Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power

The  boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de' Medici,  Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots—three queens exercising  power in a world dominated by men.

Orphaned from  infancy, Catherine de’ Medici endured a tumultuous childhood. Married to  the French king, she was widowed by forty, only to become the power  behind the French throne during a period of intense civil strife. In  1546, Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, who would  become Queen of Spain. Two years later, Catherine welcomed to her  nursery the beguiling young Mary Queen of Scots, who would later become  her daughter-in-law.

Together, Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary  lived through the sea changes that transformed sixteenth-century Europe,  a time of expanding empires, religious discord, and populist revolt, as  concepts of nationhood began to emerge and ideas of sovereignty inched  closer to absolutism. They would learn that to rule as a queen was to  wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched misogyny of their  time.

Following the intertwined stories of the three women from girlhood through young adulthood, Leah Redmond Chang's Young Queens paints a picture of a world in which a woman could wield power at the  highest level yet remain at the mercy of the state, her body serving as  the currency of empire and dynasty, sacrificed to the will of husband,  family, kingdom.