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Anne Thériault | Longreads | June 2022 | 29 minutes (8,006 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on world-historical women of centuries past.

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In the late summer of 1326, a small mercenary army gathered in Dordrecht, Holland, preparing to cross the North Sea and invade England. This in and of itself wasn’t all that unusual — from the Romans to the Vikings to the Normans, it seems like all of the European historical heavyweights wanted a piece of that green and pleasant land. I mean, I get it! It’s a classic case of those itchy Julius Caesar fingers: A man sees an island, and he wants to take it. What set this case apart was that the person leading the army wasn’t a king or a prince or a red-headed upstart duke, but a woman who was already the queen of England — had been queen, in fact, for nearly two decades. And the king she wanted to depose wasn’t some usurper who had unjustly taken the throne, but rather Edward II, her husband and the father of her four children. As she stepped onto that boat, the 31-year-old queen would set into motion a sequence of events that would leave her forever remembered as Isabella the She-Wolf of France.

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The French social scene of 1308 began with two glittering back-to-back events: the wedding of the future Charles IV of France to Blanche of Burgundy and, a week later, the wedding of his sister Isabella to Edward II of England. With Charles clocking in at 13 years old, and Isabella having just celebrated her 12th birthday, it was a double tween wedding extravaganza! Charles’ new wife, a veritable spinster at the ripe old age of 11, was young but at least age-appropriate. Edward, meanwhile, was nearly twice his child bride’s age — he would turn 24 three months later. Still, it wasn’t exactly an inauspicious start. By all accounts the union of the king and future queen of England was a sumptuous affair, attended by no fewer than eight European monarchs, as well as assorted princes, princesses, and other nobles. For Isabella, who was brightly turned out in robes of blue, gold, scarlet, and yellow and a crown dripping with precious stones, this was the moment she’d been preparing for since she was 4 years old. Isabella of France was likely born in 1295 or early 1296, since most contemporary chroniclers agree that she was 12 years old at her wedding on January 25th, 1308. At the very least, we know that she wasn’t any younger than 12, since that was the minimum age at which someone could marry in the church. Her brothers all have recorded birth dates, naturally, but I guess when royal daughters were born someone just scrawled “fuck, looks like another girl,” in some forgotten journal somewhere.

Isabella was born into the illustrious Capetian dynasty, which had been ruling France since 987 A.D. Her father, Philippe IV, was also known as Philippe le Bel, because along with his many other sterling qualities he was also, apparently, extremely good-looking. It’s always good to have a hot king! Bolsters the national morale and all that. Philippe did a lot of stuff, including various wars, quashing the Knights Templar, and, at one point, arresting the pope. Dante Alighieri referred to him throughout the Divine Comedy as the Plague of France, but that’s just one Italian man’s opinion. Anyway, he certainly had an eventful life.

Isabella’s mother was Joan I of Navarre, a sovereign ruler in her own right, though she left the actual governing of Navarre to various appointees. She and Philippe had grown up together at the French court, and by all accounts they were mutually smitten with each other. One source I read described her as “plump and plain,” but, like, come on, by the time she was 25 she’d already given birth seven times. Let’s cut the woman some slack. Joan died in childbirth when Isabella was just 10 years old, already predeceased by two of her daughters. Only four of Philippe and Isabella’s children lived to adulthood; of those, Isabella was the youngest and the only daughter, and some sources say that her father doted on her especially.

Meanwhile, Isabella’s new husband had never really been close with his own father, Edward I of England, also known as Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots. For one thing, there was a 45-year age difference between the two and Edward II was raised mostly by his nurse, and for another, Edward I’s legacy was just a lot to live up to. It probably didn’t help that Edward II was the fourth and only surviving son of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile — I feel like after you’ve seen three potential heirs die, it’s kind of hard to get invested in the last one. Like, oh, I guess you’re going to be king. Good luck! Try not to fuck it up too badly.

If Philippe IV was famous for being hot, then one of Edward I’s key personality traits was being so tall that you could climb him like a tree (and many women did). As his second nickname suggests, his other main thing was that he loved going to war with Scotland. Loved it! He’s the one who killed Braveheart! One historian even reported that his dying wish was to have all the flesh boiled off his body so that his bones could be mounted on a standard and brought onto Scottish battlefields. Now that’s commitment to a fault.

EDWARD II: I also did a lot of wars in Scotland

EDWARD II: you could say it was a sort of inheritance my dad left me, along with being really tall

EDWARD II: I didn’t get any fun nicknames, though

EDWARD II: actually, if people did have nicknames for me, I doubt they’d be flattering

EDWARD II: so it’s probably for the best if I don’t know about them

It must have been difficult to grow up in the shadow of a father who basically embodied the medieval ideal of kingship. It didn’t help that the younger Edward had some quirky hobbies: ditching, hedging, and thatching roofs. You know, peasant shit. Edward II’s dream vacation involved slumming it with a bunch of commoners, drinking beer with them and doing some manual labor, followed by a quick dip in the river (swimming just wasn’t a thing in England at the time, so Edward’s fondness for it was seen as further proof of his weirdness). But while all this stuff caused a fair amount of side-eye at court, the thing that people gossiped most about was Edward’s lifelong series of intense, emotionally charged relationships with men that made him behave in seemingly irrational ways.

Was Edward gay? That’s a tough question to answer, especially since medieval England didn’t have the same conception of sexuality as we do now. We do know that, along with his relationships with men, Edward also slept with at least one woman other than his wife, so maybe if he were alive in 21st-century Britain he’d identify as a chaotic bisexual. Or maybe not! This stuff is so tricky to unpack without assigning identities that may or may not be accurate. What is certain is that, whether or not the relationships Edward had with these men were sexual, he loved them and was infatuated with them to the point of self-destruction. What is also certain is that many of his contemporaries believed he was having sexual relationships with these men, and much of the ill-treatment he would receive at the hands of these contemporaries was rooted in homophobia.

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When the king tried to talk to his son about this little misadventure, the younger Edward “uttered coarse and harsh words to him.” The past is a foreign et cetera, but back-talking teenagers are forever. As part of his punishment, the prince was forbidden from seeing Piers, though it wouldn’t be long before the two were back in each other’s orbits. This was the beginning of a pattern that would last the rest of Piers’ life: He and Edward would get up to some shit, the pair would be forcibly separated, Edward would somehow finagle a reconciliation, and then after a brief period of quiet the two would once again get up to some shit.

EDWARD II: eventually my father just straight up exiled Piers to Gascony

EDWARD II: because of “undue intimacy” between us

EDWARD II: I’m sorry, is that a crime in this country now??

EDWARD II: he also forbade me from ever bestowing any titles or lands on Piers

EDWARD II: I wasn’t even allowed to go visit him

EDWARD II: anyway, when my dad died, the first thing I did was bring Piers back to England and make him the Earl of Cornwall

EDWARD II: like, literally, first thing

EDWARD II: less than a month after the old dude kicked it

Five months after his father’s death, Edward sailed to France for his wedding. When the happy couple returned to England on February 7th, 1308, Piers was there waiting for them at the docks. To say that Edward was thrilled to see him would be an understatement — one contemporary account describes the king falling into Piers’ arms and “giving kisses and repeated embraces.”

What did Isabella think of all this? It’s hard to know, since her reaction to meeting Piers went unrecorded. Actually, a lot of things about Isabella went unrecorded — we don’t know what color her hair or eyes were, how tall she was, or really anything about her appearance other than that she was routinely described as beautiful. Edward himself called her Isabeau the Fair (which is a pretty cute nickname, to be honest). And really, what else do you need to know about a woman other than whether she’s hot or not?

Isabella might have found Edward’s behavior strange, but then again she was a 12-year-old arriving in a whole new country — she probably found a lot of things strange. Maybe she took her husband kissing and clinging to his favorite as yet another bit of culture shock. Or maybe she thought it was totally normal! This was, after all, a time when men were much more physically affectionate with each other, and kissing was a common greeting. That being said, the other noblemen gathered at Dover to greet the king and his new bride certainly knew that something was up — for one thing, even if kissing was culturally normalized, there was only one man among them getting kissed. And, of course, these men all knew that Piers had already been sent away from the young king twice. Even if the rumors about Piers had yet to reach Isabella, they would soon.

The coronation was a disaster. For some reason, Edward let Piers plan the whole thing, even though he had no background in event planning (and, after that day, no future in it either). First of all, Piers outdressed everyone in pearl-encrusted robes of imperial purple silk, even though that color was supposed to be reserved for royalty. Then he went ahead and assigned himself the best role in the procession, carrying England’s most sacred relic: the crown of St. Edward the Confessor. But fashion and religious slights aside, the whole thing was just a shitshow. Lack of crowd control led to a wall behind the altar collapsing and killing a knight. The food for the feast arrived hours late, and when it did come it was so badly cooked that it was inedible. Piers seated himself next to the king, a spot that should have belonged to the new queen. But the insult that truly put things over the top for Isabella’s family was the fact that the tapestries on the walls had Edward’s arms next to Piers’ arms, while Isabella’s were conspicuously absent.

PIERS: the whole thing was devastating, to put it mildly

PIERS: here I am, trying to plan this beautiful day for my king

PIERS: and anyone who knows me knows that my passion is pageant planning

PIERS: I was trying to look my best for him

PIERS: trying to publicly redeem myself after that humiliating banishment

PIERS: and some of the stuff that went wrong legitimately wasn’t my fault

PIERS: for one thing, a wall collapsing seems more like a structural issue

PIERS: and of course Edward wanted to sit next to me, his age-appropriate friend

PIERS: what is a grown man going to talk to a little girl about?

PIERS: which horsie in the parade had the prettiest braids in their hair?

PIERS: how to dress your poppet for the pretend ball??

PIERS: please!

PIERS: I’ll admit that the tapestry thing was a touch too far, though

What was Isabella’s reaction to all this? We don’t know, though several contemporary chroniclers noted that several close family members who were present — specifically, two uncles and a brother — were absolutely fuming over the insult. Some accounts even have them storming out of the feast, silk robes and velvet capes a-swirling. While that most likely didn’t happen, it’s still fun to imagine because medievals had the best flouncing clothes. Modernity has its upsides, but it’s hard to make a dramatic exit in jeans and a sweatshirt.

But even if we have no historical record of what Isabella was going through in the wake of her disastrous coronation, she must have felt incredibly hurt and alone. Not that anyone should be too sympathetic to the royals, who live lives of unbelievable wealth and comfort, but it is pretty unhinged to be born into this very public job and have to do that job until you die. Not to belabor this point, but Isabella was 12, an age where everything about life seems excruciatingly embarrassing. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be sent off to a whole new life, with a new husband who can barely give you the time of day, to live in a new culture whose customs you don’t understand, and then be humiliated in front of everyone who’s anyone.

However, life goes on, and Isabella had little choice but to figure out how to live in a strange royal ménage à trois. At least one contemporary source says that Isabella hated Piers (at first, anyway), but even if she did, there wasn’t much she could do — a prepubescent, foreign-born queen doesn’t exactly wield much institutional power. Edward continued to see Piers frequently, whether his wife liked it or not. Piers continued to further alienate the rest of the English nobility by making up rude nicknames for them (“Sir Burst-Belly” and “The Whoreson” are representative of his sense of humor), while also limiting everyone’s access to the king. Basically, if you wanted a favor or any kind of patronage, you had to go through Piers, and you also had to be ready to pay him for the privilege. Unsurprisingly, the favorite remained extremely unpopular among everyone who wasn’t Edward.

The nobles started intriguing against Piers pretty much immediately after the coronation. When Parliament met in March, almost everyone present demanded another banishment. Edward told them he’d think about it, then granted a bunch of his stepmother’s lands to Piers. Parliament met again at the end of April and renewed their demands. Meanwhile, Isabella’s father, perhaps prompted by complaints from his daughter, sent some spies envoys to make sure that he had an accurate picture of the queen’s life at court.

Eventually, Edward caved and agreed to strip Piers of his title as earl of Cornwall and exile him. Considering that his “exile” involved a cushy appointment as the new lieutenant of Ireland (who, by the way, had viceregal powers), it doesn’t seem like much of a punishment. Isabella flourished while Piers was away, traveling across the country with her husband as he carried out his official duties. Edward, meanwhile, seemed to finally notice his wife, and began granting her lands and privileges. The queen must have hoped that she’d finally winnowed her marriage down to two people.

