among Catholics (the Guises), Protestants (Bourbons, including Henri of Navarre), and military leaders (Montmorency).
• Catherine worked toward religious compromise, seeking stability over religious purity amid Europe-wide Catholic-Protestant wars.

Quote:
“What was more important to her than religious purity was stability in your realm that preserves and secures your dynasty.”
— Susan (11:39)

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3. Religious Conflict Deepens: Plots & Counterplots (17:27–24:49)

• Failed Bourbon coup; harsh Guise reprisals; public executions characterized the period.
• With Michel de l’Hospital, Catherine shaped policy leaning toward religious moderation—punishing heretics only for treason, not mere religious practice.
• The Assembly of Notables was used to spread authority and accountability, tying society together in seeking stability.

Quote:
“She spread the responsibility across different levels of society…you never knew where your disapproval was going to come from.”
— Susan (19:56)

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4. Political Maneuvering and the Cycle of Regency (24:49–30:28)

• After Francis II’s early death, Catherine secured the regency for her young son Charles IX, outmaneuvering the competing claim by Antoine of Navarre by leveraging the fate of his imprisoned brother—one of several examples of her negotiation skills.
• Official letters and seals established her sole authority.

Quote:
“My principal aim is to have the honor of God before my eyes in all things and to preserve my authority not for myself, but for the conservation of this kingdom.”
— Catherine (letter, read by Susan, 25:36)

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5. Struggle for Tolerance and a Fragile Peace (30:28–39:10)

• Catherine immediately distanced Mary, Queen of Scots, and formalized her own power.
• Continued to push for tolerance between Catholics and Huguenots, but both hardliners undermined each compromise.
• Edicts (Saint-Germain, Amboise) attempted but repeatedly failed to stabilize the kingdom, setting the stage for rampant religious civil war.

Quote:
“It was a compromise that satisfied neither radical Protestants nor hardline Catholics. And tensions soon flared again and again. I say, what is the big deal?”
— Susan (38:43)

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6. The Myths of Poison and Plots: Catherine's Reputation (39:10–46:49)

• Notoriously tainted as a poisoner and manipulator, Catherine’s reputation is dissected—little evidence supports direct personal use of poisons.
• The "Cabinet of Horrors" at Blois, filled with hidden drawers, is more likely a collection room than an arsenal.
• The "Flying Squadron" (Escadron Volant): Catherine’s intelligence network of female spies who supposedly used their charm to extract secrets—an example of exploiting contemporary gender bias.

Quote:
“If people were going to underestimate women, well, then Catherine was going to exploit that weakness.”
— Susan (45:30)

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7. Power, Progress, and Pageantry (50:25–55:37)

• Catherine organized a grand country tour with Charles IX and court—demonstrating royal authority and attempting to enforce religious peace.
• Instituted the Edict of Roussillon, standardizing the New Year across France (January 1).
• The tense summit at Bayonne with Spain’s Duke of Alba highlighted her refusal to endorse Spanish-style religious persecution, but optics damaged her Protestant alliances.

Quote:
“She was obviously unwilling to entertain that kind of religious intolerance.”
— Becca (55:50)

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8. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (75:10–87:31)

• The marriage of Margot (Catherine’s daughter) to Henry of Navarre was meant to unite Catholic and Protestant factions.
• The attempted assassination and subsequent killing of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny (Huguenot leader and royal advisor) triggered the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre—widespread slaughter of Protestants.
• The hosts explore Catherine’s possible involvement:
  • She was likely complicit in the decision to target Protestant leaders but probably did not anticipate the ensuing mass violence.
  • The event irreparably stained her legacy as “the Black Queen”.

Quote:
“If I’m gonna, like, come down on one side or the other...she could not possibly have known it would lead to the thousands of deaths that followed.”
— Susan (83:14)

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9. Aftermath: Decline, Dynastic End, and Legacy (87:31–126:44)

• Charles IX (Catherine's son) died, tormented by guilt. Henry III, her favorite yet problematic child, became king.
• Catherine’s influence waned as Henry III resisted her guidance and the country fell into deeper crisis (religious wars, economic collapse, and political intrigue).
• The War of the Three Henrys ensued (Henry III, Henry of Navarre, Henry of Guise).
• Catherine died in 1589; her body was ultimately lost amidst revolutionary turmoil, symbolizing her tumultuous legacy.
• Henry of Navarre became Henry IV, founding the Bourbon dynasty and ending the wars with the Edict of Nantes.

Quote:
“Everything about her is paradoxical, and we think had her sons grown into mature and level headed middle aged kings, her fortitude and the sacrifices that she made might well be regarded with greater grace than history has typically given her.”
— Susan (138:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On gendered historical myth:
  “What could a poor woman do, left alone by the death of her husband, with five small children on her arms, and with two families in France, mine and that of the Guises striving to take away the crown… Was it not necessary that she play strange parts in order to deceive the one and the other of us? …she did this to protect her children, who reigned in succession by the wisdom of a woman so able.”
  — Henry IV of France (quoted by Susan, 139:13)

• On the challenge of ruling as a woman:
  “It is curious that it is she who's damned as the intruder, the foreigner. But… her crime is that she merely sought to defend the French monarchy, to preserve it intact as it passed throughout her family.”
  — Henry IV (139:37)

• On Catherine’s reputation as “Black Queen”:
  “This whole image of black and being sinister kind of stuck with her. And I think that she—not just accepted it, but said, 'Okay, well, this shows me as a formidable force. You got a problem with that?’”
  — Becca (87:31)

• On women rulers and compromise:
  “I think it is interesting that the women rulers are like, can we please come to some agreement? I literally don't care what it is… Just stop fighting.”
  — Susan (13:53)

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Timestamps for Pivotal Segments

| Time | Segment/Event | |---------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:21–07:05 | Power shift after Henry II’s death; Diane de Poitiers’s fate | | 11:17–16:28 | Rise of Guise power, religious conflict, and government tensions | | 24:49–30:28 | Regency secured for Charles IX; Catherine’s consolidation of power| | 38:43 | Edict of Amboise and futility of compromise | | 45:30 | The Flying Squadron and Catherine as master strategist | | 75:10–87:31 | St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and its legacy | | 120:02–120:37 | French Revolution: desecration of royal tombs | | 123:48 | Death of Henry III, rise of the Bourbons |

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Thematic Threads & Analysis

• Catherine’s Pragmatism vs. Reputation: The episode thoroughly examines how history's depiction of Catherine as a violent, scheming figure overshadows her actual commitment to preserving the throne and seeking stability—a task fraught with impossible contradictions in a divided realm.
• Role of Women in Power: The hosts recurrently parallel Catherine’s experience with other female rulers (Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots), highlighting both the misogyny they encountered and their distinct, compromise-minded approaches to rule.
• Myth-Busting: Deep dives dispel tales of Catherine’s poison cabinet, her supposed delight in cruelty, and focus on her legacy as cultural patron and influencer of art, architecture, and politics.
• Endurance Amid Cataclysm: The hosts spotlight Catherine’s resilience through scandal, loss, rebellion, and the near-total erasure of her physical legacy.

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Further Reading & Media Recommendations (127:25–133:09)

• Books:

  • Catherine de Medici by Lenny Frieda
  • Catherine de Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen by Mary Hollingsworth
  • The Rival Queens by Nancy Goldstone
  • Women of the Life and Times of Catherine de Medici by Mark Strague
  • Young Queens by Leah Redmond Chang
  • Henry IV of France: His Reign and Age by Vincent Pitts

• TV/Film:

  • The Serpent Queen (Starz) – starring Samantha Morton
  • Clips from Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), Reign (Megan Follows as Catherine)
  • Civilization VI video game (features Catherine de Medici as a playable leader)

• Sites:

  • Chateau de Blois, Chenonceau, Chaumont, the Tuileries gardens, Louvre, Basilica of St. Denis (Catherine's tomb)

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Tone & Style

Lively, witty, and accessible, the hosts blend deep scholarship, pop culture references, and colloquial humor to make early modern European politics both comprehensible and compelling. They frequently note the complicated, “rabbit-hole” character of Catherine’s era. The depth of respect and curiosity for women’s history—and the challenges of being a female ruler—tie together the storytelling.

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Summary Statement:
Catherine de Medici emerges in this episode not as a villain, but as a fiercely intelligent, patient, and strategic survivor trying to balance an unsteady realm in the crucible of history. Myths of poisons and blackness give way, through narrative and evidence, to a nuanced portrait of France's most paradoxical queen mother—one whose true legacy, as the hosts compellingly argue, is far richer and more tragic than legend allows.

Transcript

[Becca]

Welcome to the History tricks where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental. Hello, friends and welcome to the show. Before we get started on Catherine de Medici Part 2, we have a very important announcement for you.

[Susan]

Since we are talking about Roman things later in the show, let me start by saying we are going to Londinium. That is London to me and you. This is the official announcement for the next field trip. This one is for spring of 2026.

[Becca]

The actual dates are April 19th through the 27th and registration is now open. So simply go to likeminds travel.com the trip will be there, all the details of it will be there. You'll see the changes that are made in this. What is this London? Three point know, we're pretty excited about that.

[Susan]

A couple of highlights. I mean, I don't think you're going to be on the fence at this point, but just in case you are, we're going to Jane Austen's house to see the actual table where she wrote everything. We are going to Highclere Castle, home of a little show called Downton Abbey. We are going this year to visit Bath. Yes, Bath.

[Becca]

That's my scream of excitement. I was so excited when Laura was like, would you like to go to Bath? Yeah, please, can we?

[Susan]

And those are just a few of the highlights. We are going to see Westminster Abbey. By the end, Big Ben will be our friend. We'll be like, bye Big Ben. At the end as we drive away, we're going to ride on a double decker bus. We're, you know, it's going to be great. So go to likeminds travel.com and I would act as soon as your mind makes the choice be because if you snooze, typically you lose and we'd hate to see that happen.

[Becca]

So yeah, these do sell out very quickly.

[Susan]

Okay, we hope to see you there.

[Becca]

And now on with the show. This is part two of Catherine de Medici. But first, let's have a little recap, shall we? Catherine was born in the Republic of Florence in 1519 to a very powerful family. But then she was orphaned right at birth. She was bounced from one house to another, convent house to another for the first 11 years of her life, including a portion where she was held prisoner. She wed Henry of France, the second son of the king, when they were both 14. But as things often happen in royal families, in no time at all, he was the dauphin and then he was the king when she was 28. She had seven children survive childhood to raise and then of course to be pawns on a marriage market, just like she was. She was intelligent, she ruffled no feathers, she was amiable company. But she was also under the thumb of her husband's longtime mistress, Diane depoitier. But at the end of our last episode, her husband, King Henry, died in a jousting match gone terribly wrong. Her husband, her eldest son, is 15 and she is a widow.

[Susan]

And now on with part two. When her husband died, Katherine's situation at court changed in an instant. Now it's important to know that it was through her sons that Katherine built up her own political power. Though she started slowly. Have you ever seen, like, those zoo animals that have been kept in captivity and have never seen grass and how tentative they are that they really do have the power to leave their cage and run their own lives after an entire lifetime of not having that? That's what this reminds me of. No longer was Catherine the queen, but now the dowager queen. Though more importantly for our story going forward, she was the mother of the king kings. Spoiler alert, kings.

[Becca]

The new king, 15 year old Francis was married and his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots. While she was not crowned Queen of France, she was still Queen regnant of Scotland.

[Susan]

She's two kind of queens. Catherine and her entourage set off for the traditional royal 40 days of mourning. And instantly the change was clear. When the royal family got to the departing carriage, Catherine de Medici stepped back to cede the top position to her daughter in law, Mary Queen of Scots. Protocol, Protocol. She's the new queen when King Charles of Great Britain dies. This is a question. Does Camilla have to curtsy to Prince William's wife, Catherine, the new queen? Oh, I imagine it would feel about the same.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

For Camilla.

[Becca]

I think you're right. I think you're right.

[Susan]

Now our queen Catherine did not hesitate to immediately exploit some of the authority she did have. One of her very first acts was to force Diane de Poitier to hand over the crown jewels and return the Chateau de Chenonceau to the crown. Diane was banished from court, but Catherine gave her a castle, which Catherine considered the subsidiary one, the Chateau de Chaumont, like the one in, in the hierarchy of mistress versus wife that Catherine thought Diane should have had in the first place. And honestly, it's also quite beautiful. Like, it's lovely. It's beautiful to us. And Diane lived out the rest of her life in luxury and comfort on her late husband's properties, which were not seized because it could have been worse. You know what? Diane de Poitier, in her turn Who'd been, you know, de facto queen instead of Catherine. She pursued a course of punishment against the previous king's mistress. Do you remember her? The Duchess de Tombes. The mistress, dismissed from court, confiscated all her possessions, and then the duchess faced the threat of trial for heresy. Now, King Henry, son of the man who had loved her, chose not to pursue this to its usual grisly end. But the terror followed. The Duchess d', Etampes, her husband, the Duke, took his own revenge and had her confined to a castle in the country. So Diane de Poitier got off easy is what she did.

[Becca]

She did not attend the funeral. Normally she would have been invited, but not this time.

[Susan]

Katherine purposely did not invite her.

[Becca]

Right. She did write to Katherine. She sent a note that said, pardon for my past offenses against your person, and signed it, your most obedient and loyal subject.

[Susan]

You know, that's as close as I can get for thank you for not doing what I did. Yes, yes, to the previous mistress. I mean, you know what, she didn't have to do any of that. She could have taken everything and she did not. And she let Diane de Poitier live in dignity, which is more than Diane de Poitiers did to Catherine for the entirety of her marriage to the king. That's all I'm saying. So already a person completely capable of revenge does not exercise it. I'm just saying perhaps the rumors aren't as true, you know, perhaps the history is not as true as we think. That she's a cold blooded killer.

