Catherine de' Medici

... perfume feels like you've fallen into the bottom of an old handbag that's worn next to her coat.

Um, and also I think that Laszlo would wear Caterina's Dinner Party, and I think we would get an obnoxious story about he, he somehow knew, like, Caterina de' Medici's great-great-grand...

He says, "Oh, we all went to bed together, with the jester, too, and my lovely this and this." Like, any vehicle he has to promulgate pansexual chaos, he will take, and this is, like, lemon and melted ice cream, and super sexy musk at the end.

Okay, so for Laszlo, I was kind of thinking the same as you, and I was thinking, um, Malmaison by Floris, because that was what Oscar Wilde wore, and I was like, "Oh, he was probably friends with Oscar Wilde.

In 1559, King Henry died of sepsis after he became injured during a jousting tournament.

This left his wife, the famous Queen Catherine de' Medici, as regent of France.

Part of her mission when she took the throne was to find a wife for Petrus.

Queen Catherine was known to play matchmaker for others in the court, and now Petrus was her new object of attention.

[gentle music] What happens when two of the most powerful women of 16th century Europe meet across the political and religious divides of their age? Elizabeth I of England and Catherine de Medici, Queen Mother of France, never had a simple relationship.

Separated by borders, faith, and competing political interests, they nevertheless shared something remarkable.

Both were women navigating intensely male-dominated worlds of power, diplomacy, and dynastic politics.

In this episode, I am joined by historian Dr. Estelle Paranque to explore the fascinating relationship between these two formidable figures.

What did Elizabeth and Catherine think of one another? How did their correspondence, diplomacy, and family connections shape their relationship? And what can their encounters tell us about the ways women could exercise political influence in Renaissance Europe? [gentle music] Welcome back to the Tudor Chest Podcast, episode 154, the relationship between Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici with Dr.

Estelle Paranque.

[gentle music] Welcome to the Tudor Chest Podcast, Dr. Estelle Paranque.

Oh, you're very welcome, my dear friend.

He wrote it in Hebrew.

He also wrote it himself in Latin, dedicated it to Catherine de' Medici, the Queen of France, who he knew or was a patron or whatever it was.

Sure.

So when you're like, wait, this is the Sfarana, right? The Rishid.

So I shelved Border Reavers for like 15 years um not just because i needed to get i mean virgin queen came six years after here i stand so then then i got really involved in doing um creative director work for civ um and that it just took and plus i i struggled a lot with figuring out how border reavers was going to work um but uh yeah it was it was capitalizing on uh the success of here i said i didn't want to like do an expansion pack or anything like that i i i wanted to hold tackle a whole period of history there were some real challenges with virgin queen france is such a mess during that period um i was like how okay we could have france in that game but how do they ever win Basically, the whole country falls apart during that period.

And it wasn't until I read an autobiography of Catherine de' Medici and sort of got inside her head as to what her motivations were that all of a sudden it started to click as to what their path towards getting enough victory points to win is.

There's still a very hard power to play because if everyone decides to just rip France apart, they don't have much of a chance.

Interesting.

Born with a woman's heart and a man's head, Mary not only acquired all the accomplishments which constituted the education of a future queen, but also that real knowledge which is the object of the truly learned.

Thus at fourteen in the Louvre before Henry II, Catherine de Medici, and the whole court, she delivered a discourse in Latin of her own composition in which she maintained that it becomes a woman to cultivate letters and that it is unjust and tyrannical to deprive flowery of their perfumes by banishing young girls from all but domestic cares.

One can imagine in what manner a future queen sustaining such a thesis was likely to be welcomed in the most lettered and pedantic court in Europe.

Between the literature of Rabelais and Marot verging on their decline and that of Ronsard and Montaigne reaching their zenith, Mary became a queen of poetry only too happy never to have to wear another crown than that which Ronsard, du Bellay, Maisonsfleur, and Brantôme placed daily on her head.