PIERS: PSYCH

PIERS: I left Ireland less than a year after arriving there

PIERS: then Edward immediately restored my titles

PIERS: Just picture me sailing to England while Eminem’s Without Me plays in the background

PIERS: CORNWALL’S BACK, TELL A FRIEND

The barons were extremely chill about this development and decided to just live and let live when it came to the king’s favorite. Kidding! Piers’ return pushed the country to the brink of civil war. A bunch of barons calling themselves the Lords Ordainers planned — with the backing of Parliament — to come up with a bunch of regulations curtailing the royal abuse of power. One of these barons was the earl of Lancaster, who happened to be Isabella’s uncle and Edward’s first cousin and would prove to be an enormous thorn in the king’s side. Edward was not thrilled about the regulations, called Ordinances, but Parliament basically told him that if he didn’t accept them, he’d be overthrown.

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Backed into a corner, Edward decided that now was a great time to start a military campaign against Scotland. Everyone knows that wars are great for the economy, plus if you’re a guy that everyone is accusing of being gay and corrupt, it’s good branding to look like you’re following the footsteps of your strong, masculine, extremely heterosexual father. Oh also Piers was going to come too.

The campaign was a disaster, at least in part because most of the nobles who were pissed at Edward refused to join in. It’s cool to let your own commoners die in battle because of petty infighting! Meanwhile, Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland, was up there reaping the rewards of England’s inability to get their shit together. Thanks, Ordainers!

Things continued to not go well for Edward. That winter, the earl of Lincoln died, which was a problem for the king since the earl had been one of the few moderate voices in Parliament and had managed to somewhat control the Ordainers. After that, the shit really hit the fan. The Ordainers finally completed and presented their list of 41 Ordinances, and chief among them was that Piers would be exiled again. Edward, never one to properly read a room, said that he’d agree to the rest of the Ordinances as long as Piers could stay. The thing about bargaining, though, is that you have to offer something of equal value in order to get what you want. The king had nothing to offer and everyone knew it.

Piers left England on November 3rd, then snuck back in, possibly as soon as late November. Certainly by early 1312, Piers and Edward had been reunited. I’m not sure how these chuckleheads thought this was going to play out, but obviously it didn’t end well.

ROBERT THE BRUCE: Edward even asked me at one point if Piers could come stay with me in Scotland

ROBERT THE BRUCE: I’m sorry, but weren’t you trying to invade my country last year?

ROBERT THE BRUCE: and now you want a favor from me?

ROBERT THE BRUCE: ok, bud, good chat

Meanwhile, Isabella turned 16 and, just a few months later, found out she was pregnant.

What was the Queen up to during all these Piers shenanigans? Mostly just queen stuff, like, patronages and whatever, plus publicly supporting Edward and his doomed quest to keep one hot man in the country. But while Isabella might not have been able to speak out against her husband’s antics — assuming that was even something she wanted to do — she was in a better position than she’d been in a few years before. Not only was she older and more experienced but, most importantly, she was carrying what everyone hoped would be the heir to the English throne. Four years into her role as England’s queen, Isabella was finally ready to step into the spotlight.

Four years into her role as England’s queen, Isabella was finally ready to step into the spotlight.

But first there was the whole Piers issue to resolve, which Edward did by fleeing from the Ordainers with the queen and his favorite. Early in the journey they were all traveling together, but later the two men ditched the pregnant Isabella, either because they were worried about her safety or because her household was moving too slowly (this wasn’t exactly a high-speed chase, since everyone involved had an entire staff of servants plus carts and carts of supplies). Anyway, eventually there was a siege, Piers was (predictably) captured, then tossed in a dungeon until his jailers could decide what to do with him.

EDWARD: so they had a little mock trial

EDWARD: where Piers wasn’t even allowed to speak in his own defense

EDWARD: then they took him out into the road and ran him through with a sword

EDWARD: I’ve seen animals slaughtered with more dignity

EDWARD: they called it an execution, but for what crime?

EDWARD: me not wanting to follow their made-up rules?

EDWARD: rules that let them arbitrarily exile people they don’t like?

EDWARD: no wonder the rest of Europe thinks we’re a barbarian backwater

Edward was devastated, and would grieve the loss of his favorite for the rest of his life, but Piers’ death did have a stabilizing effect on the country. For one thing, the Ordainers had gotten what they wanted, more or less. For another, all the nobles who weren’t part of that core group of Lords Ordainers thought that what had happened was, frankly, super fucked up. As a result, the king enjoyed far more support than he’d had since he’d come to the throne.

His image also got a boost from Isabella’s pregnancy, since that helped dispel some of the rumors about his sexuality, plus a royal baby is always good for PR.

By the end of 1312, Isabella was 17 and finally settling into some kind of normalcy. With Piers out of the picture, the queen seemed to come into her own, managing a large household, doing all her official queen stuff, and even occasionally advising her husband (to be fair, he needed all the advice he could get). Edward, to his credit, seemed to dote on his wife even as he mourned Piers’ death. Things weren’t perfect — one historian describes Edward’s court as a “disorderly hotbed of jealousies, intrigues and tensions,” which sounds like it would be fun for maybe a week and then get very old very fast — but they were stable. Which might be why he and Isabella decided to go to France in the spring of 1313.

Isabella and Edward’s trip to France went fine, except that a tent that they were sleeping in caught fire. Edward bravely scooped up his wife and carried her out, though she suffered burns on her arms which troubled her for several months. One contemporary chronicler noted that the king and queen of England were completely naked when they came out of the tent, which must have been a titillating sight. But other than being That Time When The Royal Couple Almost Burned To Death After Doing It, this trip to France is best known for allegedly being the time when Isabella sowed the seeds of the Tour de Nesle Affair, an event which would help speed the demise of her family’s entire dynasty. Whoops! Here are the facts of the situation: Isabella had three brothers, all of whom were married. At some point it was discovered that two of her sisters-in-law were cheating on their husbands with a pair of Norman knights, and the third sister-in-law knew about this and was somehow aiding and abetting. Isabella’s father found out and shit went very sideways for the wives and their boyfriends. The knights were castrated and then, according to various sources, either drawn and quartered, flayed alive, or broken on the wheel and then hanged. All three women went to horny jail, though one of them was eventually pardoned.

Facts aside, here is the rumor that dogged Isabella for the rest of her life: During her time in France, she allegedly gave some cute purses to her sisters-in-law after watching a “satirical puppet show” with them. Later that year, Isabella noticed a pair of knights holding those same purses at a dinner in London. She apparently came to several conclusions from this: Purses are both genderless and useful, and also her sisters-in-law had slept with these knights and then gave them these purses to remember them by. So the queen called up her father and told him that his daughters-in-law were giant sluts. Isabella’s alleged motive was to get rid of all these potential royal baby-making machines and clear the way to the French throne for her own children. This makes absolutely no sense, since a) Isabella’s children were not in line for the French throne and b) she had no way of knowing that all three of her brothers would die without any surviving male children. It was one of those stories that gained traction later, when there was a succession crisis in France and this narrative seemed to prove certain ugly things about the English queen’s character, but when looked at closely it doesn’t hold any water.

Meanwhile, things were chugging along in England. Edward cycled through a few new favorites, but none of them held his attention the way Piers had. In the summer of 1314, he decided to start yet another military campaign in Scotland, apparently forgetting that just two years earlier he’d been begging the Scottish king to give sanctuary to his favorite. Not sure if you’ve ever heard of a little battle called Bannockburn, but it was an absolute disaster for the English. Edward left home at the head of an enormous army and returned to England in a fishing boat. It was another public humiliation in a long line of public humiliations and reignited some of the tensions between him and the Lords Ordainers.

If Edward hoped that 1315 would be a better year, he was sadly mistaken. Heavy rains and flooding led to poor crops and drowned livestock, which in turn led to widespread famine. Obviously, this did nothing to bolster Edward’s popularity, though Isabella did help national morale by popping out another son in 1316, which she and Edward named John. Then in 1318 she gave birth to a daughter, which they named Eleanor after Edward’s mother.

Obviously, this did nothing to bolster Edward’s popularity, though Isabella did help national morale by popping out another son in 1316, which she and Edward named John.

Shortly after Eleanor’s birth, something truly bizarre happened: A man named John showed up claiming to be the real king of England. He said that he was the true son of Edward I, but his ear had been bitten off by a sow when he was an infant, which had led to a royal nurse switching him out with a commoner’s baby, who then grew up to be Edward II. The king thought the whole situation was pretty funny and suggested John be made into a court jester. Isabella was considerably less amused. The matter might have ended there, but John kept trying to convince Edward to fight him in single combat for the throne. In the end, John was put on trial for sedition and hanged. What a weird little interlude.

In late 1318, a man named Hugh Despenser became Edward’s new chamberlain and, shortly thereafter, became Edward’s new favorite. In many ways, their relationship would mirror the one Edward had had with Piers, but there was one crucial difference. While Piers had never seemed to have any goals besides exclusive access to the king (and making up rude nicknames for everyone else), Hugh was power-hungry. Isabella had always more or less graciously endured Piers’ presence, but she would soon come to absolutely loathe Hugh.

By the time 1320 rolled around, Edward was in deep smit, and Hugh was embroiled in some extensive land-grabs in Wales. This resulted in a new set of enemies for the king: the so-called Marcher Lords from the border between England and Wales. They showed up at Parliament to demand Hugh’s exile shortly after Isabella gave birth to her fourth and final child, a girl named Joan.

ISABELLA: Edward refused, of course

ISABELLA: I was terrified that this was going to spiral into another Piers situation

ISABELLA: except worse

ISABELLA: so I got down on my knees and begged Edward to exile Hugh

ISABELLA: on my knees

ISABELLA: in public

ISABELLA: while still recovering from childbirth

ISABELLA: he eventually gave in, but I’ll let you guess whether that exile stuck

Meanwhile, Edward came up with a plan to get rid of the Marcher Lords and, of course, bring Hugh back. He came up with a scheme that involved Isabella going on a “pilgrimage” to Canterbury, but then detouring along her way to stop at Leeds Castle, which belonged to one of the Marchers. The queen demanded that she and her retinue be accommodated at the castle for the night, which was her right. But with the lord of the castle away, his wife refused to admit Isabella since, you know, her husband was in a fight with the king. Isabella’s servants tried to enter the castle by force, and six of them were killed by the castle guards. That was all Edward needed to start an all-out war against the Marchers and end Hugh’s exile.

The war with the Marcher Lords ended in a decisive victory for Edward at the Battle of Boroughbridge. This resulted in the exile, imprisonment, or death of many of Edward’s enemies, including the old earl of Lancaster, whose execution mirrored Piers’ murder all those years before. Edward was finally able to get his revenge, but he didn’t stop at punishing those who had been directly involved in Piers’ death. Instead, he and Hugh went on a years-long campaign to destroy anyone and everyone related to Piers’ killers. Lands and titles were taken and redistributed to Edward’s supporters (especially Hugh), possessions were confiscated, widows and children were imprisoned.

EDWARD: I don’t know who it was that said that the best revenge is living well

EDWARD: but they were wrong

EDWARD: the best revenge is the kind that lines your pockets and makes children cry

EDWARD: THERE, I SAID IT

What did Isabella think of all this? She’d publicly supported Edward throughout his war with the Marcher Lords, as well as helping run the country while he was out on campaigns, giving up a few of her strategically placed castles to aid in the fighting, and, of course, taking part in the ruse that Edward had used to start the war in the first place. Some contemporary chroniclers paint her as being shocked and distressed by the death of her uncle, the earl of Lancaster, but there had been so much enmity between the two of them over the years that it seems equally possible that she was unmoved. What we do know is that around this time there began to be obvious cracks in Edward and Isabella’s relationship, and in just a few years Isabella would blame Hugh for destroying her marriage.

In 1322, Edward launched yet another disastrous military campaign in Scotland. You might be wondering why I’m bothering to mention it — are these failures even noteworthy at this point? This man has two hobbies: toxic relationships and fucking up in Scotland. But this particular failure involved an event that — for Isabella, at least — was a true crossroads. At some point during the conflict, while the queen was staying at Tynemouth Priory, she was in danger of being captured by the Scots and had to flee through pirate-infested waters. It was a calamitous and possibly even deadly escape; one chronicler alleges that a lady-in-waiting died and another went into preterm labor, though these claims can’t be verified. What is certain is that Isabella felt abandoned by her husband, and she said that Hugh had “falsely and treacherously” counseled Edward “to leave my lady the queen in peril of her person.”

After that, Isabella kind of disappeared from the public record for a while. In late 1322, Edward said that she was going on a pilgrimage to “diverse places within the realm,” but it’s not clear if that’s true. It’s equally possible that Edward sent her away to cool off, or that the queen had finally peaced out of her own accord. If I thought my husband had abandoned me to the Scots and/or a dangerous sea voyage, I would probably leave too!