[Becca]

Yeah. One of the easiest things she probably did was take to wearing black. Not just in mourning, but she decided this was going to be her signature color going forward for the rest of her life. If it's okay, I'm going to wrap up Diane's story because I, like Katherine, would like to be done with her. Diane lived the rest of her life in relative quiet. Now, at this point, Diane is knocking on 60's door. She looks fabulous, but she is a little bit older. She had taken pains her entire life to maintain a very youthful complexion. Her beauty was renowned and she had it for a long time. One of the greatest elixirs that she believed she was taking to maintain this beauty contained gold. Gold and ether, which, you know, they put it over the hankies before they knock people out in movies. That was something she was drinking on the daily. It made her bones brittle. And she had a writing accident, which she never recovered from. And at 66, she died. She died seven years after King Henry. Later, her body was exhumed and they dug up her bones. And this is again, medical historians, they decided that, yes, one of the contributing factors to her death was that she had ingested so much gold, it played havoc on her organs as well as her bones.

[Susan]

So perhaps those desserts that you pay $42 for at the steakhouse, maybe skip the gold, probably counter indicate. Yeah, exactly.

[Becca]

I mean, she has taken a shot of ether and gold every day. Yeah, it's a lot.

[Susan]

It's not exactly turmeric.

[Becca]

I love that it took 500 years to do this, to figure out what it was that actually killed her.

[Susan]

Woo. So, back to the story. Francis II, Francois Dieu, became king at the age of only 15, and the new Queen Mary's uncles, the two Guise brothers, Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke de Guise, seized power the day after Henry II's death and quickly moved themselves on into the Louvre Palace. In fact, the Duke of Guise himself moved into Diane de Poitiers old set of rooms. Yes, he did. He took the grand spot. It was right next door to the King's chamber. It was called a bloodless coup. They effectively took control of the new king's administration and sidelined their rivals to. But that didn't include Catherine de Medici for the moment. Catherine worked with the Guises out of necessity.

[Becca]

You know, the Guises are a very tight family tree. All for one and one for all. That was their family motto that Alexandre Dumas stole many, many years later.

[Susan]

Is that for his three musketeers. Whee.

[Becca]

Well, their families were further intertwined when Catherine's daughter Claude married a Guise cousin and. And became the Duchess of lorraine. They were 11 and 14, respectively when this happened. But their families are intertwined, so that just makes it a little bit more difficult for Catherine to get a word in edgewise. Although she was there at the table, she was in the room where things happened for the most part.

[Susan]

Well, technically, officially, she had no role in her son Francis's government because at 15, he was deemed old enough to roll her for himself. How. How scary is that? You basically have ninth graders in charge of your government. Nevertheless, all his official acts began with the words, and I quote, this being the good pleasure of the Queen, my lady mother and I also approving of every opinion that she holdeth, am content and command that blah, blah, blah, whatever.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

So, hooray. On the surface, she is still the boss of him. And I will tell you, behind the scenes, all these sons were pretty dependent still on Mama and her opinion. It was very important to them what.

[Becca]

She thought and Also behind the scenes for the King to say that kind of puts onus on Catherine and not the Guises. So if something happened and someone came to the Guises and said, I cannot believe that the King has done this and it was something that the Guises had told him to do in the first place, they can just say, what can we do? His mother is calling the shots. Plausible deniability.

[Susan]

The long regency of Catherine through multiple baby kings. This is going on in the background pretty much from now on was marked by the French wars of religion. So that's a period of war between Catholics and Huguenots. We, being American, are going to say Huguenots. If you are in another part of the world, you might say Huguenot.

[Becca]

Very good.

[Susan]

Yeah. But we are not going to say that because it sounds again like that old Saturday Night Live special where they say, burrito tornado, you know. Well, history will depict Catherine as a crazy despot, murderer who hated Protestants. You know, it's important to note that the reality is quite different. In fact, Catherine spent a lot of her time trying to find compromises between Catholics and Protestants. She was a Catholic. Yes. Would she have preferred it if the whole country was Catholic? I would have been easier. But what was more important to her than religious purity was stability in your realm that preserves and secures your dynasty. There's three parties for her to balance. The all powerful Guises, Super Catholic, currently standing on top of the mountain as blood relatives of Queen Mary, you know, and also the people next to power, like physically also their power base was the eastern half of France. And then you have the Bourbons. Now if Catherine's line dies out, they're next up. Princes of the blood, Anthony of Navarre, Louis Prince of Conde, we'll call them Navarre and Conde. Conde actually converted to Protestantism. So they're half and half and they run the west. And then in the center, like right at the capital, you have Montmorency, who is the chief military officer, whose sons were all Huguenots and hated the Guises for their upstartery. The Bourbons also hated the geezes, because the Bourbons are like, look, legally we're next in line. We should be the bosses. And the Guises are like, come and get it. Then, you know, there was like great tension. The good thing was they were all so powerful that they kind of kept each other in check. And it was a nice little balance.

[Becca]

And the thing, if you take that image and then expand it to all of Europe, similar battles are happening, similar wars over religion. This very subject, Protestants versus The Catholics. Those wars are happening all over Europe. I mean, we talked about it a lot in the Elizabeth, the first episode and the year before King Henry had died and King Francis became, well, King Francis, Queen Elizabeth I began what would be her 45 year rule. So she's basically doing the same thing that Catherine is in her area.

[Susan]

I think it is interesting that the women rulers are like, can we please come to some agreement? I literally don't care what it is. Yeah, just stop fighting. You gotta let go of something. You gotta let go of something. Isn't that. I just think that is interesting that the women are willing to come to the table, right?

[Becca]

And then you have people like the Geezz who are pushing forth laws that would destroy buildings where Protestants are worshiping. You know, they are trying to get this official religion, the state religion for all of France, just as hard as Catherine is trying to keep it calm and tolerant.

[Susan]

I read a quote, all of these factions, for the most part, are headed by relatively young men. And I read this quote that I think is appropriate. Young men are not the servants of tranquility. Oh, and that is very true. After consolidating their power, putting their own people in at all levels, the Gizas intensified the persecution of the Huguenots, like raids on their homes, stricter laws against heresy, and the execution of the leaders of the Protestant movement. In addition, they sent troops into Scotland at great expense in order to help their niece's country. Everyone's like, where is this money? What are we doing?

[Becca]

Yeah, like what?

[Susan]

Scotland.

[Becca]

So you can imagine how thrilled they were when Scotland, which had been promised to France by the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scot, was taken over by England and the parliament there made Protestantism the official religion.

[Susan]

I mean, if the Guises are the villains in this story, they kind of deserve this, by the way. But King Henry, Catherine's late husband, had left the country in large amounts of debts. Salaries of government workers hadn't been paid in four years. Henry's daughter Elizabeth's dowry hadn't yet been paid to Philip of Spain. Inflation was running rampant. The Gizas were unpopular everywhere. And the Bourbons decided the only thing to do was to take the gases out by force, go in, kill the Gizas, kidnap the king and skedaddle. Obviously, I'm simplifying the war plan here.

[Becca]

I have to say, this whole. Even though it's taken us two episodes to cover her story, it is simplified because there's all these little, you know, side stories, story arcs that are going on in, in the background that we just can't get to. We're skipping over some stuff like those.

[Susan]

Gophers coming out of the far away hole. You're like, dang it. So you run over to that gopher hole and then it pops up over there. It's like that's happening for decades.

[Becca]

A continent wide game of whack. A mole, essentially. Yeah. And the, the Geeses are kind of operating underneath with those moles popping up up here and there.

[Susan]

When the Geeses heard of this plot to kidnap the king and incidentally kill them, they moved the entire court to a fortified castle and. And the Duke of Guise, without waiting, honestly, immediately launched this like circular outward attack into the woods in all directions. And his troops really surprised the rebels who were just literally hanging their hammocks, getting their food organized like they're getting ready for a siege. And the Geeses are like, nope.

[Becca]

Yep.

[Susan]

And they caught most of them on the spot, including the commander. Gosh, this is going to be a constant problem. How much violence do I want to be open about on a PG13 show while still maintaining how ser it was? They executed the leaders in a public way and the non leaders in a private way. So there you go, everyone's gone.

[Becca]

Yeah, not good.

[Susan]

Let's just say that the atrocities were witnessed by the entire courts. And then the rumors went out across the whole country about what happens when you cross the Gizas. Now, luckily for the country, frankly, and Catherine specifically, um, a very smart lawyer slash politico advisor was appointed the Chancellor of France. He had worked in Lorraine to great success, and he decided to help Catherine to defend the, you know, the principles of law in the face of all of this growing anarchy. And they came up with a plan. Neither one, Catherine, nor his name is Michel de l'. Hopital. Neither one saw the need to punish Protestants who worshiped in private. And as long as you didn't take up arms against the Catholics, do what you do. And so no longer would heretics be punished by death unless they were acting treasonously in other ways, like, I. E. Trying to kidnap the king, et cetera. No more should civilians investigate and report on strictly religious crimes of their neighbors. None of your business. And there were also strong penalties for bearing false witness against your neighbors. So think about it before you call me. That was like, whoa, this is all very radical. Doesn't seem radical to me, but it's all very radical. They, Catherine and the Chancellor set forth this policy to what's called an assembly of notables at the palace of Fontainebleau. So traditionally, whenever the King of France needed advice on big national issues, or in this case, the king's mother, especially the kind that couldn't be handled by, you know, your usual government channels, anything entirely new, you'd call together the assembly of notables, like a VIP brainstorming session. Princes, top ranking nobles, archbishops, judges, sometimes even important city officials. They didn't make the decision, but their input carried serious weight. More importantly, you got buy in, you know, from them. I've. You've heard it straight from me. This is best for our country. I called you in out of respect. You see, it's all like, well, it's. My Irish friend would call this piss.

[Becca]

Artistry, but it's also giving a little bit of accountability. I mean, it just, it's kind of, I'm not going to say tying the hands of the geezers, but it's kind of maybe tying their shoelaces together for a second and then they see it and they undo it.

[Susan]

Well, because she spread the responsibility across different levels of society, right?

[Becca]

She did.

[Susan]

Everyone like you never knew where your disapproval was going to come from then if you were a geese.

[Becca]

Excellent. And on the surface, Catherine is doing things like cozying up to her daughter in law, you know, just being the maternal figure that her daughter in law didn't have and fixing up Chateau Chenonceau, you know, scraping all the Henry and Diane emblems off of everything and putting up her own. That's what she's doing on the surface. But she's a duck with her feet paddling crazy underwater.

[Susan]

Her strategy at this point could best be exemplified by those parents that make their arguing children wear one large T shirt together. And I will say, it doesn't seem to me that she's taking on board, I guess I'm going to say the fervency of people's belief system. She kept thinking, if only everyone would just sit down in a room and talk about these differences of opinion, a compromise could be reached. But in these sort of matters, religion, people don't wish to compromise, do they? And as always, I never understand why people can't just live and let live, which is my own fallback position, like, do whatever you want, just don't look in your neighbor's windows for what they're doing. It's none of your business.

[Becca]

Do your thing and I will do my thing over here.

[Susan]

Anyway, that's not how it goes. That's not how it goes, you know. Well, meanwhile, Conde, Bourbon, Protestant, raised an army. And that year, right after this conclave began attacking towns in the south, like, right after this. The bosses have issued the rules and he immediately goes and messes. And Catherine ordered him to court and had him imprisoned as soon as he arrived. She's not playing around. When I say compromise, what I mean is compromise. Do you hear me? He was actually put on trial. He was found guilty of offenses against the crown. He is being made an example of. You can't get much more high ranking than a prince of the blood, can you? She sentenced him to death.

[Becca]

She has to do that because that's how she can establish her authority in this type of environment. She has to say, yeah, I will be tolerant, but not when you cross over the line.

[Susan]

Now, here's the thing. A terrible catastrophe in Katherine's life led to an extremely good tactic. I'm so sorry to say that King Francis, never strong at all, physically or mentally, really. He got an ear infection, an abscess in his ear. A lot of times, infections in one's head could go to the brain. We. We can't examine him. We don't know exactly what happened, but Francis was on a downward spiral.

[Becca]

And since we all love to roll our eyes at old timey medicine, they bled him and they gave him rhubarb enemas, which, shockingly, didn't work. Oh, I know. I hadn't heard about the rhubarb enemas before. So I was like, oh, that's interesting.

[Susan]

You know, for those of you who have not heard our Lydia Pinkham episode, Lydia Pinkham was a person who made medicines tailored to lady persons and their maladies. She gave advice of what to do when the doctor comes. And it was like, no matter how bad you feel, get out of bed, go into the closet, hide. Wait until you hear the crunch of his carriage leaving the gravel in front of your house, get back in bed. You'll be better off then than you would have been had you visited the doctor. And sometimes I think that is true.

[Becca]

And this is hundreds of years before that.

[Susan]

Yeah. Like I say, if you know my feelings on 19th century medicine. How much do you think I like 16th century medicine?

[Becca]

We talk about all the things that were happening during this part of the reign. It's 17 months. It's not years that these things are happening. It's just like they hit the ground running.

[Susan]

So Catherine had to get her second son ready to rule. The challenge was he was nine years of age. There is going to need to be a regency. Legally, the regency is held by the highest ranking prince of the blood in this Case Bourbons. And it would be Antoine of Navarre, Right Bourbon, highest ranking prince of the blood. But she had an ace in the hole, didn't she? His brother Khande, condemned to death, was in her power. And so she met with this man and they together agreed to blame the poor king who was on his deathbed for all of the Kande situation. And she said, if you renounce your right to the regency of the future king in preference of me, I will get your brother released and commute his death sentence. I mean, that's an irresistible something you can't refuse.

[Becca]

And she even threw in a little bit more and promised him a high ranking position in the next government as a result.

[Susan]

When Francis died on December 5, 1560, her young son Charles IX, he would be known as, became the next king of France. And the Privy council appointed Catherine as governor of France, Gouvernant de France, with sweeping powers to run the country.

[Becca]

I love that a lot of the sources you'll read say something like, Catherine was made regent, period. And they skip over all the behind the scenes things that she had to do to get in place so that she would be in position to be regent. So she had to watch her son's health getting worse and worse while doing all this preparation work in the background. And then, oh, yeah, just looking like the innocent queen walking through the castles.

[Susan]

Catherine wrote to her daughter Elizabeth, who we remember from part one, had married Philip II of Spain. And I quote, my principal aim is to have the honor of God before my eyes in all things and to preserve my authority not for myself, but for the conservation of this kingdom and for the good of all your brothers. It was a noble purpose. Foreign. This week in Kansas City, we have had what I like to call fake fall, which is just as good as the real thing. I've made chili, I have drunk apple cider, and I have started to go through my wardrobe in order to bring out some of the pieces that have slept in a drawer for a while. And then you identify the holes in.

