Palace politics

A rich portrayal of the tempestuous lives of three powerful women bonded by their time together in the French court.

- SUE COPSEY

YOUNG QUEENS: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power, by Leah Redmond Chang (Bloomsbury, $39.99) is out now in ebook and audiobook, in print on August 1.

Young Queens is the latest in a recent flurry of books by female historians seeking to highlight significant but often overlooked women in history: queens and consorts, wives and mothers, who for centuries have been relegated to the footnotes while male historians wrote of kings and battles.

The three queens highlighted by Leah Redmond Chang are Catherine de' Medici (1519-89), Queen of France and mother of two kings, who "changed the face of France", ruling for 30 years in all but name; Catherine's eldest daughter, Elisabeth de Valois (1545-68), who became Queen of Spain; and Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87), whose chaotic reign ended in her long imprisonment and eventual execution. All were queens during the Renaissance, "an unprecedented era of female rule... women pushed the limits of their political power far beyond what was normally expected of them". The ties formed during the years the three women lived at the French court, while often sorely tested, would bond them together throughout their lives. Mary described Elisabeth as "the best sister and friend that I had in this world".