Things continued to go badly for Edward, or, rather, Edward continued to cause things to go badly for himself. In 1323, Isabella’s brother Charles, now the king of France, insisted that Edward come and pay homage for lands that England held in France. Edward was pissed because the French had slowly been encroaching on these lands, so he politely told Charles to go fuck himself. Charles even more politely told Edward that he was free to go fuck his own self, and a small war ensued.

On September 18, 1324, Edward seized Isabella’s lands in Cornwall under the pretext that they were vulnerable to French invasion and thus he had to … protect them I guess? That was already his job as king of the whole country, but that’s fine. He also seized the rest of her lands and castles, even though the majority of them weren’t on the coast. In lieu of her income from these properties, which was what paid for all her household expenses, Edward granted her an allowance. He also removed all the French attendants from the queen’s household (except for her chaplain) and either imprisoned them or forced them to return to France. According to some chroniclers, Edward even appointed Hugh Despenser’s wife as some kind of guardian for Isabella, meant to surveil her communication with her family. All of this was intended to be cruel and humiliating to the queen, and she was sure that Hugh was behind it.

ISABELLA: but then in March of 1325, my husband sent me to France

ISABELLA: to work out some kind of peace with my brother

ISABELLA: kind of a weird move, considering

ISABELLA: I wish I could be pithy and say, “this was his first mistake”

ISABELLA: but, let’s be real, this was more like his one millionth mistake

Six months later, Edward made another enormous blunder: He sent his eldest son, the 12-year-old Edward of Windsor, to join Isabella in France. Although a tentative peace had been reached, England still had to pay those pesky homages for their French lands. Edward should have gone himself, but he knew how unpopular his little regime was and he was worried that someone would assassinate Hugh in his absence (he was especially anxious because a magician named John of Nottingham had recently tried to kill them with magic). The king might have brought his favorite along with him to France, except that Hugh had been banished from that country. So instead, Edward decided to throw his son into the snake pit and hope for the best.

By the end of 1325, it was clear to everyone that Isabella was not returning to England and neither was her son. She didn’t mince words about it either, declaring publicly that “… someone has come between my husband and myself […] and I will not return until this intruder is removed.” What’s less clear is whether or not she was already formulating a plan to invade England and get her husband off the throne.

At some point during Isabella’s time in France, a man named Roger Mortimer entered the picture. He was one of the Marcher Lords, and, though Edward had tried to imprison him, he had somehow managed to escape and flee to the continent. Much has been speculated about Mortimer’s relationship with Isabella, some of it based in fact, but most of it not. For example, the rumors that the two of them had been secretly in love for years, or that Isabella had somehow helped him escape from jail were highly improbable. Same with the popular narrative that Isabella found Edward too effeminate and thus sought gratification in Mortimer’s virile arms — not only is this wildly homophobic, there’s also just no evidence that Isabella was unhappy with her husband before Hugh came onto the scene. These bits of fabrication might provide people with satisfying story arcs — that Isabella and Mortimer had a secret years-long affair right under Edward’s nose, or that the queen was enacting some kind of revenge against her husband by taking her own lover — but real life is rarely that tidy. But whether or not Isabella and Mortimer were sleeping together (and there’s no conclusive evidence that they were), they formed a powerful political alliance.

Edward begged Isabella to come back. He begged her to send their son back. Eventually the pope got involved, writing separately to both Edward and Isabella to try to get them to reconcile. The pope even wrote to Hugh, telling him to back off. Isabella stuck to her guns and said she wouldn’t budge as long as Hugh was in England, adding that she feared he would kill her if she returned. But getting rid of Hugh was the one thing Edward couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do.

POPE JOHN XXII: have you ever watched someone absolutely run their life into the ground for a bad relationship?

POPE JOHN XXII: and you ask them why they’re doing it and they don’t have a real answer?

POPE JOHN XXII: they’ll be like, ‘I know it’s bad, but …’

POPE JOHN XXII: then they just keep doing it?

POPE JOHN XXII: anyway, this was like that, except he was running an entire country into the ground

POPE JOHN XXII: sometimes a person’s choices are just so astonishingly bad that you almost have to admire them

Mortimer wasn’t the only English lord hiding out in France, and soon enough the queen had amassed quite a following. Isabella began planning her invasion, but there was one very obvious sticking point: She was broke. Edward had, of course, cut her off long ago, and without her lands in England, she had no source of income. But the resourceful queen figured out a way around this: She brokered a betrothal between her son and Philippa of Hainault, the daughter of a wealthy Dutch count. Isabella was able to fund a mercenary army with the aid of Philippa’s substantial dowry. On September 7th, 1326, she set off to conquer her own country.

Isabella and her army landed in England just over two weeks later, and didn’t face much resistance as they began zigzagging across the country. Edward had made many enemies in high places, and even the general population was pretty sick of his shit by this time. The king, sensing that things would not go his way, fled London for Wales, at which point the capital descended into chaos. Isabella and Mortimer, meanwhile, were hell-bent on vengeance. When they caught Hugh’s father, another crony of Edward’s, they hanged the elder Despenser and then fed his body to a pack of dogs. Then, on November 16th, 1326, Edward and Hugh were captured in south Wales. The jig was up.

Isabella and her allies gave Hugh a mock trial during which a long, long list of his crimes was read out. He was found guilty on all charges, of course, and sentenced to a brutal execution that involved a dragging through the streets by four horses, being hauled up and down by a noose around his neck, having his penis and testicles cut off, and then being eviscerated. His head was taken to London, where it was displayed on London Bridge, and the rest of his body was dismembered and sent to the four quarters of the realm. That’s what we call hanging, drawing, and quartering, baby!

Edward, now a broken man, was moved to Kenilworth Castle under heavy guard. Isabella, meanwhile, installed herself in Wallingford for the Christmas season. The pope wrote to her several times encouraging her to reunite with her husband, but that wasn’t happening. Invading your spouse’s country and horribly murdering his favorite and a bunch of his friends seems like an obvious relationship deal-breaker.

When Parliament met in early January of 1327, they agreed to depose Edward and crown his 14-year-old son. Isabella would act as regent until Edward III came of age. A deputation was sent to Kenilworth, where a swooning Edward II, dressed all in black, agreed to abdicate the throne and begged his subjects’ forgiveness. What else was he going to do? He was smart (or defeated) enough to know that there was nothing to be gained from fighting back. His enemies had won. All he could do now was try to make sure his eldest son was given his proper inheritance.

Isabella kept up a friendly correspondence with her estranged husband, in spite of the fact that she had just destroyed his life. She wrote to him enquiring after his health, sent him little presents, and said that she wished she could visit him but the “community of the realm” wouldn’t permit it. In fact, Isabella would never see Edward again. On September 21st, 1327, Edward died under mysterious circumstances at Berkeley Castle, where he’d been sent after a foiled plot to free him from Kenilworth.

ISABELLA: people thought that I had him killed, of course

ISABELLA: you’ve probably heard some of the rumors

ISABELLA: like the one about him dying from a burning poker up his …

ISABELLA: you know what, I’m not going to repeat it

ISABELLA: suffice to say that it was as ridiculous as it was disgusting

But these weren’t the only rumors. There were others that said that Edward hadn’t died at all, but had, in fact, escaped, and the body that lay in state for a whole month at St. Peter’s Abbey in Gloucester belonged to someone else entirely. There continued to be sightings of the dead king for years. One man even wrote to Edward III in the late 1330s, saying that his father was living in a hermitage in Italy.

It would be nice if this story ended with Isabella competently running the country until Edward III came of age, a satisfying conclusion after all that she’d gone through to wrest the country out of Hugh Despenser’s grip. But, again, real-life narratives are rarely so convenient or tidy. What actually happened was that during her handful of years as regent, the queen emptied the country’s coffers and enriched Mortimer with lands and goods much in the same way her husband had with Hugh. Much like Edward’s relationship with Hugh, it’s hard to figure out what it was about Mortimer that led Isabella to neglect her country so badly. Did she love him? Was she in on the take? Was there some kind of extortion going on? Had she ever really wanted to save England from her husband and Hugh, or had it all just been petty revenge?

Speaking of revenge, by late 1329 or early 1330, the 17-year-old Edward III was already fomenting his own rebellion. He was tired of his mother’s controlling ways, and felt that she behaved badly toward Philippa, who was now his wife. As for Mortimer, he had started behaving as if he was king, and undermined Edward III at every turn. The final straw for the young king was when Mortimer ordered the execution of his father’s half brother Edmund. With Mortimer picking off everyone who stood between him and royal power, Edward III must have wondered if he was next.

On Friday, October 19th, Isabella was relaxing with Mortimer in her bedchamber at Nottingham Castle when Edward III and a small group of knights burst in. Mortimer was quickly taken prisoner, while Isabella was placed under guard (as her favorite was being dragged, bound and gagged, out of the room, Isabella allegedly cried out, “Fair son, have pity on the gentle Mortimer”). Just over a month later Mortimer (still bound and gagged) was convicted by Parliament of the murder of Edward II and sentenced to death. He was hanged on November 29th. Though his trial and death bore eerie parallels to that of Hugh Despenser, Mortimer was at least spared the whole castration/disembowelment/beheading thing.

Isabella, who was only 35 years old at the time of her downfall, was held under house arrest for two years and then retired to lead a country life. Once the restrictions on her freedom were lifted, she enjoyed traveling around the country, hosting visitors, and doting on her grandchildren. The wayward queen who had once rebelled against her husband and invaded her own country died a quiet death at the age of 63, an apparently contented woman.

In the years after Isabella’s death, popular depictions of her grew increasingly dire. She was portrayed as an unnatural woman, bloodthirsty, out to emasculate all the men around her. When an 18th-century poet combined Christopher Marlowe’s unflattering portrayal of Isabella with the term She-Wolf, which Shakespeare had used to refer to Margaret of Anjou in Henry VI, the nickname stuck. Her image became a two-dimensional caricature of sex-crazed bitch, instead of the complicated person she’d actually been.

It’s impossible now to know why, exactly, Edward and Isabella behaved the way they did. How could Edward not see how harmful his relationships with his favorites, particularly Hugh Despenser, were to the rest of his life? How could Isabella repeat a pattern of behavior that she had so loathed in her husband? How could two people who seemed so fond of each other for most of their marriage treat each other with such cruelty? And yet they did, and on a national stage to boot.

And while it’s tempting to slip into a WOW, WHAT A BADASS WARRIOR QUEEN, GET IT GIRL kind of rhetoric when talking about women like Isabella, what makes stories like hers endure is the fact that beneath all the superlatives is someone who’s profoundly human. Isabella was messy in her personal life. She made bad choices, choices that sometimes irrevocably harmed relationships with people she cared about. She could be selfish and capricious. She could be downright cruel. But she was also brave, resourceful, and, in her own strange way, loyal to a fault.

For all that there is to criticize about Isabella, there’s so much to admire as well. She strategized, launched, and completed a successful military campaign against all odds. With the backing of a relatively small band of soldiers, she managed to take an entire country. And maybe most impressive of all, she believed that she had worth in a world that mostly considered women to be worthless. A meeker queen would have been cowed by Hugh and stood helplessly by while her husband took away her lands and rights, but not the She-Wolf of France.

LONG LIVE THE FUCKING QUEEN!

For further reading:

• Kathryn Warner’s Isabella of France
• Alison Weir’s Isabella
• Helen Castor’s She-Wolves

* * *

Previously:

• Queens of Infamy: Boudicca
• Queens of Infamy: Lucrezia Borgia
• Queens of Infamy: Mariamne I
• Queens of Infamy: Njinga
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
• Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
• Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
• Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
• Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based writer whose bylines can be found all over the internet, including at the Guardian, the London Review of Books and, obviously, Longreads. She truly believes that your favourite Tudor wife says more about you than your astrological sign. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. You can find her on Twitter @anne_theriault.

* * *

Editor: Krista Stevens
Copy editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Fact Checker: Lisa Whittington-Hill
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 156667 https://longreads.com/2021/05/12/queens-of-infamy-boudicca/ Wed, 12 May 2021 10:00:25 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=149093 If you underestimate a woman determined to avenge violence against her daughters, prepare yourself to get sacked. On repeat. ]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | May 2021 | 18 minutes (4,866 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on world-historical women of centuries past.