[Becca]

Your wardrobe and I am doing the same thing. And if I find a hole, I'm going to Quince.

[Susan]

That's my first stop, because Quince has all of the essentials for fall, and they are elevated. Think 100% Mongolian cashmere from $50 washable silk tops and skirts, and then perfectly tailored denim. And they're all at prices that feel too good to be true.

[Becca]

I was looking at their coats because, I don't know, every winter I kind of like to have a new coat. I was looking at their double faced merino wool draped collar, short wrap coat. It is so stylish, so cozy. It looks so chic. And you could put that on over your pajamas and drive through the drop off lane and nobody would think you weren't fully dressed.

[Susan]

My house, the big old house of wood gets awful cold. And even for basics, Quince is stellar. I have some long sleeved black, you know me, they're all black T shirts that are cut so nicely for the lady person body and they fit nicely. They're stylish enough of fabric that I can just scoot out to the store or whatever in them and they keep me nice and toasty. They're an excellent layering piece for the, you know, the transitional season that we're in right now.

[Becca]

And another really awesome thing about Quince is that they partner directly with ethical top tier factories and cut out the middlemen.

[Susan]

And that's how they can give you luxury quality items at half the price of brands that you'll find elsewhere.

[Becca]

Keep it classic and cozy this fall with long lasting staples from quinte. Go to quince.com chicks for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

[Susan]

That's Q-U-I-N C E.com chicks to get free shipping and 365 day returns.

[Becca]

Quince.com chicks at this point, it is Katherine unplugged. She's had all these ideas in her head and she's been kept down from doing them by herself. She made the choice not to rock the boat too much, which she'd been doing for entire time as queen anyway. But now the gloves are off. The very day after her son's death, she got busy. It was basically au revoir, Mary. Mary, as soon as your deep mourning ends, why don't you head back to Scotland and just leave the crown jewels, please. Thank you. She locked the doors to the palace and she met with the privy consul. She had the king's name officially changed to King Charles ix. She said, and I quote, I have decided therefore to keep him beside me and govern this state as a devoted mother must do. Since I have assumed this duty, I wish all correspondence be addressed in the first place to me. So anything that's coming in, she's seeing it first. She had Navarre agree publicly that he was not going to be regent, that he had a position on the council. She had the Guises state publicly that yes, King Francis made me do it. And Catherine stood there and just said, yes, yes he did. That was part of the deal that she had made with them. And basically, once she had those pieces in place, she turned to try and clear up the mess that those men had left her. She had this giant seal of her wearing a crown, holding a scepter in one hand, a motherly pointing finger. Imagine the. No, no, no finger. It's up in the air on this, on the seal, and around the edges, it says, catherine, by the grace of God, Queen of France, mother of the King. It's all around the edge. It's this big stamp. If anything comes in, it's stamped with this thing. Okay, I see who's in charge here.

[Susan]

It's best to start off as you mean to go on.

[Becca]

Yes. And basically, she set that precedent. And for the next several years, she is operating as the head of state domestic and foreign policy. That's her appointment of government officials. Her. She was the queen mother, the mother of the king. She ruled alone and was always there to tell people of her role. Beckett had read part of that letter that she wrote to her daughter. At the end, she said, as you know, I was left with three small children in a kingdom which is deeply divided. There is not a soul I can trust who does not have a particular purpose of his own. My accent on his. But it's the patriarchy. Let's explain it. She's taking no time and saying, I'm. This is it. The buck stops here. Don't go to Charles. Come to me. I do want to say that this is not one of those story arcs where she takes control and everything starts to happen beautifully by plan, and that she makes no mistakes and ends the patriarchy, ends all those wars. No, it's not going to be that way. Sorry to break your heart. I don't know.

[Susan]

The end of her mourning has arrived, and Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland in August of 1561. And I will tell you, Susan alluded to the tenseness of the religious crisis in Scotland. Mary encountered some turmoil on her return, further agitated by, specifically a prominent Protestant Scots minister named John Knox, who openly questioned whether her subjects in Scotland had a duty to obey her at all. He published a famous tract. It is something. The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women. So John Knox used that term to condemn female monarchs particularly. He was incensed about Mary I of England and Mary of Guise in Scotland. Subsidiarily, he would become incensed at Elizabeth and at Catherine de Medici. This is part of the text. It is. I mean, and the spelling will crack you up. We'll have to put it in the show notes. I actually had to write it phonetically because, like, wow. For who can deny but it be repugnant to nature that the blind shall be appointed to lead and conduct such as do see, that the weak, the sick and impotent persons shall nourish and keep the hale and strong. And finally, that the foolish, mad and frenetic shall govern the discreet and give counsel to such as be sober of mind and such be all women compared unto man in bearing of authority. For their sight is but blindness, their strength is but weakness, their counsel is but foolishness, and their judgment is phrenicy. Phrenicy is delirium and frenzy. Let's bring that back. By the way, their judgment is phrenicy, if it be rightly considered. So this tract was out and about and everywhere. And even among Protestants, like particularly Queen Elizabeth Protestant was so offended by it, she banned John Knox from England for life for it. It's out and about. This is a particularly interesting part of history where a lot of it'll happen again later in the Catherine the Great of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, like so there's like periods in time where you look around and there's like a whole lot of women in positions of power. And this is one of those times. And he was just volcanic about it. He couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear his life, you know. Can I please tell you? Yes. My favorite author, Terry Pratchett, wrote a book called Monstrous Regiment, about a girl who dresses in boys clothes and runs off to join the military. And I can't spoil it for you, but I will say, having read it, I know Terry Pratchett has read John Knox. That's all I'm saying about that.

[Becca]

You had mentioned that to me when we were talking at some point and I have it on my Kindle, so I'm going to read it.

[Susan]

You know, I always tell people to go with Hogfather because it's based on Christmas or which is abroad, which is based on a fairy tale. But like, you know, maybe Monstrous Regimen is a good entry.

[Becca]

I will find out and I can't because those other two didn't really work for me, like on paper. I really want to love Terry Pratchett and everybody that I know that adores him, I admire and I'm like, I want to be one of those people, but I can't even fake it. I mean, I don't dislike him, but.

[Susan]

I just honestly can't love him. The ferocity of you, man, I'm Such a Terry Pratchett fan that if you listeners are Terry Pratchett fans, like, let's talk about it.

[Becca]

I'll, I'll get there. I'll try. I'll do my best. As we said before, Catherine was working to instill religious tolerance throughout the country. One of the first edicts that she put forward was the edict of Saint Germain. And the goal was a way of negating all the anti Protestant laws that had been in place, mostly started by the Gizas, and keep France out of more religious conflicts. It's happening all over. She wants out. But before she could have parliament sign off on it, those Guises went and ruined it.

[Susan]

The Guises discovered a large contingent of Protestants worshiping in the gazes own territory at a place called Vassi, in a barn. And at the urging of his mother Antoinette, the Duke of Guise and his men laid waste to the entire congregation of Protestants. He ignored orders from Catherine to cease his activities. And retaliatory activities by the Huguenots created great unrest to the point that outside combatants from foreign countries decided to show up. This is how important stopping this conflict is. Philip of Spain sent thousands of troops for the Catholic side. And in response to that, Philip of Spain was her former brother in law, by the way. Queen Elizabeth of England sent thousands of soldiers for the Protestant side. I mean, now it's a whole mess and it's all because the gazes couldn't keep it together for five minutes. It's so infuriating.

[Becca]

Well, I can see why this would infuriate people from lands afar. I mean, there was 50 people dead, many more injured, and a lot of them were women and there was a child dead because these guys were just too trigger happy.

[Susan]

So an edict in 1563 called the Edict of Amboise, supported by Catherine, aimed to calm these roiling waters of religious agitation in France. It's a compromise of sorts. It allowed Protestant worship in noble household and specific towns. It restored, seized Protestant property and offered political amnesty for past actions. We are going to start over with no blood feuds, right? This is ground zero. Protestant worship inside towns was permitted if just for the members of a household. Just don't bring your weapons to church because then you're sort of a civil rebel guerrilla force. You know, the philosophy behind this was, you know, all the things we've been trying to prevent the spread of Protestantism haven't worked. You oppress them, they grow stronger. Because I think it's that old saying, like you thought you were pressing us down into the dirt, but we were seeds and so we grew in the dark, you know, so Catherine's like, bring everyone into the light. How about this? Catholic bishops and priests have to live in the community they serve. They have to be visible, good examples. Can we please try something else for a change? Other than bloodshed and mayhem? The fallout from this far reaching edict, which seems reasonable to you and me, would be, let's just say, volcanic violence. It was a compromise that satisfied neither radical Protestants nor hardline Catholics. And tensions soon flared again and again. I say, what is the big deal?

[Becca]

I know.

[Susan]

You know what I mean? Me, I don't have. I don't have this perspective. To me it seems like, what? Why is it more important than human life? You know, it just upsets me because I don't understand the gravity.

[Becca]

No.

[Susan]

Of it.

[Becca]

And it is creating civil wars. That's what the French wars of religion are. They're 36 years, eight civil wars. Some of them lasting as short as a year, others lasting up to seven years.

[Susan]

Yeah. So the rickety house of cards after this edict of Amboise held together for a little bit. Okay, let me just tell you this is on a little bit of a lighter note. Let's talk about something else for a minute. Catherine de Medici was introduced to tobacco right about now in the form of snuff by the French diplomat ambassador to Portugal, which is where he got a hold of it. Jean Nicot. Later they would name nicotine after him. Who presented it to her in the 1560s. It was a miracle cure for chronic migraines. Well, she had headaches for sure. And she found the powder effective in relieving her pain. Like you sneeze the evil spirits out, I guess. I don't know. It became a sensation at the French court and it popularized the use of tobacco snuff throughout Europe. I mean, elaborate snuff boxes became the thing. Silversmiths, hooray. We have so much work. It was not, you know, the only fashion Catherine de Medici could be credited with. Actually, as we've seen, another perhaps darker classic fashion that Catherine de Medici embraced and ultimately became a supreme proponent of was court intrigues. And if you think office politics are intense. Woo. Renaissance Europe made em look like playgrounds. Surviving court life back then meant you had to master strategy. You had to master keeping your cool. Catherine de Medici had had so many decades of practice keeping her cool, keeping her anger inside. Woo. You don't even want to play. It's like those people that used to try to outstare the cats in ancient Egypt. Like you're not going to do it. You are not going to. Outcome, Catherine de Medici. And if whispers are to be believed, maybe you know how to make someone disappear without a trace. It was brutal, especially for people who didn't know how to play the game. But classically, the Medici dominated the game of office politics. Intimidation had been their signature move throughout history. And when that didn't seal the deal, let's just say poison had a way of finishing what words could not. Here's a rabbit hole, another rabbit hole. I've got so many rabbit holes.

[Becca]

Big time. I love it. Go ahead.

[Susan]

So going all the way back to ancient Rome, Italians had discovered, developed and deployed. There's the 3Ds, poisons like aconite, belladonna, henbane, hemlock, yew, opium and mandragora, some of which of course are familiar from the Harry Potter books. Also metals like arsenic and lead. And I also love how the concept of Roman emperors as poisoners was brought to the forefront of the Hunger Games trilogy. Everyone in the capital has ancient Roman names. You met Cressida, Portia, Cinna, Octavius, and of course President Coriolanus Snow being the most adept poisoner of all. And I sometimes think that the science fiction and fantasy authors must be some of the most well read people on earth. Like you can read them on the surface, but then you get like, oh my goodness, yeah, they are classical students, you know.

[Becca]

Right, right.

[Susan]

Well now the Medici, along with almost every powerful family in Italy, were often suspected of poisoning their rivals, even their family members at times. But like everything, the burden of proof would fall on the accuser. And in, in that day and age, of course, there was no criminal lab level proof available. It was hard to prove such a crime against someone more powerful, even with accepted evidence. You know, at least one member of the Medici family put in his will that should he die unexpectedly, the doctors were to perform an autopsy immediately. And then there's that complication that so many actual diseases were attributed to poison, when in fact they might have been like malaria or tuberculosis or cancer, all of which had no origin story or cure. Where does it even come from? So if you do the autopsy and you see something, you might still think it's poison. So there was this great, I might say paranoia, but I don't even know if it's paranoia given that it's a medium. Reasonable fear. I mean, kings had tasters for this very reason, some of whom were the children of the kitchen staff. If you want a little level of insurance. So it was A problem all over the place, but Italians were considered the master of such things. So here's one here in France, among us. Danger, Will Robinson. Catherine de Medici has a history of poison. Like, does she, though? No, you know what I mean. Like, her family does, but Catherine de Medici doesn't.

[Becca]

No.

[Susan]

She had this room that people regarded with suspicion. Have you seen a picture of this room? It's at the Chateau de Blois. People called it the Cabinet of Horrors. You can still take a tour, by the way, if you're in the Loire Valley area. Looks like it's like €17. Seems like a deal.

[Becca]

Reasonable.

[Susan]

There's 237 hidden compartments in this room. Surely people said these are for hiding her deadly poisons. All these sinister ingredients you need to whack your enemies with, like, undetectable, toxic things.

[Becca]

Poison apothecary.

[Susan]

Yeah, exactly. Now, historians, who of course, give Catherine Demetich the benefit of the doubt on this, say that she stored papers and letters and collectibles within the hidden compartments. I myself am a maximalist. I definitely have 237 things that need dusted on these shelves that I'm looking at right now.

[Becca]

I would not do well with those drawers. If it goes in a drawer, I.

[Susan]

It.

[Becca]

It ceases to exist.

[Susan]

But aren't you fascinated by those desks that have all those hidden compartments?

[Becca]

Absolutely I would, yes. This is one of the reasons why I know that if it goes in, I'll forget it exists. Yeah.

