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Marguerite de Valois
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Marguerite de Valois (14 May 1553 – 27 May 1615), "La Reine Margot" (Queen Margot, in English) was Queen of France and of Navarre during the late sixteenth century.
Marguerite de Valois at the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and nicknamed Margot by her brothers, she was the daughter of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici. Three of her brothers became kings of France: Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III.
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Marguerite de Valois (14 May 1553 – 27 May 1615), "La Reine Margot" (Queen Margot, in English) was Queen of France and of Navarre during the late sixteenth century.
Early life
Born Marguerite de Valois at the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and nicknamed Margot by her brothers, she was the daughter of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici. Three of her brothers became kings of France: Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Her sister, Élisabeth de Valois, became the third wife of King Philip II of Spain.
Arranged marriage
Although Marguerite loved Henry de Guise, her mother would never allow the House of Guise any chance of controlling France. Instead, she offered to marry Marguerite to Philip II's son Carlos, Prince of Asturias, but the marriage never occurred. Serious negotiations for Marguerite's marriage to King Sebastian of Portugal were also considered but abandoned.
Marguerite was forced to marry Henry de Bourbon, the son of Jeanne d'Albret, the Protestant Queen of Navarre, in a marriage that was designed to reunite family ties and create harmony between Catholics and Huguenots. Although Henry's mother opposed the marriage, many of her nobles supported it, and the marriage was arranged. Jeanne d'Albret died under suspicious circumstances before the marriage could take place; some suspected that a pair of gloves sent to Jeanne as a wedding gift from Catherine de' Medici had been poisoned.
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On 18 August 1572, the 19-year-old Marguerite married Henri de Bourbon, who had become King of Navarre upon the death of his mother. The groom, a Huguenot, remained outside the church during the official wedding ceremony. It was reported that during the ceremony, the bride and groom stared straight ahead, never looking at each other. Some accounts say that, when asked to affirm her marriage vows, Marguerite remained stubbornly silent: Her brother Charles had to stand up and violently force her to nod her head in acceptance.
Just six days after the wedding, on Saint Bartholomew's Day, a massacre of Huguenots was conducted by Parisian mobs.
After the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre
Marguerite has been credited with saving the lives of several prominent Protestants (including her husband) during the massacre, by keeping them in her rooms and refusing to admit the assassins, which included her lover, Guise. For her pains, she was confined to the Louvre by her mother. Henry of Navarre, too, was placed under house arrest and had to feign conversion to Catholicism.
After more than three years of confinement at court, Henry escaped Paris in 1576, leaving his wife behind. Finally granted permission to return to her husband in Navarre, for the next three and a half years Queen Marguerite and her husband lived a scandalous life in Pau. Both openly kept other lovers, and they quarrelled frequently.
Coup d'état at Agen
After an illness in 1582, Queen Marguerite returned to the court of her brother, Henry III, in Paris. But Henry III was soon scandalized by her reputation and forced her to leave the court. After long negotiations, she was allowed to return to her husband's court in Navarre, but she received an icy reception. Determined to overcome her difficulties, Queen Marguerite masterminded a coup d'état and seized power over Agen, one of her appanages. After several months of fortifying the city, the citizens of Agen revolted and Queen Marguerite fled to the castle of Carlat. In 1586, she was imprisoned by her brother Henri III in the castle of Usson, in Auvergne, where she spent eighteen years.
In 1589, her husband succeeded to the throne of France as Henry IV, though he was not accepted by most of the Catholic population until he converted to that faith four years later. Henry continued to keep mistresses, most notably Gabrielle d'Estrées from 1591 to 1599, who bore him four children. Negotiations to dissolve the marriage were entered in 1592 and concluded in 1599 with an agreement that allowed her to maintain the title of queen. She settled her household on the river Seine Left Bank, in the Hostel de la Reyne Margueritte that is illustrated in Mérian's map of Paris, 1615 (illustration); the hôtel was built for her to designs by Jean Bullant in 1609. It was eventually demolished and partially replaced in 1640 by the Hôtel de La Rochefoucauld.
During this time, Marguerite wrote her memoirs consisting of a succession of stories relating to the affairs of her brothers Charles IX and Henri III with her former husband Henry IV. The memoirs were published posthumously in 1628 and scandalised the population. The strong-minded Marguerite was promiscuous throughout her life, and took many lovers both during her marriage, and after divorcing. Most notable were Joseph Boniface de La Môle, Jacques de Harlay, Seigneur de Chanvallon and Louis de Bussy d'Amboise.
In the end, her beauty fading, Queen Marguerite lived in near poverty hounded by creditors to the point of selling all of her jewels. Reconciled to her former husband and his second wife, Marie de Medici, Queen Marguerite returned to Paris and established herself as a mentor of the arts and benefactress of the poor. She often helped plan events at court and nurtured the children of Henry IV and Marie. Marguerite died in her private residence, the Hôtel de la Reine Marguerite in Paris, on 27 May 1615, and was buried in the Chapel of the Valois.
Marguerite de Valois in fiction
Alexandre Dumas, père's novel Queen Margot ("La Reine Margot" in French) is a fictionalised account of the events surrounding Marguerite's marriage to Henry of Navarre. The novel was adapted into a 1994 French film, La Reine Margot, in which the role of Marguerite was played by the popular French actress Isabelle Adjani. The main action of Shakespeare's early comedy Love's Labour's Lost (1594–5) is based on an attempt at reconciliation, made in 1578, between Marguerite and Henry.
La Reine Margot appears in Jean Plaidy's novel, Myself, My Enemy a fictional memoir of Queen Henriette Marie, consort of King Charles I. A chance meeting between the young princesse Henriette and the elderly reine Margot at the celebration of marriage of Henriette's brother, the King, and Anne of Austria hints to the reader about the fascinating character that Marguerite de Valois was.
Marguerite de Valois also has a major role in the Meyerbeer opera Les Huguenots. This was one of Joan Sutherland's signature roles and she performed it for her farewell performance for the Australian Opera in 1990.
See also
External links
Ancestry
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