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***

She was tall — terrifyingly large, in fact. Her tawny hair fell in a “great mass” to her hips. She was dressed in a colorful tunic and cloak, her outfit completed by a giant fuck-off gold torc. Her voice was harsh, unfeminine. She had spent the last weeks murdering and maiming her way across the British countryside, and now she led a force of hundreds of thousands of Britons in a standoff against the occupying Romans. She had a rabbit hidden in her skirt for occult purposes. She was a bloodthirsty barbarian, devoted to a ghoulish religion, out to destroy the social order of the known world. At least, this is how historian Cassius Dio described Boudicca, a British tribal queen, over one hundred years after her death — every civilized man’s worst nightmare.

But before we dive into the revolt that literally burned London to the ground, we need some context. The Romans had first cast their eyes toward Britain back in the good old days before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and got himself murdered. Caesar, who had been conquesting his way through Gaul for a few years, decided to take a break in 55 BC and invade Britain as a little treat, although “invasion” is probably a stretch since he didn’t do much more than visit Kent and then turn back. But it must have been a fun caper, because he returned the next year, this time managing to cross the Thames and score a few victories against the Britons. After that Caesar had to put a pin in it due to other pressing business; he had a republic to bring down, after all, and a back that needed stabbing. In the chaos that ensued, Rome more or less ignored Britain for the next hundred years until the Emperor Claudius decided to invade again in 43 AD.

Boudicca appears in the narrative about 17 years after Claudius’ invasion. Her husband, Prasutagus, was the ruler of the Iceni, a British tribe whose territory included modern-day Norfolk and parts of Suffolk. The historian Tacitus, who gives us a near-contemporary account of Boudicca’s uprising, wrote that she was of royal blood, but beyond that we don’t know much about her. Did she come from Iceni nobility or was she a princess from another tribe who had married Prasutagus as part of an alliance? Was Boudicca her given name, or since it’s believed to come from a Proto-Celtic root word meaning victory, was it a title she adopted? We don’t even know how old she was in 60 AD — she had two daughters by Prasutagus who were probably in their tweens or early teens, and if those were her first and only children, she could have been as young as 30. Then again, if there had been other children who had died or if, for some reason, she’d married later or hadn’t been able to conceive right away, she could have been in her 40s or even 50s. All we know about her life are the scraps that Tacitus and Dio left us, and those are the highly biased Roman accounts describing an enemy they considered to be primitive and sub-human.

BOUDICCA: I mean, the Romans barely consider their own women to be people

BOUDICCA: even the ones they allegedly like

BOUDICCA: you know, the ones who’ve mastered the skills of shutting up and spinning wool

BOUDICCA: neither of which are exactly my forte

The Iceni had allied themselves with Rome and been allowed to live fairly autonomously with Prasutagus as their client king in the standard Roman model. They were apparently quite wealthy and prosperous, even as neighboring regions were gutted by invading forces. As long as the Iceni kept bootlicking paying their taxes, everything was going to be fine. Or at least that’s what they believed right up until Prasutagus died and all hell broke loose.

BOUDICCA: my husband had a will, as all responsible adults should

BOUDICCA: if you don’t have one yet, close this tab and go make one right now!

BOUDICCA: anyway, he split his assets between our daughters and the Emperor Nero

BOUDICCA: the Romans, being always fair and just, honored that agreement

BOUDICCA: oh my god, I’m sorry, I can’t even say that with a straight face

BOUDICCA: of course they didn’t honor it

BOUDICCA: but seriously, you need a will if you don’t have one already

The fact that Boudicca was not named as one of Prasutagus’ heirs, even though she was his wife and the mother of his children and was going to rule as regent until they came of age, might be a clue as to what kind of person she was. Some historians speculate that she might have had strong anti-Roman sentiments even before shit went sideways — that perhaps her family of origin may have been involved in some of the earlier revolts against the Empire. Maybe Prasutagus had strategically left her out of his will as a way of reassuring Rome that he was on their side. After all, nothing was guaranteed to stir up ire like naming a possible insurrectionist as your successor. But, as it turned out, the Romans’ ire was going to be stirred no matter what. Prasutagus’ death was the perfect opportunity for a land grab, and the Romans were going to use whatever excuse they could to make it look legitimate.

All we know about her life are the scraps that Tacitus and Dio left us, and those are the highly biased Roman accounts describing an enemy they considered to be primitive and sub-human.

The Romans claimed that Prasutagus’ agreement with the Emperor Claudius was now null and void as both parties were dead. Since there existed no contract between Boudicca and Claudius’ successor, Nero (yes, that Nero), they were under no obligation to honor Prasutagus’ will. When Boudicca pushed back, the Romans turned violent. Their army plundered Prasutagus’ lands and enslaved various members of his family. They stripped the most powerful Iceni men of their land and possessions. Worst of all, they publicly flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. This last act was not only meant to terrorize the girls both physically and psychologically, but, from a Roman perspective, the soldiers were also marking them as damaged goods. One of the foundational myths of Rome involves a noblewoman killing herself to escape the perceived dishonour of having been raped — that was the only way she could restore her lost virtue. The assault on Boudicca’s unnamed daughters was a way to harm not only their present but also their future prospects as wives, mothers, or even just respectable women. And considering that the girls were the heirs of the King of the Iceni, it may even be seen as an attempt to curtail the future of the tribe itself.

BOUDICCA: I guess they thought they could break me

BOUDICCA: beat me into submission, that kind of thing

BOUDICCA: they weren’t used to women who fight back

BOUDICCA: or women who fight at all, full stop

BOUDICCA: which is why they failed to notice or care when I started rallying my own troops

BOUDICCA: told my daughters to get in the chariot, because we are going to burn this fucker DOWN

PASSING ROMAN SOLDIER: awww, it’s cute that a little lady thinks she has troops!

BOUDICCA: you see what I mean

Part of the reason the Romans were less than attentive to Boudicca’s casual fomenting was that they were distracted by a different British problem. Suetonius, the governor of Britannia, was tired of the turbulent British priests — the Druids — and decided to stamp them out. His official reasons? The Druids were sheltering anti-Roman political refugees on the Isle of Mona (modern-day Anglesey) and it was alleged they practiced human sacrifice. It’s honestly kind of rich that the Romans — who had only stopped ritually sacrificing people about 150 years before and who loved to, you know, watch gladiators fight each other to the death — were so hung up on the sanctity of life or whatever, but people can rationalize anything. Anyway, the real reason that Suetonius and his peers wanted to take out the Druids was because they held an uncomfortable sway over the British population and refused to be assimilated. Basically, the Romans were worried that they would stir up rebellion, and also they just found them kind of spooky.

Worst of all, they publicly flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters. This last act was not only meant to terrorize the girls both physically and psychologically, but, from a Roman perspective, the soldiers were also marking them as damaged goods.

When Suetonius and his men arrived at Mona, they could see the Druids raising their arms and chanting, while a bunch of messy-haired women in black swung burning sticks around. Tacitus would later compare these women to the Furies, which might explain why the Roman soldiers were so uncharacteristically unnerved.

SUETONIUS: it was just, you know, so uncivilized

SUETONIUS: I had to … god, this is embarrassing

SUETONIUS: I had to remind my men that women aren’t worth being afraid of

SUETONIUS: anyway, we pulverized their sacred groves

SUETONIUS: we pulverized them GOOD

SUETONIUS: Druids delenda est and all that

It’s hard to overstate the level of desecration at Mona. It wasn’t just that the island was an important place of worship; in the belief system of the Celtic Britons, every river, every lake, every grove had its own individual god. By destroying the groves, the Romans quite literally killed British gods. The tribes were already primed for revolt, and as the news about Mona reached them, it must have added fuel to their fire.

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Another result of Suetonius’ decision to take on the Druids at Mona — which was on the opposite side of Britain from the Iceni territory — was that the Roman governor was conveniently out of the way when Boudicca and the Iceni set off on their tear.

Boudicca found an ally in another local tribe, the Trinovantes. Like the Iceni, the Trinovantes had an axe to grind with the Romans, namely the colonia they had established in Camulodunum (modern-day Colchester), and the rebels chose that as their first target. But before we go deeper into that story, we need to take a brief detour.

One of the Empire’s grifts was that legionaries who fulfilled their enlistment terms received a small parcel of land. So if you were an enlisted nobody from a poor family, you could pull yourself up in the world by serving the required 25 years and getting your own land grant (assuming you lived that long; plenty of legionaries didn’t). The problem, of course, was that land is a finite resource, and these land grants typically stayed in families for generations. This meant that to fulfill their promise to their veterans, the Empire had to keep expanding outward into the ether, annexing more and more territory. Of course, the Emperors had their own reasons for wanting to broaden the Empire’s boundaries! But a side benefit to all that growth was that it meant more available land for veterans — once they’d cleared out those pesky native inhabitants, of course.

Anyway, back in the pre-Roman times, Camulodunum had been one of the most important settlements in Britain, serving at one point as the capital of the Trinovantes tribe. Naturally the Romans thought it would be the perfect spot for them to settle down. In doing so, not only did the Romans drive the Britons out, but archeological evidence shows that they forced the displaced people to live and work in brutal conditions while re-building the town to Roman specifications. According to Tacitus, the soldiers posted encouraged this abuse of the Britons, even though it went against Roman policy (this was, after all, supposed to be a peaceful settlement, not a battlefield); he noted that those soldiers saw their future selves in the retired veterans and hoped they too would be allowed to treat native populations however the fuck they wanted someday.

BOUDICCA: you can’t spell colonialism without colonia!

BOUDICCA: yes, I know that’s the point

BOUDICCA: I understand how language fundamentally works

BOUDICCA: root words, et cetera

BOUDICCA: but since my husband’s death I’ve had to take up the mantle of dad jokes in our family

As Boudicca travelled across the country, her following grew. Those joining her cause weren’t just warrior-type men from the Iceni and the Trinovantes, they were people of all genders and ages. Farmers abandoned their fields and women loaded their children into carts to join the throng. With every British settlement they passed, the mass of people bearing down on Camulodunum increased in size; according to Dio, by the time they reached the city, they were 120,000 strong. The Britons were done hedging their bets — they were either going to solve the Roman problem once and for all, or they were going to go down in a blaze of glory.

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Meanwhile, in Camulodunum, strange things were happening. A statue of Victory fell over, apparently for no reason. Women went into a frenzy, speaking in tongues and making frightening prophecies. South of the city, at the Thames Estuary, people saw visions of drowned houses in the water and the North Sea seemed to turn the color of blood. But even with all these portents and the news of Boudicca’s approach, the leaders told the townspeople not to worry. It was just a rag-tag group of women, after all — and not just any women, but primitive, uncivilized British women. No big deal. There was time to evacuate, but why bother? The procurator of Roman Britain, Catus Decianus, ordered an extra two hundred men to Camulodunum and figured the problem was solved.

BOUDICCA: obviously misogyny sucks

BOUDICCA: and no one likes to be underestimated

BOUDICCA: but sometimes that kind discrimination is a gift

BOUDICCA: a gift called the element of surprise even though they saw you coming

Boudicca’s army did not just attack Camulodunum, they razed it. They slaughtered every Roman they could find, even children and the elderly. They defaced graveyards and set buildings ablaze. The head of a statue of Emperor Claudius was crudely hacked off and thrown in a river. Some townspeople barricaded themselves in a temple, but even that couldn’t save them — after two days’ siege, the Britons stormed it and killed everyone inside. The destruction was so intense and so fiery that the layer of soil from that period is a strange orange-red.

BOUDICCA: some people use the term “scorched earth” metaphorically

BOUDICCA: but I’d say I’m more of a literalist

BOUDICCA: some women just want to watch the Roman world burn, I guess

BOUDICCA: again, not in a figurative sense

One curious thing about Boudicca’s sacking of Camulodunum is that it seems to have left no bodies behind. There’s plenty of archeological evidence to show that the city was gutted, but there are no mass graves or deposits of human remains, even though everyone agrees that the Queen of the Iceni authorized wanton mass-murder. Some historians theorize that the Romans later came back and cremated the dead, while some wonder if the high death toll was a bit of exaggeration. Still others have suggested that Boudicca and her people removed the bodies to a nearby oak grove for darker purposes, perhaps some kind of religious rite to Andraste, a local goddess of victory. While Celts of all stripes did enjoy dismembering those they had conquered in battle — they would apparently embalm their heads and put them on display in their homes as trophies — this last theory is probably a little too far-fetched to be true. Then again, given some of the allegations Dio would later make against Boudicca, maybe not.

The destruction was so intense and so fiery that the layer of soil from that period is a strange orange-red.