[Susan]

You know, you might even forget the drawer exists. Anyway, the room is cool. I just don't think it was that sinister. It was more of a fashion. I mean, the desks emerged about this time, too. Even the door. Sometimes the doors that you go through are also hidden. Atlas Obscura said it best on their page about this room. And I quote, Catherine definitely ordered the killing of a handful of people, but she may be innocent of poisoning, specifically. Yes. So here's something that has more truth and evidence behind it. Catherine de Medici's flying squadron.

[Becca]

You hear a lot about the flying squadron. They were presumably these ladies in waiting that she had. They were beautiful, they were spies, and they used their feminine wiles to lure men into unsuspecting situations. Well, here's the thing. All of these rulers, all of these powerful people, the Gizas, had spies. They all had spies. But in Catherine's situation, they were all these beautiful women.

[Susan]

There were around 80 of them who. 80 also perform. Yeah. Who also performed in these lavish entertainments that Catherine de Medici liked to put on when she got to the French court, she felt like the standards of entertainment were pretty low. Ancient Rome bred in circuses. We need the circuses part up here in France to distract. Like, look at this shiny thing. These ladies allegedly. Can we say, though, it's pretty clear now, use their charm and sexuality to extract information from powerful men, often by forming actual liaisons with them spanning multiple years. And if people were going to underestimate women, well, then Catherine was going to exploit that weakness. The flying squadron was a key element in Catherine de Medici's intelligence network. How does she do it? She seems to know everything that's going on everywhere.

[Becca]

Hmm.

[Susan]

I wonder. Yeah, I wonder how that happens.

[Becca]

Who's feeding you grapes? Sir? Hey, Beckett. Are you secretly cleaning with microplastics? Because I'm. I discovered this week that I sure am.

[Susan]

Huh.

[Becca]

Yeah. Detergent pods. Some scrubbing agents in cleansers are leaving microplastics in our environment.

[Susan]

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[Becca]

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[Susan]

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[Becca]

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[Susan]

I'm here to give you a little review on the toilet tablets. And number one, I already like them. But I have downstairs. You know, there's. There's only two of us, and there's the three bathrooms, and there's this one downstairs bathroom that we only really use when we have people out on the porch. And so it's. Since it's been so hot, nobody's been in that bathroom for a really long time. So that toilet Gets hard water problems. And one of those toilet tablets just handled it. And I was like, literally making like dense bean salad in the kitchen and it was handling its business and I didn't even have to scrub. I was like dreading getting that bathroom ready. And it made it just a breeze. It was good. So there. There you go. If it can handle that, that toilet in the house of wood, what could it do for something that's not in that bad of shape and it smells so good. Yeah. Blueland has a special offer for listeners right now. You can get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com chicks.

[Becca]

You don't want to miss this. Blueland.com chicks for 15% off.

[Susan]

That's bland.com chicks to get 15% off. When Charles IX became of age to rule on his own at 14. Yikes, yikes, yikes. And the regency was technically legally over. Catherine de Medici took the title of Queen Mother of France, continued to attend all governmental meetings, and used the influence she had over her son to really remain in power. She dominated her son, who never was strong physically. In fact, all of her children were regarded as sickly in constitution, with the one exception of her youngest daughter, Marguerite, who everyone called Margot. But otherwise, everyone was in rickety states of health.

[Becca]

So one of the first things she did once Charles hit his majority. We need more family unity. I know. Let's take a road trip. Any of the kids that were still there, they went on it as well. As well as a 15,000 person entourage. This road trip, like, circumnavigated the entire, what we think of as the country of France. The whole thing. 4,000 kilometers, which is about 2,500 miles. Now, of course, their bugles were not the kind that you put on your finger. They were metal. They tooted everywhere they went. But they took two full years. Two full years. This is even better than those people who do the van life, right?

[Susan]

That's what they're doing.

[Becca]

They're doing the carriage life and they're seeing the country. And what it did was it didn't really unite the country as far as religious tolerance goes, but it did show the authority in the impressive pageantry of their ruler. And on the trip, Charles himself gets credit for realizing that there wasn't a standard calendar around the country. The church calendars differed from different kingdom to kingdom or duchy to duchy, depending.

[Susan]

On where you were. The new year began at Christmas or on March 25, Lady Day, nine months before Jesus's birth.

[Becca]

Earth.

[Susan]

I'm gonna let that math Sit on The importance of March 25 or March 1, that was started in the 5th century by Romans to honor the God Mars. Man, so many Roman references. Maybe the new year started at Easter. I mean, it was a cockamamie mess. How are you supposed to get anything done in a modern society with no date for the beginning of the new year? No.

[Becca]

So the Edict of Roussillon introduced a standard calendar for a year to begin on January 1st throughout land. During this road trip, it was one of those moments of peace. Now, it was very tenuous. They called it, quote, armed peace. They were able to travel the country without being shot upon.

[Susan]

Yeah, almost like, not technically peace, but exactly equal menace, which looks like peace sometimes. Exactly. Counteracted menace. Well, the tour was, in fact, a practical exercise to enforce that edict of amboise. The fragile, limited peace depended on it. And the tour was really necessary to ensure that it was being implemented all the way across all these remote provinces. You know how it is when you work remote and there's some initiative from corporate, and sometimes you get away with not following the new directive because nobody's looking at you. Well, Catherine is like, hello, I'm corporate. We're looking at you. It was very, very important.

[Becca]

I can just imagine her in the carriage, you know, sitting at the window and doing that two fingers to the eyes and then pointing thing as she drove through every single village.

[Susan]

Correct. Now, she did bring the hammer, but she also brought lavish festivals and public ceremonies. It was supposed to be like a healing moment, also to introduce the new king in a positive way to his subjects. You know, people in remote parts of the country had probably never seen a king. How cool was this? If there'd only been Instagram, people would have been so excited to have taken selfies with themselves. And the king. The king has just come by. It was very exciting. And that's also what it was meant to do, like, have a positive feeling. You know, people won't remember what you did or what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. So she's trying to create this positive social memory of the king. The last major part of the tour was a meeting at Bayonne in 1565. Just kind of right at the end. It was supposed to be with Philip ii, but again, he chose not to take his booty off his throne and come to meet her. He instead sent an envoy. Envoy, A powerful man named the Duke of Alba, who was a strict Catholic and a leading Spanish general, who represented his king, King Philip ii. The summit was formally a family Reunion organized around a meeting between Catherine and Charles and then her daughter Elizabeth, who was married to Philip ii. I'm actually very glad they got to meet up because a lot of times those daughters will go marry a foreign king or dignitary and you'll never see them again. You know, think of Marie Antoinette who never saw her mother again, and here you get to meet up now. The Duke of Alba's whole goal of this summit was to convince Catherine to adopt Spain's policy of just brutal persecution and suppression of Protestants, or Huguenots, if you're French. You know, he literally wanted her to scrap this entire philosophy of tolerance that she had put this whole tour on in order to reinforce. Like, what are the chances? Duke of Alba, like, that her two years of working to be like, can you please just pretend that didn't happen? Like, no.

[Becca]

Can you imagine the planning session for that King Philip saying, look, she's just a woman. We're just going to go down there and set her straight and tell her the ways of the world and have her change this whole tolerance thing.

[Susan]

Go. So Catherine was obviously unwilling to entertain that kind of religious intolerance.

[Becca]

You know, what if King Philip had bothered to show up to his own wedding in Paris, maybe he would have.

[Susan]

Known what she was like, but he wouldn't have because she was still in meek and mild, second fiddle to Diane depoitier mode.

[Becca]

True.

[Susan]

So, no, he had no idea. And maybe that's what his like, oh, ho, it's that lady. Let's just go handle her business.

[Becca]

True.

[Susan]

Okay, she's not anything. Let's just go do that. Well, Catherine, number one, was overjoyed to see her daughter again. Number two, she thought it was important to negotiate with the Duke of Alba or Philip to strengthen peaceful relations with Spain, perhaps arrange for her son to be married advantageously in that realm, but not to go down the Spanish road of religious purity. Now, the bad thing is the optics didn't look good. No one could believe that's what Catherine was talking about with the Spanish envoy. Protestants were extremely freaked out that Catherine was openly negotiating with the country who had, of course, and was still responsible for the famous Spanish Inquisition. That's bad. Protestants thought Catherine was flipping on them, was massing forces and allies in order to exterminate them. And tensions rose again throughout France. Dang it. Undoing the work we've been doing that was so carefully orchestrated, like all those costumes for the flying squadron, all that food for the 15, 000 people, all those carefully orchestrated stops, all those meeting of dignitaries like this one meeting untied a lot of the good she had done. And now Spain was angry at not being obeyed. Stay angry, Spain. Side note, I am very glad that Katherine was able to see her daughter Elizabeth during this conference. Regardless of what else happened, I'm glad she did this because I'm very sorry to say that her. Elizabeth died in childbirth not very long after this meeting. It was the last time she was to see her daughter. So I'm glad they got this meeting, you know?

[Becca]

No, me too. Me too. Catherine was still looking for some advantageous marriages for the children that were children that are now teenagers and still with her that are still, I hate to say on the playing board, but they're on the playing board. And obviously the first one up was the grand catch, the king himself. Charles was 20.

[Susan]

Long past time to get married. What is he doing?

[Becca]

Yeah, I know. Like, how did he stay single for so long? Oh, Catherine was his mother. The same reason that Diane dupoitier teamed up with Catherine, because she, the unknown woman, could be more dangerous and take control. So that's my guess.

[Susan]

So Catherine made another brilliant marriage. She married the young king to the holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian's daughter named Elizabeth, who's got to be like the ninth Elizabeth in our story. So you have to constantly evaluate your situation and counteract the moves of other people. And if Spain was going to be tripping, you need to have another powerful ally.

[Becca]

So they did what people courting at this time did and exchanged portraits. Charles saw Elizabeth's portrait and said, at least she won't give me a headache. How's that for a rousing endorsement?

[Susan]

It's true love. How romantic.

[Becca]

He had a more favorable reaction when he actually saw her in person. And when he did that, he had disguised himself as a soldier and went to a large event where she was going to be so he could get a peek at her.

[Susan]

Okay, you know what, Charles? I'm gonna tell you, had you not liked what you saw, it wouldn't have mattered.

[Becca]

Not much. Mm.

[Susan]

Mm, my friend. So speaking of that, though, perhaps Catherine evaded the problem of having a powerful daughter in law to turn the head of her son this way and that. But unfortunately, young King Charles was increasingly coming under the influence of an admiral named Gaspard de Coligny. He was sort of the recognized leader of the Huguenots. And Catherine became increasingly fearful that he was pressuring the king to pursue an alliance with England and the Dutch against the Catholic establishment. And he was actively seeking war with Spain. All of this is 100% counter to Catherine's desire for peace. Why are we agitating the waters again? Why? And Coligny had been the one that was lighting those little fires after little fires all over the country for years. He's a thorn in Catherine's side. Coligny was also hated by Henry, Duke of Guise, because the Duke of Guise accused him of having killed his father. So two thirds of the factions had their beady eyes on Coligny, who had his eyes on the King. Now, I really and genuinely think that this upcoming marriage is more of that big T shirt scenario. Or perhaps she's thinking like a monarch where to make friends. You join your children in marriage. Because Catherine spent months negotiating a potential marriage between her Catholic daughter, Marguerite of Valois, Margot, everyone called her. I love that name. To the Huguenot Henry of Navarre, son of our old friend Antoine of Navarre. Bourbons. Remember Bourbons. And a woman named Jeanne d', Albret, who was in fact the holder of the title.

[Becca]

Right.

[Susan]

She was the Queen regnant of Navarre. We've been talking about Navarre so often. Antoine of Navarre. Antoine of Navarre. It is a country between Spain and France. It had been strategically super important and also troubled by interference by everyone for a long time. The husband was the married in. You remember him, Antoine, the guy that bargained his right to be regent so that his brother would be freed. Anyway, he died in a battle during that first flash of violence. So it is the mama that is to be negotiated with.

[Becca]

She had been queen in her own right for eight years at this point. And it's just this queen to queen chat about the marriage.

[Susan]

Jeanne was. How do I say, the spiritual leader. She's not the clerical leader. She's like the icon, the Lady Gaga. I don't even know. I was going to say the muse, but that implies she doesn't have power. I don't know what I'm looking for. The hub. She's the hub around which the Protestants are operating in France. So here's Catherine, the hub of the Catholics. And together they're going to make a machine that rolls in the correct direction, constructed from their children. How about that for a metaphor that's actually really good. Like the bicycle of progress.

[Becca]

Jeanne was kind of hesitant about sending who now was her only son. This is it. This is all she has, is this one son. She was hesitant to send him from bucolic Navarre to what she personally saw as kind of a bawdy French court, especially in Paris.

[Susan]

Flying squadron on deck. The flying squadron's activities were part of this broader Reputation for the French court under Catherine's rule, which was often portrayed as both extraordinarily opulent and extraordinarily corrupt. Ah. Jean found the atmosphere at Chenonceau horrible. Horrible. She wrote letters to her son. I mean, she could not comprehend the wantonness of the courtiers. In one of her letters, I want to quote, not for anything on earth would I have you come to live here. Although I knew it was bad, I find it even worse than I feared. Here it is the women who make advances to the men, rather than the other way around. If you were here, you would never escape without special intervention from God.

[Becca]

As for the two betrothed, on paper, they should have had a lot more in common. They were the same age, they both spoke French, which was good, because unlike Charles's wife, they didn't have to learn the language. Charles wife only spoke German when she got to court, but she said that he smelled of garlic and he wasn't cultured as she was. And he said she wore too much makeup and wasn't forthcoming in her talks with his mother. So he. She was just like, yes, ma' aming the whole time, not answering questions straight out.

[Susan]

Well, Margot was actually in love with Iguise, yet another Henry. But Catherine de Medici made a cold decision to banish this man for that and insist her daughter marry a Protestant. She literally said to her, if you do not consent to this marriage, I will make you the most miserable woman in the kingdom. I read somewhere else that when Catherine de Medici found out that Margot had bestowed her heart upon agu's, she came down there and slapped her and pulled her hair and called her all the names. I mean, yeah, she's not playing. And domestic violence is certainly in her repertoire.

