Lady Jane Grey Reference Guide

Between 1531 and 1537, Alessandro’s reign as prince of Florence was as magnificently colourful as it was short. The bastard son of a Medici duke and a ‘half-Negro’ maidservant, he was propelled to power at the age of only nineteen after the grandest dynasty of the Italian Renaissance lost its last legitimate heir. Betrothed to the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, he faced down bloody family rivalry and enormous hostility from Florence’s oligarchs, who called him a womaniser and tyrant. Yet this real-life counterpart to Machiavelli’s Prince kept his grip on power until he was assassinated during a late-night assignation by his scheming cousin.

From dazzling palaces and Tuscan villas to the treacherous backstreets of Florence and the corridors of papal power, this dramatic biography draws on extensive archival research to overturn our perceptions both of the history of race and of the Italian Renaissance.

Catherine de’ Medici, the infamous queen mother of France, was a consummate pragmatist and powerbroker who dominated the throne for 30 years. Her youngest daughter Marguerite, the glamorous ‘Queen Margot’, was a passionate free spirit, the only adversary whom her mother could neither intimidate nor control.

When Catherine forces the Catholic Marguerite to marry her Protestant cousin Henry of Navarre against her will, and then uses her opulent Parisian wedding as a means of luring his Huguenot followers to their deaths, in the notorious St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, she creates not only savage conflict within France but also a potent rival within her own family.

Rich in historical detail and vivid prose, Nancy Goldstone’s narrative unfolds as a thrilling historical epic. Treacherous court politics, poisonings, international espionage and adultery form the background to a story whose fascinating array of characters include such celebrated figures as Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Nostradamus.

From Catherine’s early struggles with her husband’s exquisite mistress, Diane de Poitiers, and her exultant rise to power, through Marguerite’s poignant sacrifice of love and happiness to save her husband’s life, and ultimately to the political awakening that leads to a threat to her very survival, THE RIVAL QUEENS is a dangerous tale of love, betrayal, ambition and the true nature of courage, the echoes of which still resonate.’