After Camulodunum, Boudicca turned her gaze toward Londinium. Although it wasn’t a particularly big or important city, Londinium made sense as her next target because, unlike many of the other towns in Roman Britain, Londinium had likely never been a British settlement — it was a Roman enterprise, a trade outpost whose location was chosen because the river there was narrow enough for a bridge but deep enough to accommodate Roman seagoing vessels. By the time Boudicca went on her tear, the young city had already become a bustling centre of commerce, with goods from such distant locations as Spain, Greece, and Syria later uncovered in archeological digs. To strike at Londinium would, in Boudicca’s mind, have been like striking at the heart of the Roman occupation itself.

The Romans had, of course, by now figured out that this was more than a throw-two-hundred-men-at-it-and-call-it-a-day kind of problem. The IXth legion (or, at least, part of it) was dispatched to deal with the unpleasantness at Camulodunum, but they were routed by Britons just north of the colonia. Meanwhile, Suetonius himself, having finished butchering those old harpies on Mona, rushed to Londinium. He somehow made it there before Boudicca, even though he had to cross the breadth of the country and the Britons only had to saunter down the coast. That’s one of the benefits of travelling without children, I guess!

Suetonius had, at least according to Tacitus, initially hoped Londinium could be used as a military stronghold against the Britons. He quickly realized that Londinium was not fortified and was in no way capable of withstanding the type of attack that Camulodunum had suffered. He immediately abandoned the city to its fate.

SUETONIUS: look, I’m a real-talk kind of guy

SUETONIUS: I tell hard truths, and some people think that makes me an asshole

SUETONIUS: but I think it just makes me honest

SUETONIUS: so I honestly told them they were honestly fucked

SUETONIUS: I’m not a magician, I can’t make defences appear from nowhere!

SUETONIUS: so I told them I was going to make a last stand somewhere else

SUETONIUS: and I invited all the able-bodied men to join me

SUETONIUS: which I feel was very generous

It’s not known how many people took Suetonius up on his offer; it’s not even known how large the population of Londinium was at the time, although some estimates place it around 30,000. The residents there were Suetonius’ own people, they were Romans, they were the ones he was supposed to be protecting. But what are a few civilians — women, children, the elderly or disabled — worth when it comes to protecting the Empire? Not much, as it turned out.

Boudicca did to Londinium what she’d done in Camulodunum, but worse. Her brief presence there is also marked by a red layer of soil, about 13 feet below the surface. It’s full of smashed treasures, ruined food stuffs, and debris from the cataclysmic fires that swept through Londinium, which archeological evidence shows burned in excess of 1,000 degrees Celcius. The Britons continued to show no mercy, and slaughtered everyone they could find, sometimes in exquisitely cruel ways.

Boudicca did to Londinium what she’d done in Camulodunum, but worse. Her brief presence there is also marked by a red layer of soil, about 13 feet below the surface.

After Londinium, Boudicca and her forces descended on the settlement of Verulamium, which might seem like a curious choice, since it was neither a settlement full of veterans like Camulodunum or a Roman merchant town like Londinium. In fact, it was a town populated by Britons — specifically, Britons who were friendly to the Roman cause. Although Verulamium suffered the same fiery fate as the two cities that had been sacked before it, excavations of the red layer there show far less debris from personal possessions, which suggests that the inhabitants had time to gather up what was precious to them and flee. Still, according to Tacitus, Boudicca’s tear across the country had left 70,000 dead (although, again, many modern historians agree this figure is likely inflated).

The Britons didn’t just kill citizens of the cities they razed — according to Dio, they often tortured them first. The Roman historian vividly describes the gruesome acts the Britons were alleged to have committed: stripping the “noblest and most distinguished women” naked, cutting off their breasts and sewing them into their mouths, then “impal[ing] the women on sharp skewers run lengthwise through the entire body.”

Was this another Roman hyperbole meant to paint the Britons in a savage light, or is there some truth to it? Again, dismemberment or disfigurement of enemies was not outside the realm of Celtic practices. If it is true, Boudicca might have found a certain poetic justice in the act of defiling Roman women’s bodies after the violence their men had inflicted on her and her daughters. Sure, these Roman women were innocent civilians, but to the Britons they were still the enemy — interlopers, invaders, colonizers. Hadn’t the British tribes been pushed off their own lands, defrauded, and even killed so that these women could live in peace? A passive beneficiary to violence is still, in some ways, an abettor of it.

The red layer of soil in present-day London has the same curious problem as that in Camulodunum, namely that it isn’t filled with human remains. According to Dio, the Britons followed up each round of sacking with visits to groves dedicated to Andraste and other “sacred places.” There, they held sacrifices and banquets and indulged in “wanton behavior.” It’s possible that the events he’s describing — if they happened at all — were little more than boozy victory celebrations, distorted to fit Dio’s agenda. At this point, who knows? What does seem clear is that Boudicca’s spiritual beliefs seemed just as fervent and uncanny to the Romans as those of the Druids on Mona.

Speaking of the Romans, what were they up to while Boudicca was slashing and burning her way across the country? They were making plans, of course. The Britons had numbers on their side — Dio writes that by the time of the final battle, Boudicca’s army had swollen to 230,000 strong. The Romans only had a tiny fraction of that, but they had the benefit of intensive training and organization, something their enemy sorely lacked.

In fact, the Britons’ whole escapade was a bit haphazard from beginning to end. They seemed more interested in killing and plundering than they were in actually engaging the Roman forces. They’d missed several key chances to attack Suetonius while he was travelling to and from London. Why hadn’t they set an ambush for him the way they had for the IXth Legion back at Camulodunum? Maybe, drunk on their successes (and, no doubt, actual alcohol), they believed themselves to be invincible, or maybe they genuinely didn’t realize that the absolute worst thing they could do was give the Romans more time. Maybe they just thought their uprising was just too big to fail. Whatever their reasoning, it’s possible that victory may have been within the Britons’ grasp and they fucked it up.

No one is quite sure where the final battle took place, although many historians think it was somewhere in the West Midlands. According to Tacitus, Suetonius chose a spot with a forest on one side and open fields on the other, and then positioned his troops so that they weren’t vulnerable to British ambushes. Tacitus also tells us that Suetonius had 10,000 men with him, which means that even if there were only half as many Britons as Dio says, their forces were still more than ten times bigger than that of the Romans. As the two sides arranged themselves on the field, more than one Roman soldier must have wondered if this was going to be a battle or a bloodbath.

Both Tacitus and Dio have Boudicca addressing her troops before the battle; this is where Dio’s description of her as a large, be-necklaced woman with a bossy voice comes from. He has her finish the speech by calling out an invocation to Andraste and then releasing a hare from underneath her skirts (the direction it ran was supposed to predict who would win the battle). In Tacitus’ version, she speaks from her chariot, riding up and down her lines with her daughters on either side of her, telling those assembled that “it was indeed usual for Britons to fight under the leadership of women.” Both versions of the speech give off a noble savage sort of vibe: together, the Britons would throw off the shackles of Rome! Their ways were superior and more natural than those of their invaders! It would be better to follow the ways of their ancestors in impoverished freedom than to live as slaves with Roman wealth! Of course, there’s almost no chance that either of these speeches could be accurate — Boudicca would not have been speaking Latin to her people, and the Romans who were present would not have understood the British language. The words that Dio and Tacitus put in Boudicca’s mouth say more about them and how they wanted to portray the Britons than they do about anything else.

BOUDICCA: I mean, my people don’t need me to explain to them that we don’t mind women leaders

BOUDICCA: especially not when I’m literally in front of them?

BOUDICCA: but I guess Tacitus’ audience needed to hear it

BOUDICCA: at least he didn’t say my voice was ugly, unlike some historians I could name

The battle was an absolute shitshow for the Britons. They might have been numerous, but they weren’t seasoned warriors like their opponents — don’t forget that Boudicca’s following was largely made up of random men, women, and children who had joined her ranks as she marched across the country. They were far more likely to be farmers than trained soldiers, and they lacked the weaponry and armour of the Romans. Not only that, but the Britons had stationed their wagons — packed with their animals and children — in a ring around the back of the battlefield, which meant that when the Romans started pushing forward, the Britons were effectively trapped by their own people. And push forward the Romans did, killing everything in their path — even the women and “beasts of burden,” according to Tacitus. He also reported that 80,000 Britons died, as compared to only 400 Romans.

The words that Dio and Tacitus put in Boudicca’s mouth say more about them and how they wanted to portray the Britons than they do about anything else.

Boudicca died too, although not in battle; Tacitus says she drank poison, while Dio merely tells us that she “fell sick and died.” It’s possible that the Romans had her killed — Tacitus never specifies exactly who administered the poison — but that wouldn’t have been their style. They were more a “dress our conquered enemies up in golden chains and publicly humiliate them in the streets of Rome” type of people. Then again, it’s possible that Suetonius knew that parading a defeated Boudicca around might not have the effect he hoped for. There would have been little glory in having bested a woman on the battlefield, and in showing off Boudicca to a home audience, there was a good chance that he was the one who would have been humiliated. What kind of man nearly has his territory wrested from him by a lady, and a barbarian to boot? This is why the size of the British horde had to be exaggerated, why Dio had to go out of his way to describe Boudicca as large and hyper-masculine — to have struggled so hard against a smaller number of backwoods savages led by a woman would have been emasculating in the extreme. That being said, suicide is the more likely option. Boudicca had seen first-hand what the Romans did to British women who disagreed with them. Like Cleopatra before her and, possibly, Zenobia after her, she might have felt that self-inflicted death was the least painful course of action.

What kind of man nearly has his territory wrested from him by a lady, and a barbarian to boot?

What about her daughters, the two girls who helped spark the rebellion? Neither Dio nor Tacitus says what happened to them, so we can only speculate. Maybe they died in the battle. Maybe Boudicca slipped them a dose of poison. Maybe the Romans captured them. Maybe they escaped, went into hiding, lived out the rest of their lives as farmer’s wives who, on cold nights, would spin tales for their children about watching Londinium burn.

It’s frustrating that so little concrete information about Boudicca exists, not just because it would be satisfying to fill the gaps in her story, but because the existing records reduce her to this one, brief period in her life. What was her life like back before she entered recorded history as a bloodthirsty warrior queen? I try to imagine her in quiet moments of bliss — on her wedding night, or touching her daughters’ hair as they sleep, or hurtling alone in a chariot down a track. I hope that even in her last days she had times when she felt happy, or at least powerful. I hope she enjoyed every second of those debauched victory feasts.

There is no record of where Boudicca was buried. Several theories have sprung up over the years, including one that says her remains are somewhere under Platform 8 at King’s Cross Station. English writer Jane Holland published a collection of poems called Boudicca & Co. in 2006, the final poem closes with the lines “The end/was confused. Some screaming, vomit./It hurt, I know that much./Nothing else. Just good British dirt/and closing my mouth on it.”

This is how I like to imagine Boudicca: somewhere deep in the rich, dark, earth, nothing but nourishment now. She is reborn again and again, in the stories that we tell, in the fires in our bellies, in every fight against injustice, even the ones that feel unwinnable. She is the opposite of those dead red layers of earth that mark her passing. She is nothing but life now.

LONG LIVE THE FUCKING QUEEN

* * *

Previously:

• Queens of Infamy: Lucrezia Borgia
• Queens of Infamy: Mariamne I
• Queens of Infamy: Njinga
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
• Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
• Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
• Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
• Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based writer whose bylines can be found all over the internet, including at the Guardian, the London Review of Books and, obviously, Longreads. She truly believes that your favourite Tudor wife says more about you than your astrological sign. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. You can find her on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Krista Stevens Fact Checker: Julie Schwietert Collazo Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 149093 https://longreads.com/2020/05/28/queens-of-infamy-lucrezia-borgia/ Thu, 28 May 2020 10:00:52 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=141204 History may have pigeonholed her as Renaissance Italy's most notorious seductress, but it's high time we give the Duchess of Ferrara a closer look.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | May 2020 | 33 minutes (8,371 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on world-historical women of centuries past.

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* * *

Mention the Medieval period and people free-associate themselves right into visions of plague, violence, and shit-covered peasants. The term “Renaissance,” on the other hand, conjures up stuff like humanism, science, and paintings of people that actually look like people. But late 14th-, 15th-, and 16th-century Italy consisted of more than just painters with Ninja Turtle names wanking their way from one Tuscan villa to another; it was also full of intrigue, murder, and complex intergenerational family drama. If there was one family that featured heavily in some of the most violent and licentious stories of the period, it was the Borgias — even today their name is a by-word for depravity. And at the center of many of the wildest Borgia stories was the beautiful, wily, thrice-wed Lucrezia.