[Becca]

Right. And in this conversation with Queen Jeanne, who. I want to say Queen Jean, I really do, but I won't, because it's disrespectful. They did have to come to a bunch of compromises, and one of them was that while Henry would come to Paris for the wedding, he would not have to go into Notre Dame because it was going to be a Catholic wedding there. And he. He wouldn't do that. He would send a proxy. Is that agreeable to you? So that you can maintain your Protestant. This is a big deal marriage, Catholic with a Protestant. The negotiations went on that Queen Jeanne was starting to send her son letters that told him how to do his hair instead of, oh, my gosh, you're not going to survive here. She agreed. And, you know, she's trying to get him ready.

[Susan]

Although she did say to her friends, she did say, katherine only mocks me and reports the contrary of everything I've said to her in order that my friends will blame me. I myself do not know how to deceive as she is wont to do. I mean, you know what? Recognize the game, I guess. Yeah.

[Becca]

And, I mean, she's been queen on her own for eight years now, so she's not sitting there because she was stupid.

[Susan]

So she realizes she's in the hands of a master practitioner of court intrigue. And maybe that's a good thing to have in your corner, actually.

[Becca]

I would think, yeah. Two months before the wedding, Queen Jeanne headed to Paris. She set up house there. She was only 43 at this time, but her health was never that great while she was in Paris. She was getting ready for the wedding. She was doing a lot of shopping. You know, her son had to have the right clothes. She had to have gifts for everybody. But one day she came home and she was feeling so ill that she took to her bed, and she thought she was so sick that she wrote her will. She had a fever. She had a pain in her right side. And some days later, she was dead. Now, there's a myth about this that Catherine had gifted her with poisoned gloves. They even have names. This story is so detailed that Catherine's perfumier. A Florentine. Of course it was a Florentine. You can't trust those Florentines that she was the one that had poisoned these gloves.

[Susan]

Now, it's no surprise that people would accuse Catherine of this, considering her rumored love for deadly substances. That cabinet. You know what's more, she'd. She'd, quote, gone to great lengths to make perfumed gloves fashionable at the French court. This part makes me laugh because, okay, she purposely made the gloves fashionable years in advance, just in case this situation ever came up.

[Becca]

That's a long game.

[Susan]

Yeah. Or maybe is it that gloves, due to their construction, were often very stinky. They decompose during the tanning process. Leather does. The gloves had been soaked in either sour milk or cider pressings or fermented rye, all of which stinks. To stop the action of that, they would put things like dog, pig, or bird poop in and work it into the leather. So anyone who's accidentally even left a pair of jeans in the washer knows how long and hard you have to work to get stink out of fabric. And this is leather. And so although the French at this time did not mind that stink the more fastidious Italian courts wanted to counteract that smell with better smells. So this Italian accessory, perfumed gloves, it's exotic and dangerous, not unlike Catherine de Medici herself. Can I please tell you, I fell down another rabbit hole looking up perfumed gloves because I encountered something that mixes both my love of history and my obsession with the Great British Bake Off. Here is a little side note of history. A man named Musio Frangipani was a 16th century Italian nobleman and he was very famous for inventing or causing to have invented a bitter almond scented perfume that he used to scent gloves. And the scent was so popular that French pastry chefs were inspired to create a sweet almond filling made of butter, eggs, ground almonds, sugar and flour, which they named frangipan after Muco frangipenni. Now, I myself never tasted frangipan until I heard about it on Great British Bake off and went and made some. All of our British listeners just stopped breathing because they've been eating Bakewell tarts since they were zero. Right. But that's just how it is. We don't have it here.

[Becca]

Right, Right.

[Susan]

So, yes, I think we should all enjoy some frangipan and.

[Becca]

And we should get Catherine off the hook for this one because she had zero to gain. The marriage contract was already signed.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Becca]

There was nothing to gain. And it turns out that Queen Jeanne died of tuberculosis and an abscess on her right breast.

[Susan]

You see, like I said, typically people jump to poison when they don't know what it is. And then when you jump to poison, your mind turns to an Italian. So the wedding plans proceeded. Margot and Henry of Navarre. Yay. Sitting in a tree. Many Huguenot nobles, including notorious Admiral Coyny, thronged into Paris for the wedding. But Parisians were anti Protestant and they hated the fact that all these Protestants had flooded in. Catholic priests stoked their anger, I'm sorry to say, in sermons at mass. Horrified at the marriage of a Catholic French princess with a Protestant. The French parliament actually snubbed the marriage ceremony entirely. And on top of that, there's general discontent. The harvest had been poor, the taxes were higher. The luxury on display with the wedding made the common people angry. Even the court was divided. Catherine de Medici hadn't received permission from the Pope for the marriage. Not real permission. She had produced some kind of cockamamie, fraudulent, yes, I'll look into it type of thing.

[Becca]

She's like, she's like, yes, it's coming. I've heard from my ambassador. And then she closed the borders so nobody From Rome. Could get into France.

[Susan]

There you go. Well, the governor of Paris left town a few days before the wedding because he can smell the air. He was out of there. He wouldn't be caught up in whatever happened, whatever it was going to be. He was not going to be in it. He was gone. It was a very strangely organized event. The ceremony took place partially on a platform that they put on that western facade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Now, they negotiated this before because Henry was a Protestant. He wasn't going to go into the Catholic cathedral. So here he is, the groom, on a platform outside, while Marguerite, four hours. Went inside to have a proxy wedding. Now, we're used to the proxy weddings where Philip is in Spain and a guy travels on a boat and comes and does the proxy wedding, or the bride's brother stands in. You know, we're used to that kind of thing. But, like, she's right there.

[Becca]

Yeah. The king of Navarre was going to get his bride. He was at least showing up in the city.

[Susan]

Henry's proxy during the religious rites, the. The one that was standing inside the building as he was. I mean, he literally was hanging outside with his friends, chatting. Like he would have been on his phone if he'd had a phone. Just hanging out like there's nothing for him to do. He's just standing there. There's no speakers. Nobody knows what's happening. I guess when she comes out, I'll be married. Like, okay. It was a Catholic cardinal, actually. So, theoretically, the two factions have joined in marriage for a gloriously united future. But in reality, two. Or honestly, more than two, distrustful, fully armed, resentful, and powerful factions were all crammed into a tight area together. It could only end in disaster.

[Becca]

Here's the dream, Beckett.

[Susan]

Okay.

[Becca]

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[Susan]

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[Becca]

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[Susan]

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[Becca]

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[Susan]

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[Becca]

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[Susan]

Hungryroot.com chicks code chicks. A couple of days after the wedding, Admiral Coligny was shot in the back with an arquebus. Think of a OG pirate gun. If you're trying to picture this scene from an upstairs window of a building owned by the Guises, well, this put the city in a lovely state of apprehension. So the visiting Huguenots and the Parisian Catholics were totally afraid of the other side. Tensions were very, very high. And then a couple days after that, the Duke of Guise openly moved to avenge his father and murdered Admiral Coligny in his lodgings. Threw him out the window, in fact, afterward. And as he landed in the street, Parisians mutilated his body. And this mob action then erupted into what has been called the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, a systemic slaughter of Huguenots that lasted about five days and spread all over France. There's an estimate that between and this is a big, wide difference, but between 10 and 70,000 people died during this horrible, widespread massacre. In fact, Henry of Navarre, the groom, only managed to avoid death by pledging to convert to Catholicism. That's the only thing that saved him. I would not like to tell you about the atrocities that happened. If you want to look it up, you can. I've hardly ever, ever read such inhumane accounts of the disregard of the importance of human life. That's all I'm saying about that, like, it's horrifying.

[Becca]

It's called the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, but that's only because it started on St. Bartholomew's Day, a religious celebration of St. Bartholomew, who was the patron saint of, I think, leather makers and butchers and accountants.

[Susan]

I got the butcher part right.

[Becca]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Susan]

So bad.

[Becca]

But really, they call it the St. Bartholomew's season. It wasn't just a day. It wasn't just a couple days. But because, like Becca just said, it went out into the countryside a season.

[Susan]

It's like the madness spread like a virus and just erupted everywhere. And at the time, a lot of Catholics, both in France and out of France, actually, they saw this massacre as. I mean, I guess I'm going to say divine intervention. The only way to stop what they thought was an impending Protestant takeover. The violence was so brutal, somebody actually tried to send the severed head of Admiral Kagne to the Pope as a sort of trophy. I guess it didn't make it all the way. I don't even want to know the rest of that story. But the Pope responded by sending King Charles a golden rose. That's almost like bestowing a medal of honor or a knighthood. Yeah, that's a golden rose from the Pope. Thanks for this massacre. Der E. The Pope actually ordered a hymn of thanksgiving to be sung in celebration on the anniversary of the massacre every year. That happened for years afterward. He even had a commemorative medal struck with a Latin inscription. I'm not going to try to say, but it translates to Slaughter of the Huguenots, 1572. An angel holding a cross and a sword standing over fallen, presumably Protestants on the ground. This whole thing was framed by the Catholics as divine justice.

[Becca]

Really gross. Because we're not talking soldiers here. We're talking people who they were just unfortunately, out on the street. Children, women, elderly, people, not soldiers with weapons.

[Susan]

There are in the Vatican three frescoes commissioned by this pope. It is Gregory the 13th. I had to look at my Roman numerals. X, 1, 1, 1. That seems like an easy one. Actually, there are three frescoes commissioned by this Pope in a room called the Sala Regia. One is the assassination of Admiral Coligny. And then number two, the aftermath of his death. And then three, King Charles triumphant. And we may be able to see these on our upcoming Vatican trip. I'm not certain what. What rooms we're able to see, but they're by Giorgio Vasari. We'll put pictures of them in at least the Pinterest. It's like Admiral Coligny stood in for or was the enemy of all Catholics on Earth. His death was almost like, I don't know, would you say, like, killing the devil? I mean, why are we celebrating this so much?

[Becca]

My guess is because they had been under that armed. Peace and hostility was just building and bubbling, and soldiers and military leaders were just waiting for an excuse to pull the trigger and get going. So Coligny was just the person he was working with King Charles on a cross faith army, which was Huguenots and Catholics who were going to go to battle the Habsburgs, that would be Austria and Spain in what is modern day Belgium. So there was this whole battle that was starting to be formed where, I mean, on paper, oh, yay. The Catholics and the Protestants can work together against a common enemy. But for Catherine, she's like, I don't want any more wars. What? This is not good.

[Susan]

That explains, then why Philip II of Spain is okay. I read a story about him. He heard the news of this massacre, and I quote, philip laughed for almost the only time on record during the entirety of his life. So maybe he was happy that obviously this, like, confederation of Coligny and the King of France had fallen, much to his great joy and benefit. Now, Protestants, of course, did not have that same reaction. The English ambassador at the time, his name is Sir Francis Walsingham. You probably met him during the Tudors. If you watched that, his apartments were no longer safe enough. No matter who he was or who he was with, he had to take refuge with Catherine herself. He witnessed the bloodshed in the streets, and he never, ever forgot it. The effect this massacre had on the English, who were already jumpy about Catholics attempting to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. I mean, that was profound. So seeing this, witnessing this violence, Sir Francis Walsingham would actually go on in England to build a spy network that would catch Catholic priests and keep Elizabeth safe. Perhaps. So it affected policy in England. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian ii, that's the king's father in law, was sickened. He was horrified. He was always. Although he was technically Catholic, he was extraordinarily egalitarian with regard to Protestants and Catholics under his umbrella. And he described the massacre as a shameful bloodbath. And as a matter of fact, just like Maximilian, moderate French Catholics also began to wonder, is a completely Catholic country worth this price, this violence, this terror? Like, I don't want to live like this. What is it going to take? Traditionally and at the time, this whole massacre had been believed to have been instigated by Catherine to Medici.

[Becca]

So was Catherine responsible For this. Well, I guess I'm not going to be the judge for you. Some people say yes, some people say no. What we do know is that she was involved in the planning of a list of leading Protestants to assassinate. She was involved in it, along with the Guises.

[Susan]

So she probably either ordered or accepted the plans for Colony's assassination. You know, she. That's very useful to have the Ghize family so agitated about that guy. Right? Like useful mercenaries. I can plausibly deny it. Blah, blah, blah. So did she suspect the Geezes would be happy to take revenge on this guy because he had killed their father? Probably. And Colony had been a thorn on her side for years. But this is my position. If I'm gonna, like, come down on one side or the other. She could not possibly have known it would lead to the thousands of deaths that followed. She couldn't possibly have known it. She is more intelligent to have him killed in such a public way at such a time of tension. I can't reconcile these two things. Like, yes, she probably wanted him dead, but wouldn't she have arranged it more intelligently? Instability is not in her interest.

[Becca]

Well, I think the problem happened when he didn't die. The initial shot taken from a geese building by an assassin known to be an associate of the Guises. The shot didn't kill the man. So that's when people were like, holy cow, they're trying to kill this guy. And then she kind of had to backpedal with everybody and come up with a plan B to make the assassination of Collingye valid. And what she did was arranged a group of people to go to the King and explain that there was an assassination attempt on his life. They convinced him, even though King Charles had been an associate of Coligny, they were working together. So it took some time to turn his thinking around from, this guy is working with me for something good to, oh, my gosh, he's trying to kill me, my family, and destroy France. And that's when this list of people came up. All these Protestant leaders, like, these are the guys we need to get out of the picture to continue to go forward. And Charles was so fired up, he screamed, then, kill them all. Kill them all. Which meant the list. But that's not obviously what happened. It just got out of her control.

[Susan]

Well, and also, that story about Kill them all. Kill them all. Is actually written far after the fact and may have been. What do they call it in the comic world? Retcon. Yeah, like, people retconned that story in order to make sense of the king's, you know, involvement.

[Becca]

Okay.

[Susan]

I think. And also, I also think to place blame firmly on Catherine de Medici for the resultant violence. Because at the time, Catherine did get most of the blame for the bloodshed. They thought she'd orchestrated it with her, you know, like, Italian lust for bloodshed. Her, like, womanly misunderstanding of politics and the hearts of men. Her strange and exotic self was the natural target of everything, you know? And so did she force her son to kill Chloe? I don't know. I. You know, the word is out. I just think if I were her. You don't have to push too hard. The geese wanted him dead. All you had to be like is, I'm gonna look the other way. La, la, la, la, la, la, la. We're not involved with that. It's the Giza's building. It's the Giza's arquebus, which is more like a word I keep wanting to say again, which is why I just said it. It's all geese all the time. But then when they didn't kill him, there was like, a tap dancing scenario.