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People have called Lucrezia many things over the years: seductress, murderess, femme fatale of the Borgia cabal. The attributes assigned to her didn’t come out of nowhere; as we shall see — and as Lucrezia noted herself — many of the men around her came to unfortunate ends. In portrayals where she escapes the villainess role, she’s often made out to be another hapless aristocratic daughter traded off into various political marriages, someone with no agency or ambitions of her own. The reality, of course, is much more nuanced. While Lucrezia was indeed married off several times to further her family’s agenda, as an adult she proved herself to be a skilled ruler loved and respected by her subjects.

LUCREZIA: women! we contain multitudes

LUCREZIA: and not just in a constantly-pregnant, heir-providing way

LUCREZIA: although, let’s be real, I also did that at the same time I was doing everything else

LUCREZIA: among other things, women invented multitasking

The Borgias — Borja in the dynasty’s hometown, Valencia — had shown up on the Roman scene in the early 15th century with Cardinal Alfonso de Borgia’s promotion to Pope Callixtus III in 1455. His election didn’t mean that he was particularly popular; the elites of the Italian city-states were notoriously hateful towards outsiders in general, and specifically loathed the fact that Borgia came from a former Moorish kingdom with a large Jewish population. Callixtus was chosen as a compromise candidate in a conclave divided by two powerful Roman families, and since he was an elderly foreigner, both factions assumed that a) they could manipulate him, and b) he would die soon. Even though Callixtus was pretty chill as far as Renaissance popes go, apparently even managing to remain chaste, he and his family were always viewed with suspicion. The Borgia family would go on to produce several popes, but their contemporaries would constantly deploy xenophobic and anti-Semitic slurs against them. This almost certainly contributed to the clannishness for which the Borgias became notorious (although Callixtus didn’t help matters by bringing a large contingent of Spaniards to the Vatican, including his nephew Rodrigo).

After Callixtus’ death in 1458, the Italians swore up and down that they would never tolerate another foreign pope. “Never again” turned out to be less than 50 years, since in 1492 the College of Cardinals elected Rodrigo de Borgia to the church’s highest office. On August 26 of that year he rode through the lavishly decorated streets of Rome to claim the Throne of Saint Peter as Alexander VI.

The fact that the name Lucretia was so strongly associated with an icon of feminine chastity would be the cause for much hilarity during Lucrezia’s lifetime, since she was often anything but.

The first thing you need to know about Alexander is that women apparently found him extremely, irresistibly fuckable. “[He] moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet influences iron,” wrote a former tutor. He wasn’t the type to let a pesky vow of celibacy get in his way, and over the course of his lifetime, he fathered between eight and ten illegitimate children. His favorites — Giovanni, Cesare, and Lucrezia — were with a twice-married Italian woman named Vannozza Cattanei. She also had a fourth child, Gioffre, whom Alexander acknowledged as his own, although he had his doubts and never afforded him the same affection as the couple’s other three children (in fact, he accused her of cheating on him with her second husband, which is… a reach).

As with so many of the other infamous women that I’ve written about in this series, the details of Lucrezia’s early life are hazy. But unlike, say, Eleanor of Aquitaine or Anne Boleyn, we do know the date and place of Lucrezia’s birth: April 18, 1480, in the fortress of Subiaco just outside of Rome. Her father placed her in the care of his relative Adriana de Mila at a young age; while Vannozza was fine as a mistress, he didn’t trust her in the business of raising his children. She was named after the Ancient Roman noblewoman Lucretia, who was said to have killed herself after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last king of Rome. The fact that the name Lucretia was so strongly associated with an icon of feminine chastity would be the cause for much hilarity during Lucrezia’s lifetime, since she was often anything but.

* * *

Alexander was a loving and attentive father — a real Renaissance Daddy — and Lucrezia and her siblings were much, much closer to him than they were to Vannozza, who seemed content enough with the child-rearing arrangement and milked whatever money and social climbing she could from her position as mother of the Pope’s children. Although it might seem somewhat counterintuitive for the pope to have children — literal evidence of sins committed! — it was actually pretty common. Most popes preferred to help their offspring through back channels rather than publicly promote them, but Alexander was a man who couldn’t help flaunting what he had. Lucrezia was 12 when her father ascended to the papal throne, and at that point she came much more directly into the public eye.

Lucrezia was a beautiful young woman, although, as contemporaries kept feeling the need to point out, not quite as lovely as her father’s new mistress, Giulia. Describing Lucrezia in her early 20s, Niccolò Cagnalo of Parma wrote that she was “of middle height and graceful in form.” He went on to praise her long golden hair, well-cut nose, and “admirably proportioned” bust, concluding that she was always “gay and smiling” — if he had only added that she had quirkily ordered a burger for lunch but only eaten the side salad, his letter would have read like a Vanity Fair celebrity profile. Her bearing was also striking, and she was said to carry herself in such a way that she barely seemed to move even as she crossed a room. (Gliding around like a nimble ghost was a big thing for Renaissance women.)

The Borgias were a tightly-knit group (a bit too tight according to some of their frenemies). Feuds and shifting alliances were common for prominent Roman families, but when it came to the Borgias, it was them versus literally everyone else. They dealt with this isolation by surrounding themselves with their countrymen — the only people they felt they could trust — and by segregating themselves from everyone else, hosting private parties and speaking Valencian when they were together.

Feuds and shifting alliances were common for prominent Roman families, but when it came to the Borgias, it was them versus literally everyone else.

Like any loving father who also happens to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, Alexander had big plans for his kids. He made Giovanni the Duke of Gandía and promoted Cesare to the position of Bishop of Pamplona at the age of 15, grooming him for a life in the Church. He even managed to winkle a prestigious marriage for Gioffre: a young noblewoman named — wait for it — Sancia, pronounced san-chya (I see you, George R.R. Martin, flipping through the history of Europe like it’s a baby name book). When it came to Lucrezia, his plans were slightly more complicated. Her greatest value as a woman in Renaissance Italy lay in her ability to marry well, especially since her position as Vatican princess would last only as long as her father lived, but Alexander also recognized that she had talents that exceeded your basic snagging-a-rich-man-with-a-title needs.

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At the age of 12, Lucrezia was already on betrothal number three; her first engagement had fallen through, and her father ended her second engagement when he became Pope and her prospects improved. The third time was the charm, and her engagement to Giovanni Sforza, the illegitimate son of a count, managed to stick. They were married on June 12, 1493, Lucrezia having just celebrated her 13th birthday. The Sforzas had been powerful allies of Alexander and had helped him secure the papal throne, and so he wanted to reward them. But, unfortunately for Giovanni, it was not a union built to last.

ALEXANDER VI: I mean, I’m a pope who flagrantly has children

ALEXANDER VI: even Isabella of Castile told me to take it down a notch

ALEXANDER VI: obviously I have a, shall we say

ALEXANDER VI: less than traditional approach to the sanctity of marriage

Like everything else in her life, the collapse of Lucrezia’s first marriage was complex in both the political and personal arenas. But before we get to the juicy, a bit of backstory. Giovanni (Borgia, the brother, not Sforza, the husband), left Rome for Barcelona shortly after Lucrezia’s wedding, and Alexander made Cesare the Archbishop of Valencia. It’s not necessary to get into details here, but please know that the Borgia brothers were being fuckboys supreme while in Spain.

Meanwhile, back on the Italian peninsula, the King of Naples, Ferdinand I, died and the pope supported Ferdinand’s son Alfonso’s claim to the throne instead of the much more specious claim of King Charles VIII of France. This ticked off Lucrezia’s husband Giovanni, whose family — the Sforzas — were the traditional enemies of the royal family of Naples, and he politely asked Alexander what on earth he was thinking. The pope responded by telling him even more politely to fuck off. It was the beginning of the end of poor Giovanni’s relationship with the Borgias. History has left us plenty of information about what Giovanni and Alexander thought about this turn of events, but not much about how Lucrezia viewed it. Her behavior suggested that she felt humiliated by the public unraveling of her relationship, but she was too much under her father’s thrall to push back. After all, she’d been taught from the cradle that her duties to the Borgia family always came first.

Like any loving father who also happens to be the Vicar of Christ on earth, Alexander had big plans for his kids.

But, back to Charles VIII for now. He decided that if the pope wasn’t going to give him Naples, then he was going to take it, along with whatever else stood in his path. His army rapidly made their way through the north of Italy, and on December 31, 1494, they entered Rome. Lucrezia was in Pesaro with her husband and Giulia, Giovanni was still in Barcelona, and 12-year-old Gioffre was in Naples, all of which meant that the only family the pope had nearby was Cesare. Luckily, both brought out the Borgia craftiness in spades.

Alexander knew that Charles was a deeply religious man, and as the French entered the city, the pope proclaimed that if a single salvo was fired, he would mount the battlements himself and hold the Communion host above his head.

CHARLES VIII: what was I supposed to do?

CHARLES VIII: shoot at the Holy Sacrament?

CHARLES VIII: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a little thing called transubstantiation, but

CHARLES VIII: that little bread thing is literally Jesus’ body

CHARLES VIII: anyway, I just couldn’t

CHARLES VIII: so I went to some brothels instead, let my soldiers sack the city

CHARLES VIII: Christ-like, you know?

When Charles finally met Alexander, the king flung himself at the pope’s feet. The two spent the next few weeks together, Alexander offering Charles advice and referring to him as his first-born son. Eventually they formed a pact of non-aggression that would allow the French safe passage through the Papal States, although Alexander refused to provide a firm answer on the question of Naples. Charles left Rome on January 28 with Cesare as a hostage, but the pope’s son sneaked back to Rome by disguising himself as a groom. When he found out that he’d been Borgia’d, Charles furiously declared that all Italians were dirty dogs and the pope was the dirtiest of them all.

Charles took Naples in February of 1495, but a month later Alexander, along with the rulers of Venice, Milan, and the Holy Roman Empire, came together to form Team Fuck The French The League of Venice. Charles might not have been a brilliant strategist, but he was geographically savvy enough to know that, being in the south of Italy, he and his troops had to pass through the north — and The League — to get home. So he quickly peaced out of the peninsula, but not before he and his men bestowed the gift of syphilis upon Naples, where it would subsequently become known as the French disease.

* * *

The summer of 1496 was one long Borgia party. Lucrezia returned to Rome shortly after her father’s victory, Gioffre and Sancia made it back in May, and Giovanni joined the clan in August. 18-year-old Sancia allegedly began having an affair with either one or both of her husband’s brothers, probably because her 14-year-old husband wasn’t done with puberty yet. Sancia also became close friends with Lucrezia, and the two of them scandalized Rome by gossiping and giggling through boring sermons at St. Peter’s.

Meanwhile, annulment plans were afoot.

By early 1497, it was clear to everyone that the Borgias had collectively moved on from Lucrezia’s marriage, although their reasons were unclear. Was Alexander still angry that Giovanni Sforza had briefly stood up to him? Was he punishing him for the fact that the rest of the Sforza family had sided with the French against him? Had his recent military success convinced him that he could make a bigger and better match for this daughter? What we do know is that Giovanni left Rome — more like fled — at the end of March. He then began dropping hints that his in-laws had been making threats against him. Once again, it’s hard to know what (if any) role Lucrezia played in any of this; some people believe that she was the one who had warned Giovanni that Alexander and Cesare were out to get him, while others believe that she was in league with her family. Whatever the case was, the outcome was a separation.

GIOVANNI SFORZA: and then

GIOVANNI SFORZA: and THEN

GIOVANNI SFORZA: the pope said he wanted to annul my marriage

GIOVANNI SFORZA: on grounds of non-consummation

GIOVANNI SFORZA: DUE TO IMPOTENCE

GIOVANNI SFORZA: and I was like, bro, my penis works great

GIOVAANNI SFORZA: anyway, I told everybody that Alexander probably wanted his daughter for himself

GIOVANNI SFORZA: you know, incest-wise

17-year-old Lucrezia had checked out of the situation and retreated to a convent. Some claimed she was angry with her father over the annulment, while others confirmed that she and Giovanni had parted on “unamicable terms.” No matter how you slice it, it was clear Lucrezia was tired of the men in her life engaging in nonstop histrionics.

Less than two weeks after Lucrezia had ensconced herself in the walls of San Sisto, tragedy struck the Borgias. Giovanni Borgia disappeared after leaving a family dinner at his mother Vannozza’s house; his body turned up in the Tiber covered in stab wounds. Alexander was distraught at the loss of his favorite, and spent days shut in his room, weeping and refusing all food and drink. In a public statement given on June 19, he said that he would give up seven papacies if that could bring back his son. Rumors about the murderers’ identities flew around Rome. Was it a retaliatory move from Giovanni Sforza and his publicly maligned penis? Was it the Orsini family, who had an old vendetta against the Borgias? Was it, some whispered, Cesare, over the fact that he and Giovanni were allegedly competing for Sancia’s attention? The mystery deepened when, after just a week, all inquiries were suspended.

You can’t keep a good pope down for long, though, and within a month a grieving Alexander was scheming about Lucrezia’s next marriage. This one was going to be even bigger and better than the first, the prospective groom being Alfonso of Aragon, the illegitimate son of the now-abdicated King of Naples (and brother to Lucrezia’s old pal, Sancia). Lucrezia wasn’t the only papal child with new prospects; with the once-promising Giovanni dead, Alexander decided to pull Cesare, whom he’d made a cardinal, out of the Church and set him on a more secular path to power. This was fine with Cesare, who had inherited all of his father’s libertine qualities and none of his religious devotion.

In the midst of all the chaos around her, Lucrezia proved to be a competent leader and administrator, a role she would come to relish later in life.

In the middle of this hullabaloo, a wild infant Borgia appeared. Where did he come from? Whose child was he? Although the papal family acknowledged that the baby belonged to their ranks, none of them would disclose who the actual parents were. Rome, already awash with conspiracy theories about Giovanni’s death and Lucrezia’s annulment, buzzed with even greater fervor. The fact that Lucrezia had just spent several months out of the public eye did nothing to help the situation; it was rumored that the baby was hers by Giovanni Sforza, or hers by a chamberlain in Alexander’s household (a man named Pedro Calderon, whose body had also recently turned up in the Tiber). Some suggested that Cesare, or even the pope himself, had conceived the child with Lucrezia. Three years later Alexander would issue two separate bulls naming first Cesare and then himself as the boy’s father — a mother was never named — but for a while the baby was known only as the Infans Romanus (the child of Rome), adding yet another layer of dysfunction to Italy’s holiest family.

Lucrezia and Alfonso were married in the summer of 1498 in a sumptuous nuptial mass. The bride’s robe was made of golden brocade with crimson velvet; her sleeves and belt were studded with jewels, and she wore a rope of pearls around her neck. The bridegroom chose a semi-matching outfit of black brocade lined with crimson silk, and a cap topped with a brooch that his new wife had given him, featuring a unicorn and a cherub. After the ceremony, everyone feasted at the palazzo until, at Alexander’s signal, the group was escorted to a hall in the Vatican, where the real party began. At first it was pretty standard wedding stuff: drinking, dancing, gift-giving, more feasting. Later, a select few made their way to the Borgia apartments within the Vatican, where Cesare had organized a set of amusing tableaux, one of which involved him dressing as a unicorn with poor Gioffre relegated to the role of a sea-goose. The dancing and drinking continued until dawn, when a light meal was served and everybody went to bed. The festivities ended a week later with a lavish bullfight given in the couple’s honor.

LUCREZIA: if you think this is the height of obscene Borgia parties, wait til you hear about the Banquet of the Chestnuts

LUCREZIA: it allegedly involved 50 courtesans crawling around naked

LUCREZIA: and prizes for the guests who had the most sex with the courtesans

LUCREZIA: while my father and I watched

LUCREZIA: I mean, it probably never happened but, you know

LUCREZIA: allegedly

Not long after, Cesare officially resigned from his ecclesiastical role and set off to France, where he was determined to woo Alfonso’s cousin Carlotta. She presented the opportunity for a choice alliance, since her father had become the King of Naples when Alfonso’s father had abdicated during Charles VIII’s occupation (Neapolitan politics had hardly become less complicated since Joanna of Naples’ time a century earlier). His departure was so disgustingly splendid that jewels, precious metals, and other finery had to be imported from Venice — all the recent Borgia celebrations had put a dint in the Roman supply of luxury goods. Unfortunately, Carlotta was not impressed by Cesare, and in the summer of 1499 he wound up marrying Charlotte D’Albret, sister to the King of Navarre. Louis XII, the new King of France, wrote to tell Alexander in awed tones that the couple had sex eight times on their wedding day (twice before supper, and six times at night), which was four more times than he had managed on his special day.

Unsurprisingly, Alfonso and Sancia were not impressed that Cesare was associating with their enemies instead of marrying their cousin, an alliance which they’d hoped would strengthen both Rome’s support of Naples and their own position in Alexander’s family. They were even less impressed when Louis accompanied Cesare on his return to Italy, apparently intent on picking up where Charles had left off. Alfonso, fearing for his safety, fled Rome, leaving behind Lucrezia, who was six months into her second pregnancy of the year after suffering a miscarriage in February. He wrote to Lucrezia asking her to join him in Naples, but Alexander forced her to refuse. Instead of allowing his daughter to be with her husband, the pope appointed her Governor of Spoleto, a position usually held by a cardinal. In the midst of all the chaos around her, Lucrezia proved to be a competent leader and administrator, a role she would come to relish later in life.

Eventually Alfonso joined Lucrezia in Spoleto, and together they travelled to the fortress of Nepi, which Alexander had also put under her control. Meanwhile, King Louis and Cesare were riding across Italy, snapping up territories here and there; the pope did his part by relieving several lords of their states with the excuse that they were behind on their taxes. The Borgias had officially begun their long-anticipated conquest of the peninsula.

GIOVANNI SFORZA: it’s interesting how the Borgias were against the French until Cesare realized they could help fulfil his expansionist fantasies

GIOVANNI SFORZA: very interesting

GIOVANNI SFORZA: in conclusion, I’m still not impotent, from before

GIOVANNI SFORZA: I actually have an aura of potency, people tell me that all the time

GIOVANNI SFORZA: strangers see me on the street and say, there goes a potent man

GIOVANNI SFORZA: I bet his dick works great, they say, and they’re correct

GIOVANNI SFORZA: no, my divorce isn’t eating me up inside, why do you ask?

Lucrezia gave birth to a son, Rodrigo, on November 1, 1499. For a brief moment, it must have seemed to Lucrezia as if everything was going to be alright, with her father, brother, and husband united in their joy at the arrival of a son and heir. But as the new century dawned, Cesare drew Rome and his family deeper into chaos.

First, he and Louis took Milan. Then they set their sights on Naples. Louis, like his cousin Charles VIII before him, had a legitimate(ish) claim to those lands, but taking them meant unseating two powerful families — the Sforza, to which Lucrezia’s first husband belonged, and the Aragons of Naples, family of her current husband and sister-in-law. Needless to say, Alfonso and Sancia were furious over what was happening, and neither was subtle about their feelings. If Lucrezia had any thoughts on the matter, she prudently kept them to herself. More than anyone, she understood the importance of staying out of her father and brother’s way.

For a brief moment, it must have seemed to Lucrezia as if everything was going to be alright, with her father, brother, and husband united in their joy at the arrival of a son and heir.

On July 15, 1500, Alfonso was attacked on the steps of St. Peter’s by four heavily armed men. He barely survived, and had to be carried back to the Vatican. By all accounts, Alexander was shocked and dismayed, and had his son-in-law installed in apartments above his own, where Lucrezia and Sancia could care for him around the clock. Lucrezia was terrified that another attempt on her husband’s life would follow, and she insisted that he only eat meals that she had prepared for him and be treated by no one other than his personal physician from Naples.

Alas, her efforts were in vain. On August 18, Alfonso, Sancia, and Lucrezia were enjoying a visit from his uncle when Cesare’s chief assassin, Micheletto, burst into the room with his men. The intruders managed to get everyone but Alfonso out of the room under a false but urgent-seeming pretext, and then Cesare’s so-called ministro tristissimo strangled the young duke in his bed. When the pope’s daughter and her sister-in-law returned to Alfonso’s rooms and found his corpse, their screams filled the halls of the Vatican.

Alexander was distraught as well at first, but Cesare eventually convinced him of the necessity of the murder. Alfonso had, he said, tried to shoot him with a crossbow in the garden, so really, it was an act of defense. As improbable as the story was, the pope accepted it; the alternative was to believe that his most cherished and ambitious son was a monster. Lucrezia, though, was furious. Just a few weeks after her husband’s death, Alexander packed her off to their castle in the nearby town of Nepi, apparently irritated by her obvious grieving and worried that it would further stain his son’s reputation. Rumors of incest sprang up (again), this time asserting that Cesare had killed Lucrezia’s husband out of jealousy. Some even speculated that Lucrezia had been in on the crime. Meanwhile, the always forward-thinking Alexander began to plot a third marriage for his 20-year-old daughter.

* * *

Just as she had after the end of her first marriage, Lucrezia went into a complete retreat after Alfonso’s murder. She remained in Nepi for several months, writing letters signed “the most unhappy princess of salerno [sic],” which was the title she’d acquired through her marriage to Alfonso. She ordered oodles of black clothing and furnishings for her mourning and requested masses to be said for her dead husband’s soul. When Alexander began talking of another marriage, Lucrezia balked. The pope asked her why she didn’t want to marry again, and she replied acidly, “Because my husbands have been very unlucky.” Still, she eventually agreed to wed Alfonso d’Este, the son and heir of the Duke of Ferrara. (It’s kind of weird to marry someone with the same first name as your former partner, but if Ben Affleck could make it work, so can anyone else.) This match was even more advantageous than Lucrezia’s first two marriages, and if she was understandably reluctant, there was also a part of her that must have been eager to escape her father and brother’s poisonous clutches. Before, she had willingly participated in her family’s shenanigans, but now she saw the necessity of asserting her own will.

LUCREZIA: I mean, as much as one can assert one’s own will against the literal pope

LUCREZIA: the temporal and spiritual leader, direct line to God, etc

LUCREZIA: but, you know, I’d learned a thing or two from him during our years together

LUCREZIA: one was that you can never have too many jewels

LUCREZIA: another was how to work a situation to your advantage

Alfonso d’Este was a bit of an odd duck. His main passions in life were artillery, pottery, and brothels. His first wife, yet another Sforza, had died in childbirth, not that he cared much. Their relationship had been marked by deep mutual disinterest, which allowed him to look the other way when she began dressing as a man and sleeping with women. According to at least one source, Alfonso liked to march naked through the streets of Ferrara, a sword in one hand and his penis clutched in the other. You know, normal Renaissance stuff! Lucrezia’s third husband was a jumble of eccentricities, but, somehow, he would prove to be a good match for her.

An escort from Ferrara arrived in Rome in the fall of 1501, and we know exactly what Lucrezia wore to meet it because her future sister-in-law, Isabella d’Este, had sent a spy among the retinue. He wrote that the bride-to-be was dressed in a mulberry gown banded with gold under a gold jacket lined with sable, a necklace of rubies and pearls, and a gem-encrusted snood. He also reported that Lucrezia was graceful and beautiful and a good Christian, much to Isabella’s dismay.

The proxy marriage took place on December 30 and just over a week later, Lucrezia set out for Ferrara with a large retinue. She had agreed to leave her 2-year-old son Rodrigo behind, and her parting from him must have been wrenching. Had she been a man, she most likely would have been able to bring him along, but as things stood, the Borgias wanted her to seem unencumbered by her dicey romantic past. Of course, the double-edged reality of womanhood meant that although she had been counseled to leave her son behind, the fact that she did so would be used for many years after her death as evidence that she was monstrously unmaternal. But she stayed as involved in his care as possible, sending him letters and gifts and arranging his education. She was distraught when he died at the age of 12 from a fever; in typical Lucrezia fashion, she retreated to a convent for a month to grieve in private.

Wedding no. 3 was yet another lavish affair.

The journey to Ferrara, way up in the north of the boot, was long and made longer still by Lucrezia’s frequent requests to stop and wash her hair. Her blond curls reached all the way to her knees and cleansing them — which she did every three days with a boiled mixture of vine stock ashes, myrrh, scrapings of horses’ hooves, and other assorted ingredients — was a time-consuming enterprise. “She [keeps] always to her room, to wash her hair but also because she is rather solitary and remote by nature,” wrote one envoy. Was she anxious about meeting her new husband? Or was she just exercising what little control she could muster over the situation?

Alfonso d’Este surprised her by meeting the convoy in the city of Bologna, bursting into his bride’s room while she was combing her damp hair, barely dressed in a muslin gown. This romantic gesture delighted Lucrezia, and the bridegroom, for his part, was surprised by his immediate attraction to his new wife. He had never had much interest in his first one, and hadn’t remotely expected to fall into deep smit with his second. The two traveled on to Malalbergo where they met Isabella d’Este, whose jealousy only deepened upon meeting her new sister-in-law. It probably didn’t help that Isabella’s own marriage to Francesco Gonzaga was an unhappy one; her main interests in life were collecting art and meddling in the lives of those around her. They arrived in Ferrara together, where Duke Ercole d’Este met them with great fanfare.