[Becca]

Yes. No, I agree with that completely. And if you read two different books from two different historians who are looking at Catherine a different way, the story comes out differently. So, I mean, the fact that we can't tell you exactly what happened, that's because nobody can. They'll say they do know. They say they know, but I don't think anybody really, really knows.

[Susan]

Now, as the centuries wore on, I will tell you that historians began to understand the full complexity of the tensions in the country and sort of come to the conclusion that there's no way that the extensive massacre could have been premeditated.

[Becca]

Right?

[Susan]

Now, maybe the. The direct assassination of Clooney, that's a separate issue. But in no way was Catherine the author of the 70,000 killed that week, you know?

[Becca]

No, but she was the recipient. This is where you get the idea of the Black Queen. She was wearing black all the time. Okay, I do want to say that for the. Her kids weddings, she took the black off and wore an actual color, but most of the time, she wore black. But this whole image of black and being sinister kind of stuck with her. And I think that she kind of not. Not just accepted it, but said, okay, well, this shows me as a formidable force. You got a problem with that? You know what I'm saying?

[Susan]

It's almost like, are you going to underestimate me? Then? How about I send the flying squadron after you? Right. Are you going to think I'm a scary, scary Italian poisoner, Serpent queen. Fair enough. I'll just let you believe that press then, if it is to my advantage. In the aftermath of this horrifying event, the king, King Charles, his fragile mental and physical constitution weakened. He had mood swings, boasting about, like, how well it went and how lovely it is to be on the way of, you know, religious purity. And then he would scream that he heard the murdered Huguenots in his ears at night, and he would blame himself or his mother. He once screamed, who but you is the cause of all this? God's blood, you are the cause of it all. And he had trouble sleeping and eating. He was like a mess. He was a broken man.

[Becca]

He was. And at this point, he's 23, and his wife, Elizabeth of Austria, had had a child. So he's a father, but he's just spiraling.

[Susan]

Katherine responded by declaring she had a lunatic for a son. That was her emotional, caring response to his freakout. So she turned her attention to other matters and she successfully campaigned for her third son, at this time known as Henry, Duke of Anjou, to be the first foreign king elected to the brand new Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth as a sort of constitutional monarch. And it's not every mother that could get a third son his own kingdom. She beat out representatives from powerful families all over Europe and Russia. Incidentally, the very last king of the very same Commonwealth was also installed by the influence of a powerful woman. We've already talked about him. His name is Stanislaw Poniatowski. He was the boyfriend of Catherine the Great. So see Catherine the Great's episode for the other end of the kings of Poland. That's right.

[Becca]

As Charles's health was getting increasingly bad again, Catherine could see the writing on the wall. Not only was she getting her other children in place, but she knew that Charles wasn't gonna. So she had him sign a document that gave her the regency until Henry the heir could get back to France. Because now he's the King of Poland. And with Catherine and Elizabeth of Austria by his side, Charles died on May 30, 1574. He was just 23 years old.

[Susan]

Do you want to hear what his last words were purportedly? Here we go. What blood. What murders. What evil counsels have I followed? Oh, my God, pardon me and have mercy on me if thou canst. I know not what I am. What shall I do? I am lost. I see it well and seen. He's out.

[Becca]

She made sure that all the proper protocols were followed for Charles's funeral. And as the regent until Henry could get back, she negotiated a temporary truce with the Huguenot leaders until Henry could get back to France. Which I think must have been a miraculous bit of talking to be able. I mean, what a better time to attack while they're weak? They don't have a king. That's. But again, we're fresh off the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre season. So Catherine has this image as being the black queen right now. So maybe that helped her. Like, yeah, you can wait till the king comes back. We would love that. But I'm here and I'll take care of things. If you aren't agreeing with it, I'm guessing that's just a guess.

[Susan]

Well, also, I think the whole thing is, what does it matter if the king came back? We had a king last time.

[Becca]

Yeah.

[Susan]

You know, so like the same lady is here, so we might as well keep it on the low. Low. Yes.

[Becca]

Yeah. Henry had not been on the throne and elected king. He hadn't been on the throne in Poland for more than five months when word came that Charles had died. His time while he was there was mostly spent keeping as far away from his people as possible. He was fighting off matrimonial advances of a 48 year old princess. He's only 22 at this point and just basically faking enjoying being Polish. He assured everyone that his mother had things well under control in France. And he was the king of Poland after all. I am here to serve you. He is very charming. Henry reminds me of Oscar Van Ryan on the Gilded Age. Fairly attractive homosexual man who is playing the game.

[Susan]

Well, he came by the game honestly on his maternal side, by the way.

[Becca]

Yes, absolutely. No question about it. But he was a very flamboyant person. He was always surrounded by men. Yes, he was attached to women at some points, but he was clearly more comfortable in the company of men.

[Susan]

Well, the polls refused to allow him to leave when he determined it was time to go reclaim his kingdom. And so he sneaked away in the dead of night.

[Becca]

Literally. He snuck out of the palace at night with the crown of Poland, any other crown jewels that he could fit into his pockets, and anything he had brought with him. And snuck out with a small group of confidants. They got in a carriage, they headed for the border. There was a Polish cavalry troop that were closely following him, trying to bring him back. But the escaping party crossed over a bridge out of Poland and then blew up the bridge.

[Susan]

Like, I really want to leave.

[Becca]

That's right.

[Susan]

This is how serious I am.

[Becca]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now he's making his way back to France, but he's taking his sweet time. He hung out in Vienna a bit. They really liked him. He had a sore on his foot that wasn't healing. So they brought their newest medical advances, which included putting that foot into the mouth of a freshly slaughtered bull.

[Susan]

Curiously, didn't at least you have dinner afterwards.

[Becca]

Didn't work. He continued on to Venice where they absolutely adored him. They gifted him with a golden coach and 3,000 men to accompany him to the city. And when he reached the water, he hopped onto a specially made gondola and was the centerpiece of a 2000 boat flotilla that cruised the canals. He is just waving to the people on the side. They are loving to see him. There was 40 gondolas that were his like protective cushion around him especially made gondolas. This parade, in my mind it's so extravagant and I bet in person it was even more so. But as he's going along, apparently he was very generous and he was handing out some of those baubles he had taken from Poland. As he's going, he's shopping everywhere. As he's touring the city, he went to Murano and got glass in Murano. He bought every single perfume that he smelled. He was celebrated for two weeks in Venice before he had to move off. And eventually he returned to Paris.

[Susan]

Catherine placed high hopes in this favorite child of hers, Henry, someone to straighten France out, calm the turbulent waters. Obviously he has the charm offensive thing. Down, down. That is in his favor. Simultaneously, she worried about his shortcomings. She thought he was impulsive, you think, and easily led, but not necessarily by her. As exclusively as his two brothers had been who had come to the throne at such young ages that their natural instinct was to rely on their mama. This 22 year old man, who had in fact been king of his own realm, was not going to be as easy to manage, was he? And she was going to have to go back to behind the scenes manipulation if she wanted to get things done, exercise some old skills. Henry was married to a princess of Lorraine, a relative of the Guises, again two days after his coronation. So he's back, he's charming, he's married, perhaps the line of succession is going to be secured. But what Catherine really underestimated was how problematic her third son was going to end up. Now, to be fair to him, things were pretty grim going into Henry III's reign. The country was, you know, torn apart by religious conflict, roads, towns and basic Infrastructure was completely ruined. The economy had tanked so badly that nearly every social class was struggling to get by. On top of that, the weather wasn't cooperating, harvests kept failing, and food shortages were a regular occurrence. And even though theoretically taxes were being collected in the King's name, the court barely saw any of that money. It was being diverted. There was corruption.

[Becca]

Catherine's role was really pared down from the amount of control she'd had. I mean, she. She was just the regent, she was controlling everything. And Henry came in and he's going to do things his way. So was she retired exactly? Not really. Her daughter Claude, unfortunately died in childbirth. She was just 27. But her nine year old daughter Christina came to live with Grandma. So Catherine is now semi retired and raising her granddaughter.

[Susan]

In addition to some family concerns, Catherine de Medici, like her forebears, became a patron of the art, specifically, I guess we'll call it engineering and art. She specifically became interested in architecture.

[Becca]

She began building her new Parisian digs, a little place called the Tuileries. She had built the original building that was later added on and destroyed by fire, like 300 years after her reign, but the gardens were kept intact. So the Tuileries, that we think of. Imagine this big palace around it, and that's what she was building.

[Susan]

All is going so well at the Tuileries, isn't it? It's lovely, it's famous. The problem is, her astrologer, a man named Ruggery, told her that she would die near Saint Germain. And guess what? The Tuileries was near the Eglise de Saint Germain. Oh, no. She took his predictions seriously enough that she decided to vacate and occupy a different property as her main residence.

[Becca]

But that didn't mean she couldn't decorate it and she couldn't throw parties there. She always collected art and oddities. This palace was full of family portraits. A huge one of herself over the massive fireplace in one room, she had seven taxidermied alligators hanging from the ceiling. And she was.

[Susan]

Was it an alligator or a crocodile?

[Becca]

Oh, oh, because they're crocodiles. I don't know.

[Susan]

I don't know.

[Becca]

One of those. Imagine one of those. Just change the.

[Susan]

Because I keep thinking Nile. Nile crocodile.

[Becca]

Oh, well, isn't it a crocodile that lives in the sun? Not an alligator. Hmm.

[Susan]

I keep thinking alligators are Americano.

[Becca]

Yeah, entirely possible.

[Susan]

I don't know. But we know what they look like.

[Becca]

That's right.

[Susan]

In a vague kind of way.

[Becca]

There were seven taxidermied giant reptiles hanging from the Ceiling. I bet anybody that's listening can relate. Books. She had so many books. In her primary residence, she had 4,000. She had another 4,500 at another castle. Her collection of books was so massive that it would become the basis for La Bibliotheque Nationale. That's a lot of books. While Wayfair helped me with my outdoor furniture this year, now that the weather's going to be turning cooler, I have to look inside and I think I'm going to need to do some refreshing. And the first place I'm going to go is Wayfair. Wayfair is kind of a one stop shop for everything you need to fix up your indoors.

[Susan]

So I ordered some curtains and they came. And the house of wood in this room has 11 windows. And unlike in a modern home, all these windows are like made to whatever specification the guy felt like doing at the time, you know, so from the inside, it could be a little hard to unify a space. So I hung these curtains and. Spectacular. Spectacular. They are a glorious backdrop for my maximalist style. There's black and there's a subtle linen plaid with cream and black. They're like a hidden tab top. It's so good, so good. And it makes everything pop and it filters the light just enough. You know, I like, I like to pull a curtain because I'm right on a main road and it does everything I want it to do. Plus it makes it so cozy in there. It's just perfect because like I hung the curtains, it got crisp outside and it was like the universe is like, hello, welcome to the season that you actually really like. I was very happy.

[Becca]

Well, I think I need to find some lamps. I know my daughter's moving into a new apartment and I know she's gonna need some lamps, so I told her to go onto Wayfair. And Wayfair, you can make like a board. It's called the like and it. You just label it Becca's apartment. And you just put the things that you like as you're shopping around in there and then you can see them all lined up and pick from that at the end.

[Susan]

It's great. Well, and there's something for every style and every home and every budget too. So you can have a board and she can have a board and they could be completely different but. But completely complete.

[Becca]

Yep, that's exactly what we do because she's on my account.

[Susan]

Ah, very good.

[Becca]

Make it handy at Christmas time. You know what else I really like about Wayfair is how detailed you can get in your search descriptions. You can do a particular style, mid century modern, farmhouse. You know, whatever style you have, there's so many and you can just narrow it down by that and color and size, and you just get those items that match your criteria.

[Susan]

Also, there's free shipping, even on the big stuff.

[Becca]

Love that.

[Susan]

So cozify your space with Wayfair's curated collection of easy, affordable fall updates. From comfy recliners to cozy bedding and autumn decor. You can find it all for way [e-mail] that's W-A-Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home A quick look back at how the King is doing. The Catholics were convinced Henry was going to be on their side. And he badly disappointed them because he had a policy of reconciliation. You know, like I said before, rulers don't want chaos. Ideally they don't. It's not good for anyone. And he made concessions so the Huguenots could exercise their religion openly and legally everywhere except in Paris. He even allowed them to fortify eight towns as a home base for added security. No, the Catholics were not down with this. The Duke of Guise, him again organized something called the Catholic League to resist the King. And the King called everybody into the meeting again, just like his mother had done so long ago. But unlike the outcome, his mother had got the nobles, the high ranking individuals sort of bullied the King into declaring there was a law in France which required the King to be Catholic. And why was this? That law was intended to prevent Henry of Navarre, Margot's husband, who now stood second in the line of succession, from becoming king. You know, no Protestant kings, which might not be a big deal, right? The King would maybe have children. He still had a younger brother, just in case. How much could it hurt? Also, they refused to grant the King any new revenue unless he caved in to everything they wanted. So the monarchy's disastrous fiscal situation could not be improved by the King. Isn't that what you want, though, to fix the country's fiscal situation? So he did have to pull back from everything he'd given the Huguenots. But it was still more than they had had when he got there. So it was kind of a nice middle ground again, we have a nice balance of power between the opposing parties. This particular peace lasted around seven years. Okay, it's balanced. We're good. Can we please move on? Unfortunately, Henry's personal behavior then began to cause him serious problems. He gathered at the court, this group of young noblemen he called his Mignon, which means darlings or cuties, and he lavished money on them and titles. Kings throughout history have lavished money and titles on their favorite people. Right from all eternity. Absolutely. But, and I want to quote again, this is what's going around. This was a German diplomat. The name Mignon began at this time to travel by word of mouth through the people to whom they were very odious, as much for their ways, which were jesting and haughty, as for all of their paint and effeminate and unchaste apparel. Their only occupations are gambling, blaspheming, fornicating, and following the king everywhere, seeking to please only him in everything they do and say, caring little for God or virtue, contenting themselves to be in the good graces of their master, who they fear and honor more than God. There was, let's say, a strong hint of homosexuality. Some might even say it punched you in the face. That's fine at court. Frankly, that's fine at Court. No one cares. And by the nobility in general, no one cares. Technically illegal, eh? Scandalous for the common people, scandalous. Made even more shocking by the mignon's habit for wearing over the top Italian fashions. We've already talked about how suspicious Italians were, right? And as the years went by, his lack of children made people turn against him in, you know what? Egalitarian. They turned against Marie Antoinette for the same reason. Right? At least they're doing it to a man now. More importantly, he attempted to raise taxes. And that, combined with the royal court and the Mignon's like, obvious extravagance, right, Made him maybe the most vilified king in French history. He and his Mignon were the subject of cartoons and articles, I mean, sarcasm, sermons against him. He started to be accused of holding black magic masses. And because he was openly very devout, goes to mass a lot in public. He was also accused of being a dirty, dirty hypocrite. So he fixed it politically and then messed it up culturally and made everyone mad at him. Catherine had enough to deal with here. She's actually very stressed out about his behavior and his decisions. She's really trying to advise him. He's sort of not trying to hear it. Grown men often don't try to hear their mother's advice. Ask me how I know. Well, in 1579, negotiations commenced for marrying her fourth son, currently the Duke of Alenon. Now, it's confusing because he also got the title of Anjou later. But let's. To prevent confusion between the sons, let's go with that title, Alenon. So perhaps she can marry her fourth son to Elizabeth I of England. Now he's 24, Elizabeth is 46.

[Becca]

And this is not the first of her children that Elizabeth. I think she's just playing. She had started negotiations to marry King Henry at one point. I think she's just playing them. She has no intention of getting married. But this one with Alan Song was a little bit more serious than the one with Henry. They actually met. They got along. She even had a pet name for him. She called him my frog, which at the time was not a derogatory word for French people, as it is now. So it was just kind of a little pet name. And discussions did last for years before Elizabeth just kind of said, no, this is not gonna work for me, and backed up.

[Susan]

Well, we know from here that Elizabeth had no real intention of marrying, you know. So the agitated controversy in her country about her marrying a Catholic was just sort of so much noise.

[Becca]

It also properly pissed off King Philip II of Spain, which might have been her intention all along.

[Susan]

Yeah, she's pretty good. She's pretty good. Well, Alan Song was called, quote, the papist son of the Jezebel of our age. Referring to Catherine, of course. But how hilarious, I think, to refer to Catherine as the Jezebel of the age, when her Jezebelitude is mostly being as powerful politically as men.

[Becca]

Right.

[Susan]

Who lived at the exact same time as she. And to have that said to Elizabeth, who is in a very similar situation as being as powerful politically as men, that's irony. Irony. Do you remember in Elizabeth, that movie starring Cate Blanchett, that the Duke of Anjou as her suitor. I mean, it's an old movie. I'm not giving you any spoilers. He was surprised by the Queen during a revel in which he was wearing a dress. Do you remember that?

[Becca]

No, I don't remember that part. I think I saw it once a long time ago, maybe when we covered Elizabeth.

[Susan]

Well, he. Let's see, PG 13. He was surrounded by assorted debauchery. And that in the movie, is when Elizabeth decided not to marry him. It's a pretty good scene. We'll have to give you a link to it. Here's what I'm thinking. It was a mix of the actual suitor's existence, fourth son, and the mannerism, reputation and court life of Henry the Third. Third son. Both of whom at different times had the title of the Duke d'. Anjou. Do you know what I'm saying? So the Third son never made it to England, so it can't be him.

[Becca]

Right.

[Susan]

The fourth son actually went multiple times, but didn't have the proclivities of his older brother. So I think it was just too irresistible for the movies. And they had to put it in.

[Becca]

No. That's a great story for a movie.

[Susan]

No, but there is one recorded incident that Catherine specifically interfered with in kind of an immoral way, I think with the Duke of Alenon. So the Duke of Alenon and Henry of Navarre. So these are the first and second in line. Right. For the throne. They became sort of BFFs, and Catherine got a whiff through her spy network of, I guess, conspiracy, I guess, is what you'd call it. Maybe we should unseat Henry III because he's a madman and everyone's mad at him, blah, blah, blah.

[Becca]

That whiff of conspiracy had to do with daughter Margot, now Queen of Navarre, being involved in a failed coup attempt to put the baby of the family, Alan son, on the throne.

[Susan]

So she decided to put her flying squadron to use. There was a woman named Charlotte de Sauve, literally the mistress of her daughter's husband. Yeah. Henry of Navarre's mistress was instructed to also seduce Catherine's fourth son. Purpose engender jealousy between the two men. So they'd stop being friends, stop hanging out, and that would bring to an end any sort of rebellion or scheme that they were thinking of making. Yeah. I mean, cold hearted.

[Becca]

Cold hearted, yeah.

[Susan]

Margot, sister of one man and wife of the other, wrote this in her memoirs. Quote, they became extremely jealous of each other to such a point that they forgot their ambitions, their duties and their plans, and thought of nothing but chasing after this woman. Exactly what mother intended.

[Becca]

Yes.

[Susan]

Henry of Navarre, in fact, wrote to a friend, quote, this court is the strangest I've ever known. We are nearly always ready to cut each other's throat. Everyone, you know, wants my death on the account of my love for Alenon. I'm waiting for a minor battle, for they say they will kill me and I want to be one jump ahead of them. Alenon was sent to be the hereditary ruler of the Netherlands. So a fourth son with a crown. Hooray. Hooray. All four of them off my hands. Where out of the range of wise counsel of his mother, he started a war in which his 1500 troops were basically hacked to death by the citizens of Antwerp. Catherine wrote to him, would to God you had died young, you would then not have been the cause of the death of so many brave gentlemen. You know, What? Catherine, you said it out loud, didn't you? And you didn't knock on wood. Almost instantly, Alenon fell deathly ill with what we now know of as malaria. But of course, you know, everyone's like poison. Blah, blah, blah, black magic. And Catherine brought him back to France just in time for him to reconcile with his brother, the King, before he died at only 29. So now there is no heir from the House of Valois. King Henry had no son himself. His successor was Henry of Navarre. Remember Bourbon? They're next up. And his father's dead, so he's the next. He is also the Huguenot leader, even though he had technically converted to Catholicism to save his bacon during the St. Bartholomew massacre. Nobody really thought that was real. And the dormant Catholic League reappeared with a vengeance. Guess who their supporter was? Philip II of Spain. And the League persuaded Henry again to declare that all kings of France were to be Catholic. Naturally enough, in response, Henry of Navarre, Protestant, decided to take up arms. And now what do you have? An amusingly named but horrible war called the War of the Three Henrys. Because the King is named Henry, Henry of Navarre is named Henry. And this Guise had also got the name of Henry. It's very confusing.

[Becca]

It is.

[Susan]

Maybe you could just call them Henry V, Henry G and Henry N. Like everyone used to do with all the Jennifers, Michelle's Christophers, and Jason's in the 70s and 80s. I was curious, so I went to look. And according to Baby Center, Henry was the number 13 most popular boy baby name just last year. So I imagine Henry's have always had this problem. In late 1587, the Guises defeated a Protestant army. And his victory was. I mean, he became the man among Paris's Catholics. And King Henry was actually terrified that the Guises had become so powerful that they could unseat him. The King barred him from coming to Paris, but Guise came anyway. King Henry's efforts to keep control of the city led to a horrible day called the Day of the Barricades. Catholics used barricades in the streets to isolate all of Henry's royal troops and force them to surrender. And Henry ended up having to flee from Paris. Catherine spent her time trying desperately to advise her son, but you know what? He no longer wished to listen to her. I don't know that he ever really 100% listened to her anyway. But now he was fully. Hands up. Stop talking.

[Becca]

Yeah, stop. She had been working kind of as a diplomat around the country, and she was the one that was able to see that his Popularity was dropping rapidly wherever, and he wouldn't listen to her. That predated what you're talking about, but. Yeah, well.

[Susan]

So you're always wanting to kill the messenger. And she was bringing him the bad news, and he wasn't about that life. He didn't want to hear any bad news. And she was trying to tell him the truth. And he wanted to live in this whole fantasy of him being the most charming man on earth and the people loved him, and all this was nonsense and lies. But, you know, you get to a point when you have to face reality. And I'm sorry to say that Catherine started to feel very weak and she was very ill. And at this time, the situation in the country was almost at its worst. And she continued to feel very powerless, as she saw helplessly, her son's power was failing. I mean, diminishing, I guess you'd call it. Henry, the King ordered the assassination of all the Guises. Openly ordered their assassination with a bounty. Please kill them for me.

[Becca]

And when it was done, he went to Catherine, who's laying in bed sick, and he says, please forgive me. Monsieur de Guise is dead. He will not be spoken of again. I have done to him what he was going to do to me. So this is echoes of St. Bartholomew's right? That worked the last time. So let's try it again.

[Susan]

Yep. So bad it w. It was so treacherous of him.

[Becca]

Her response was, what do you think you've done? You've killed men who have left a lot of friends.

[Susan]

I mean, it was very, very disappointing. After all this time, she is about to bear witness to her family's losing hold on the country, that she had basically sacrificed her entire adult life in order to keep it together. And here is this nonsense erupting right as she is so, so sick and can't do anything about it. Here's one last fable which I cannot prove is untrue or true, but has a nice ring to it if you remember. Once upon a time, an astrologer once warned Catherine that she would die, quote, near St. Germain. As a result, she pieced out of the Tuileries because it was too near a church called St. Germain, and moved somewhere else. Took it seriously enough that she left. Okay, fast forward. Fifteen years later. Here she is. Catherine is extremely ill at the Chateau of Blois. Hard to say. B L O I S And a priest was called. He introduced himself. This is real, I swear. Or at least told as real. His name was Julien de Saint Germain. And the legend says that Catherine de Medici knew her time had come.

[Becca]

That's probably not what killed her. But she was given the last rites and died on January 5, 1589. She was 69 years old. It was later discovered that she had pleurisy. Who else was it that died of that? Lots of people I know somebody in her story, like part one, somebody else significant, also died of pleurisy. So it was pretty common.

[Susan]

Catherine herself had commissioned her elaborate tomb, which she shared with her husband at the Basilica of St. Denis. But the story of where she went after death is very complicated and starts out in the following way. Due to the fact that her son had been besieging Paris, it was impossible to remove Catherine de Medici's body to the resting place at St. Denis, which is just outside of Paris. Therefore, she was buried temporarily, they thought, on the grounds of the local parish in which she died. Where she remained, I do believe, in the ground for 20 plus years until a French noblewoman quietly had her body removed and placed into her tomb with her husband in the Basilica of St. Denis. But the complications and peregrinations do not stop there. The building was commonly known as Notre Dame de la Rotonde and the design stated it was supposed to be covered with a dome. But no one ever built it, the dome, because the work was interrupted when Henry died in 1589, the last Valois king. It was left abandoned for 130 years and eventually the building fell into ruin. In 1719, the rotunda was dismantled and the tomb of Henry II and Catherine de Medici was moved just inside of the church from that unfinished building outside where it had been for 130 years. But she couldn't rest in peace.

[Becca]

During the French Revolution, Catherine's tomb, as well as other royals, 46 kings, 32 queens, and that doesn't even touch how many noble people. All of these tombs were exhumed and their bodies were dumped into a mass grave. They were then covered with quicklime, which rapidly decomposed the bodies beyond recognition. During the Revolution, the actual tomb had been able to be saved. It was moved into a museum and returned to the basilica in 1816. But Catherine nor her husband were in that tomb.

[Susan]

So Louis xviii, so this is Marie Antoinette's husband's younger brother, had all the royal bodies, what was left of them? Bones reclaimed from their exile on the grounds and placed in a consecrated ossuary. Like a. It means like a, a bone home. So all the bones are placed in kind of a crypt underneath the church. So you can certainly see at St. Denis the Glorious tomb of Catherine de Medici. But the woman herself is not inside of it. It's a bummer. Well, back to a little bit of a 1990s movie, you know, after the end of the story. Epilogue. What happened to her son Henry and what happened to France after those assassinations he had ordered? Catholic rage at the king was enormous. The pope excommunicated the king of France, and the people of France denounced him as a tyrant whose assassination would be a holy deed by any devout Catholic. A young Dominican brother named Jacques Clement took people at their word. So assassination of the king would be a holy deed. Well, I'm a devout Catholic, so picture this. It's August 1st, 1589. King Henry III is camped out with his army, gearing up to launch an attack on Paris. Tensions are very high. And then, out of nowhere, a young Dominican friar comes and he's got these forged papers, and he claims he's carrying urgent documents for the king. And he hands over a bundle of papers, and he tells Henry he has a secret message to deliver. And Henry makes a mistake. And he waves all his attendants away to speak privately with this friar. And instead of whispering state secrets to him, Mr. Clement leans in and stabs Henry right in the abdomen. I will say the guards react instantly to the king's cry. And they did kill the assassin on the spot. And at first, it looked like Henry might survive. He's wounded, but he's still lucid enough to. I mean, this is pretty big of him. Knowing he's going to die, he urges his men to stay loyal to the new king, Henry of Navarre. If he ends up dying, promise me that you will not unseat him. Promise me, even though you know he's technically on the other side, you have to make an oath to me. And they did. And by the next morning, the very day they were supposed to storm Paris with the army, Henry died. And I'm going to say the impact was immediate. His army fell into complete disarray. Nobody knew what to do. The attack obviously called off. Inside Paris, the news sparked wild celebration, just like after the St. Bartholomew massacre. This event, the assassination of King Henry III, was seen as divine intervention. And how sad to have lived in such a way that there is widespread celebration at your death. His death marked the end of the Valois dynasty. There are no more Valois kings. It's the beginning of the Bourbon kings. Henry IV is what Henry of Navarre became. He was also referred to as King Henry, the Good, good King Henry. That's a good sign.

[Becca]

Yes. Good King Henry.

[Susan]

He was Able to bring a close to the wars that had plagued the last three decades in France. And, you know, what is it? I mean, it's a dark legend about Catherine and all of her sons. None of them were able to put an end to these battles. And is it. I just think it's timing. I just think the world was in. The world was in a period of change. I mean, it was happening all over the place, and it was an unprecedented situation, kind of. And how you navigated it was a lot of luck, honestly. You know, there's all this prejudice against her. Her Italian origins. You know, she was into astrology. She was interested in the occult. There was all that Italian as poisoner thing. But, you know, all the kings plotted, lied, schemed, made alliances that they broke immediately, like all of them did. She did all of that to preserve France. Most of the time, she didn't even claim the power for herself. You know what I mean? No. So she really. Her reputation really gets. Got smeared.

[Becca]

Well, it's very complicated. So when you have complicated stories, it's easier to make a villain out of someone who had a very complex life. You know, not totally good, not totally bad. Just make them the villain.

[Susan]

I also think that not everybody is totally good or bad, and she's certainly not totally bad.

[Becca]

No, absolutely. And I hope that we. You and I, in this nearly 15 years, we've been doing this. If you take one thing from this, it's that not everyone is completely good or completely bad.

[Susan]

And I think her goal. I really do think her goal was to get France to a place of peace and stability.

[Becca]

I agree.

[Susan]

It's almost like balancing a plate on a stick. Like one tiny weight on one side. Not even a side. It's a circle. One tiny weight in any place in the circle will cause the plate to fall. And I think that's literally the geometry that she was faced with, is trying to keep the spinning plate of France balanced on a little stick of stability. And that's, like. That would be impossible for anyone.

[Becca]

No argument there.

[Susan]

One more thing.

[Becca]

Sure.

[Susan]

All that exists of Catherine's residence in Paris is the Medici column. It's near the Bourse du Commerce, near Les Halles. You can still see Catherine's version of her husband Henry's coat of arms with the C instead of the D there. That's about all that's left of her architecture. And I will tell you that Catherine is. Let's see. Marie Antoinette is a direct descendant of Catherine de Medici's youngest daughter. So therefore a direct descendant of Catherine de Medici. Catherine de Medici is Marie Antoinette's grandpa's grandma's grandma. Does that make sense?

[Becca]

Yes. I mean, in royal families, that's like a deep root right there, but, I.

[Susan]

Mean, they go straight down, like nobody's a cousin or whatever. That is a straight line. And that brings us to the end of the complicated, interesting, sometimes devilish story of Catherine de Medici. And now it's time for media. And as usual, we'll start with books. And I'm going to start with a book that I actually have owned for some time. It is Catherine de Medici by Lenny Frida. F R I E D A I mean, the number of pages I have turned down shouldn't shock you, but I own this one, so I could do it. Librarians of America, do not fear.

[Becca]

Yes. And this is the book that the TV series we'll talk a little bit about later is from. This is what they read. So it's very detailed. It's great. The other one that I liked was Catherine de Medici, the Life and Times of the Serpent Queen by Mary Hollingsworth. It's also. There's a lot to it. It's pretty detailed, but not quite as detailed as the other one.

[Susan]

This book, Serpent and the Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King by Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent.

[Becca]

Nice.

[Susan]

Is a good intertwined story about the lives of Diane dupoitier and Catherine de Medici.

[Becca]

Along those same lines, the rival queens, Catherine de Medici and her daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom by Nancy Goldstone. There's a nice intertwined story we, like, had to skip over a lot about Margot. Maybe Margot gets her own episode. I don't know.

[Susan]

Sounds good.

[Becca]

Yep.

[Susan]

So this book covers all three. It's called Women of the Life and Times of Catherine de Medici. Diane de Poitier and Marguerite de Valois by Mark Strague, covers everyone.

[Becca]

Another compilation that has the stories intertwined is called Young Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power. It's about Catherine de Medici, her daughter Elizabeth of Valois, and Mary Queen of Scots. So the queen stories are all intertwined. I thought that one was very readable. It's by Leah Redmond Chang.

[Susan]

In addition, if you would like some adjacent rabbit holes, Henry IV of France, His Reign and Age by Vincent Pitts. That's like what happens after the story we just talked about. And then Nostradamus, the man behind the prophecies, if you'd like to know. I mean, brace yourself. Anyway, the book is by Ian Wilson. Just be sure that you would like to know if you look up anything about 20, 25. There you go.

[Becca]

Finally. It's a very small overview book. It's called the House of Medici. A captivating guide to the history of the Medici family and dynasty. It's part of a captivating history series. So it just kind of gives a brief overview of all of them. So if you want to, like, get your murder board out and put the pictures up on the wall with the red string tying between everybody, that's a good one to read.

[Susan]

And then in the last episode, I gave you that recommendation for the book on the Medici, and we will put that up on the website. There is, for reasons that you probably already know, not really a children's book that I could find. Okay. So video mediums. Let's just get it out there. Serpent Queen on Stars, where Samantha Morton plays Catherine de Medici. I would say that if you've heard this episode and you know the story, you'll recognize when characters appear that are made up for narrative economy. I would say it's not going to break your spirit. It's. You know, there's parts where you're like, oh, okay, I get. You gotta put these people together. You gotta move the story. It's not. It's probably Tudor's level, is what I'm saying.

[Becca]

Yeah. No, I agree. Personally, I found it a bit too anachronistic and not done as well as, say, Marie Antoinette or a knight's tale modern language. And they have the Gies brothers as, like, almost like buffoons, which kind of. I was like, really? That's not quite them.

[Susan]

But okay, once you know the story, I think you can watch the Serpent Queen. I would certainly not advise that anyone watch that as your introduction.

[Becca]

I loved Samantha Morton in this. She was the best thing in the series as far as I was concerned. But she, as an actress, she played Mary Stewart in the Cate Blanchett. The one we were just talking about. Yeah, Elizabeth. And this one blew my mind. She is Ruby's voice on the animated series. Max and Ruby.

[Susan]

Ruby and Max.

[Becca]

Max and Ruby. Sorry.

[Susan]

So that's like we're dating ourselves because I literally don't know that little kids now ever watch Max and Ruby. But that was in high rotation when Jet Graham, currently age 20, was a little kid.

[Becca]

Yeah, my kids, too.

[Susan]

My kids too. There is another video that I am going to give you. You know, we're gonna either put it on the show notes or in the Pinterest. It is a movie clip from that movie. Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett the Duke d', Anjou, which is the character name in. In that movie in a dress. And Elizabeth's reaction. So in Elizabeth, it makes it seem like seeing him like that in that environment is what Elizabeth used as her excuse for rejecting his suit in marriage. In real life, her excuse because you know, she wasn't gonna get married. In real life, her excuse was that he had led those 1500 men to their death and she didn't approve of his judgment, which is the actual reason she gave for rejecting his suit. So there it is. But this is much more entertaining. It's very cute. We'll put that. We'll put that on there. It's good. And here's the thing. I am very sorry for fans of Anne of Green Gables. And you're going to have. It's going to be sad. So the OG Anne of Green Gables, no less than Megan Follows herself, plays Catherine de Medici in Rain R E I G N and I cannot support the existence of that show at all.

[Becca]

No, I know. But she is fantastic. That's the best part of the whole series. Not that I watched all of it. I did watch I probably a season and a half back when we were covering Mary Queen of Scots maybe.

[Susan]

But yeah. And if you love it, that is 100% fine. I am now in the philosophy where I don't necessarily yak people's yum. So let's just start again. For me, I would not watch Rain as historical, even like historically based show but it is like an entertaining sort of soap opera y thing. I mean I might even equate it as if you're a doctor, you probably don't want to watch Grey's Anatomy for the medical like truth telling. But it's a fine tale. That's true. That's true. So I put it about in in that category. Perfectly well directed etc but maybe not your best source of true information. Also if you play the game civilization in civilization 6 I am not joking, there is a character named Catherine de Medici who is based on guess who? Catherine de Medici. I am cracked up about this leader bonus Catherine's flying squadron get listen to this. This gains you plus one level of diplomatic visibility. With every encountered civilization you receive a free spy with castles all spies start as agents and then it's like leader agenda, black queen gain as many spies and as much diplomatic visibility as possible. Dislikes civilizations that ignore these espionage activities. It's like so hilarious.

[Becca]

Yes.

[Susan]

And there's two versions that you can go down. It's so hilarious. Oh my gosh. Here's some of her lines. I see you were also practiced in the subtler arts of statecraft. I've always rather enjoyed a bit of espionage myself. My companion ladies would be delighted to speak with you during the festival. Like, it's like somebody knows their stories.

[Becca]

That's funny. So video game makers and science fiction writers all know their history.

[Susan]

You dare attack my sovereign realm? I don't believe even Nostradamus could have predicted this.

[Becca]

I think that's a niche bit of information too. So whoever those developers were, they were.

[Susan]

I think that is great. I mean, I am telling you what, these people are some of the most well read, well educated people on earth. Anyway, I just thought, you know, how many of you play that game? I don't know. But how niche is that? How great do you play that game? I do not. I might have to go, like, I'm not very good with battle Y games though. I don't like that. Like where you go. I don't know, it just seems work. It does seem more complicated than that, but I don't like those. You know me in suspense. I have to know that, like, Willy's gonna be free before I watch Free Willy. Like, I can't bear it. I can't bear the suspense. I always read the last chapter of a fiction book first. Do you actually, no. I read the first chapter and then I read the last chapter and then I decide whether or not I'm gonna read them at all.

[Becca]

Interesting.

[Susan]

Sometimes I get what I need out of the first and last chapter, I. E. Do not finish. I'm out. Goodbye. Back to the library you go.

[Becca]

That's funny.

[Susan]

All these crimes I commit against books, right?

[Becca]

Well, it's not a crime. You're giving it back so somebody who wants to read it can read it.

[Susan]

Well, yes. Now online there are such things. You can tour the Chateau de Blois. How cool though, to go there and see the cabinet. I would like to do that. Also Chenonceau and Chaumont, the two castles that look very like a Cinderella castle that were kind of objects of envy between Diane de Poitier and Catherine. The Tuileries, of course, always there. And then the Louvre. Might as well. Yeah, she lived there too.

[Becca]

I know. I stand in the times. We've been there in the middle of the courtyard of the Louvre and think this was a house. I mean, it's a palace, but there's so much. It's so massive. I would love to go to Chateau Chenonceau. You can go there. You can walk the gardens. You can have events there.

[Susan]

That would be cool. Speaking of museums, that you could go to the Uffizi Gallery, which was at one point the administrative offices of the OG Cosimo de Medici, Patria Patrier of Florence.

[Becca]

Okay, I'll go.

[Susan]

Okay. Twister went off.

[Becca]

You insist I have an article about their tomb. I have other articles. We'll just put them in the show. Notes.

[Susan]

Yeah. St. Denis. The Chapel of St. Denis has a whole page on the tomb. And what happened to it.

[Becca]

Yeah, I don't have anything else.

[Susan]

And in closing, Catherine de Medici lived in a century defined by the contributions of exceptional women. And she distinguished herself as one of the most remarkable of all. Tireless and patient, sharp and strategic, brave in ways that defied expectation. Her capacity for patience and her aptitude for calculated decision making were matched by her courage in the face of adversity. Yet her most enduring role was that of a custodian of her family's legacy. Everything about her is paradoxical, and we think had her sons grown into mature and level headed middle aged kings, her fortitude and the sacrifices that she made might well be regarded with greater grace than history has typically given her. Perhaps we should end with a quote from a man who certainly knew Catherine de Medici very, very well. In his lifetime, at all stages of his development. Henry iv, the first of the Bourbon kings. Henry the Good, the man who's had the name of Henry Navarre throughout most of our story. When asked about his mother in law, this is what he had to say. Let me ask you, what could a poor woman do, left alone by the death of her husband, with five small children on her arms, and with two families in France, mine and that of the Guises striving to take away the crown. Was it not necessary that she play strange parts in order to deceive the one and the other of us? And yet she did this to protect her children, who reigned in succession by the wisdom of a woman so able. It is curious that it is she who's damned as the intruder, the foreigner. But that her crime is that she merely sought to defend the French monarchy, to preserve it intact as it passed throughout her family. Thanks for listening.

[Becca]

Bye.

[Susan]

If you liked what you heard today or learned a little something, please tell a few friends about us or leave a review for us on Apple podcasts, on Spotify or on your favorite podcatcher. Links to the things we talked about today could be found at our website, thehistorychicks.com including the literal, cutest picture of Henry IV I have ever seen. Of a king in my life. He's dressed as Hercules. He's very proud of the muscles he's built in his legs and his little face. It just can't be beat. So go see that. If nothing else, I will also open up the Pinterest board. And don't forget to let me know if you are a fan of Terry Pratchett. And if you read Monstrous Regiment, let me know what you think of it. The song at the end is Champion, featuring Lila Mai by a band called Mondays. See you next time.

[Guest Singer]

This is me, I'm so royal and you all wanna be round yeah, you all wanna be round round. A champion, a champion I got tales of soul and my true collective ball Famous also famous number one decided I do what I want when I want and how I want it Leave you with the one in yeah, that's how I roll. I got changes, bro I don't care about no go Better, so much better Flipping incredible Always on the show so they know that I still got it and I never feel sorry here.

[Susan]

You.

[Guest Singer]

All wanna be round When I hear him come like my fuse and then ba bomb let it See you later. I'm about to blow this up. You can sing my song if you want I know you want it. It's always kind of funny, yeah. Cause I know I'm a superstar on the sky to lead you on Hate haters gonna hate Is a proof of how they love. They can bring me down. Nah, nah, nah. They are jealous of me and royal brilliant this is me, I'm so royal and you all wanna be round. Yeah, you all wanna be round round. A champion, a champion it's just me, I still on it. Cause you all wanna be loved. All I wanna do is just say you don't understand how I play I am in my way to win you over no way yeah. Oh, you gave me my voice in your head and you wanna hear it again so you play it over and over and over.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Guest Singer]

This is me I'm so real and you all wanna be around and you all wanna be round run a champion this is me I still on it. Cause you all wanna be love if you wanna wanna be love this is me I'm so royal and you all wanna be round if you all wanna be round Champion, a champion. All I wanna do is just say you don't understand how I play I am on my way to win you over Nobody oh, you can leave my voice in your head and you want to hear it again so you'll play it over and over, over and over.

[Susan]

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[Becca]

McDonald's for a limited time.

[Susan]

Prices and participation may vary.

[Becca]

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