Wedding no. 3 was yet another lavish affair. Alfonso wore a tunic of gray velvet covered in beaten gold scales, a black velvet cap, and gray calfskin boots. Lucrezia wore an ermine-lined robe made of violet satin and cloth of gold; she had a diamond and ruby necklace and a headdress bedecked with still more diamonds, plus sapphires and other precious stones. The procession wound through the city to the piazza, where an acrobatic display had been arranged. Later, the happy couple retired to specially-prepared bridal apartments where, Isabella’s spy reported to her, they thrice boned. The remainder of Isabella’s letters home detail her disdain: Lucrezia slept in every morning, the plays and mock-battles arranged for the wedding were boring, the balls were too crowded to actually dance. “Your Lordship should not envy me for your not being here at this marriage because it is of such a coldness that I envy anyone who remained in Mantua,” she concluded one letter.

Machiavelli, who just happened to be on the scene, was suitably impressed; Cesare would serve as a major inspiration for The Prince, a classic on the art of political scheming.

Much to Isabella’s chagrin, the rest of the Este family adored Lucrezia. Ercole, who was a bit of an eccentric himself (he collected famous nuns, which were a bit of a tourist attraction at the time, and placed them in local convents), was almost as thrilled about her as his son. Alfonso d’Este’s brothers Ferrante and Ippolito were also charmed by their new sister-in-law. When Lucrezia became ill during the first pregnancy of her third marriage, it was Ferrante who accompanied her to the Este country estate at Belriguardo so that she could rest and get some fresh air.

Lucrezia’s illness continued throughout her pregnancy and, indeed, would affect her during all of her subsequent pregnancies. It’s not clear if it was a pregnancy-related disorder like preeclampsia or HELLP syndrome, or had to do with the fact that her husband likely had syphilis — the epidemiological effects of Charles VIII’s invasion were still rippling across Italy. She was further stressed by the behavior of her brother Cesare, who captured Urbino in June 1502; not only was her family’s continued warmongering upsetting for Lucrezia, but the Duke and Duchess of Urbino had become her friends after giving her a warm reception on her trek to Ferrara. Her condition continued to deteriorate over the summer, and by the end of July she was suffering from a fever and having seizures.

LUCREZIA: meanwhile Cesare wrote me a letter being like

LUCREZIA: “I know what will make you feel better, I’m about to invade Camerino!”

LUCREZIA: surprise, him being back on his bullshit didn’t fix my pregnancy problems

LUCREZIA: the things men know about women could fill a very small paragraph in a very small book

Lucrezia had returned to Ferrara at this point, and Alfonso slept in the room next to her and attended to her at every meal. But even with his thoughtful care she continued to decline until, on September 5, she suffered a seizure so severe that she went into preterm labor and delivered a stillborn daughter. Cesare rushed to his sister’s side and spent a day with her; she seemed to rally under his attention and even laughed at one of his jokes while her doctors bled her. Then, on September 13, she became so ill that when she tried to feel her own pulse, she couldn’t find it, exclaiming, “Oh good, I am dead!”

* * *

If Cesare’s visit to Lucrezia seems strangely brief, that was because he was hatching yet another scheme. He had his eye on Bologna, but several of his own followers — including members of the Orsini family — began plotting to bring him down. Hey, remember the Orsini? The ones who were suspected of orchestrating Giovanni Borgia’s murder? Alexander sure did, and when he and Cesare learned of their treachery, they began counter-plotting. Cesare and Micheletto did the dirty work of strangling the main conspirators, while Alexander arrested and incarcerated a bunch of lesser Orsini, including the Archbishop of Florence. Machiavelli, who just happened to be on the scene, was suitably impressed; Cesare would serve as a major inspiration for The Prince, a classic on the art of political scheming.

As Cesare’s powers waxed, Lucrezia embarked on an affair with a poet named Pietro Bembo (who would later multitask to become a linguist and a cardinal). Alfonso d’Este was still regularly visiting brothels, so he wasn’t exactly being a paragon of fidelity, and everyone knows that poets are irresistible (if often terrible). As much as Lucrezia was fond of her husband, his earthy ways weren’t exactly to her taste, and she missed the highfalutin artistic and philosophical circles she’d moved in at her father’s court. We’ve all been through our own “dating an artist” phase; we get it. (Speaking of bad artist boyfriends, the letters between Lucrezia and Bembo would one day drive Lord Byron into a horny frenzy, leading him to steal a lock of her hair from the archives in Milan. Oh, Byron!)

Hundreds of people died each day from disease and hunger, while the ruling class fled to their country estates.

In the summer of 1503, while illicit romantic tensions were mounting in Ferrara, catastrophe struck. On August 11, Alexander celebrated the 11th anniversary of his ascension to the papal throne; on August 12, he and Cesare both came down with an illness that caused vomiting and frighteningly high fevers. For a while it seemed as if the pope was recovering while his son got worse, but then things took a turn. Pope Alexander VI died on the evening of August 18; some said his last words were “I come; it is right; wait a moment.” The funeral was an objective fiasco, with the August heat bloating and putrefying Alexander’s body to the point where it could no longer fit in his coffin — attendants had to roll it up in a carpet and shove it into the narrow box. When Cesare learned of his father’s death, he knew his status was about to take a nosedive. Still recovering from his illness and barely able to stand, he sent his troops in to control the new conclave, forcing the election of a man he knew would support him. Unfortunately for Cesare, Pope Pius III would have one of the shortest pontificates in history — just 26 days.

Lucrezia was once more undone by her grief, but, given her family’s ongoing expansionist activities and general treachery, she wasn’t likely to find a sympathetic ear in Ferrara. Bembo counselled her to hide her mourning and display her famous aloofness, writing, “this is not the first blow which you have suffered at the hands of your cruel and malevolent destiny. Indeed your spirit ought to be inured to shocks of fate, so many and so bitter have you already suffered.”

LUCREZIA: things went downhill from there

LUCREZIA: after Pius, my father’s mortal enemy Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope

LUCREZIA: and then I had another miscarriage

LUCREZIA: then Cesare was captured and imprisoned

LUCREZIA: luckily, through it all I was surrounded by emotionally supportive men

LUCREZIA: hahaha omg obviously I am kidding

LUCREZIA: the men in this story are many things, but “emotionally supportive” is not one of them

In the middle of this personal and geopolitical rollercoaster, Lucrezia began another affair, this time with her brother-in-law Francesco Gonzaga. That’s right, Isabella’s husband, a man so wanton with his favors that a large number of children in Mantua bore a striking resemblance to him. Listen, we all make choices in this life!

Speaking of life, Lucrezia’s was about to be turned upside down once again. Duke Ercole d’Este died on January 25, 1505, making Alfonso the new Duke of Ferrara. Lucrezia became pregnant once again, and must have felt that her spot was nearly secure: she had the title of Duchess and was hopefully carrying the Duke’s heir, all in spite of her family’s downfall. But if any year proved to be Lucrezia’s annus horribilis, this was it. Cesare, whose situation caused her great anguish, tried to escape from prison, only to be caught and sent to a better-fortified stronghold. The newly-minted duchess began a letter-writing campaign to free him, appealing to anyone and everyone she could think of. Then, as the weather warmed, an outbreak of the plague hit Ferrara, followed by a drought that spoiled the crops. Hundreds of people died each day from disease and hunger, while the ruling class fled to their country estates. Lucrezia was ill too — although it’s not clear if it was the plague, or pregnancy-related, or something else — but as the brutal season wore on she continued her borderline delusional campaign to secure her brother’s freedom. She even grew desperate enough to ask the new pope, Julius II, to release Cesare.

JULIUS II: lol

JULIUS II: just… lol

JULIUS II: one might even say, lmao

Shortly after this botched attempt, Lucrezia suffered another one of those “shocks of fate” that Bembo had described: after giving birth to a sickly son on September 19, her legs went numb and she was once again struck by a fever. Hoping that her baby might channel some of her father’s strength, she named him Alexander. But the newborn struggled to eat and, less than a month later, died. It was one more blow to Lucrezia’s emotional well-being.

LUCREZIA: meanwhile, trouble was brewing amongst my brothers-in-law

LUCREZIA: I’m not really going to get into it here, but it started with a fight over a musician

LUCREZIA: then turned into a fight over my slutty cousin Angela

LUCREZIA: then one of them stabbed the other in the eyes

LUCREZIA: then it somehow devolved into a plot to assassinate my husband

LUCREZIA: men call women dramatic, but really?

LUCREZIA: every single man in my life has been like this

In early 1507, Lucrezia miscarried yet again; this time Alfonso d’Este blamed her for carousing too much during carnival season. Two months later, Cesare, who had escaped prison once again in late 1506, was betrayed, stabbed, then stripped and left to die alone. Lucrezia, who only learned of his death a month after it happened, was distraught, wailing, “The more I try to please God, the more he tries me.” She shut herself away from the world once again, not knowing how else to cope with this fresh loss. Although Cesare and their father had manipulated her, used her to promote their own agenda, and (likely) killed her beloved second husband, they remained the two people to whom she felt the closest in the world. The bonds of abuse and trauma are strange things; while Lucrezia came to question how they had treated her, she still believed them when they swore that it was the Borgias versus the world. Now there was nobody left on her side.

* * *

Lucrezia became pregnant once again in the summer of 1507, and on April 4, 1508 gave birth to a healthy son who, according to Isabella D’Este’s spy, had “a most beautiful mouth but a little snub nose and eyes [which were] not very dark nor very large.” The boy was christened Ercole after Alfonso d’Este’s father, but even his birth didn’t fully pull Lucrezia out of her spiral. She wrote flagrant letters to Francesco Gonzaga, which she knew would infuriate her husband if he ever intercepted them. She was long past the point of caring, and begged her lover/brother-in-law to visit her. He refused on the grounds that his syphilis was flaring, which may or may not have been a convenient excuse.

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The Italian Wars that Charles VIII had begun 15 years earlier were still ongoing, and Alfonso was absent from the end of 1509 until 1512. Lucrezia remained in Ferrara and once again flexed the muscles of leadership and administration that she’d first begun exercising all those years ago in Spoleto. Alfonso, meanwhile, proved to be an able soldier and tactician. Together, Lucrezia and Alfonso were a real, if unlikely, Renaissance Dream Team.

LUCREZIA: again, I don’t want to get into it, but we switched over to Louis XII’s side

LUCREZIA: and Julius II had some big feelings about that

LUCREZIA: he excommunicated us and tried to capture Ferrara

LUCREZIA: it was a whole thing

Alfonso managed to get his hands on a statue of Julius that Michelangelo had made, which he promptly melted down and forged into a cannon he called La Giulia — all except for the head, which he stuck on a pike. The fighting was near-constant, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. In the midst of all this, Lucrezia gave birth to another son, named Ippolito after his cardinal uncle. The war dragged on until Easter Sunday 1512, when a decisive battle took place outside Ravenna, at which an estimated 10,000 men were killed. It was a significant win for Alfonso d’Este, whose innovative approach to artillery carried the day.

ALFONSO: see??

ALFONSO: all those weird hobbies were worth it

ALFONSO: and during the war, when we had to sell all our fancy silver plates?

ALFONSO: that’s right, we ate off my pottery

ALFONSO: the brothel visits were probably also good for something, although I’m not sure what yet

The Duke’s re-entry into his city was a splendid victory parade, and Lucrezia was waiting for him at the Castello. Three months later Alfonso d’Este travelled to Rome, where Julius gritted his teeth and gave him absolution. Secretly, though, the pope was still determined to take Ferrara by hook or by crook (or, technically speaking, by ferula). Alas for him, he died on February 21, 1513, before any of his plots could come to fruition. Lucrezia and the Este family had won, and it was a victory that would shape the papacy for years to come: among those they took prisoner during the Battle of Ravenna was Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, the man who would soon be Leo X — as well as great-uncle to noted serpent queen Catherine de’ Medici. Soon enough he would begin orchestrating his own Borgia-like schemes, making the Medici name at least as infamous (if not more).

Together, Lucrezia and Alfonso were a real, if unlikely, Renaissance Dream Team.

In spite of her various indiscretions, Lucrezia had always had a pious bent — even after leaving Rome she would retreat to convents during difficult periods — and as she got older, she became even more devout. Her personal losses certainly played a big part in this progression; not only had she lost her father and brother, but Rodrigo, her son with the ill-fated first Alfonso, had died in 1512. In 1514, she gave birth to another son named after her father, but he died in 1516. She also gave birth to a healthy daughter in 1515, and another healthy son in 1516. Each pregnancy and birth was physically difficult, and it’s hard to imagine how worn out she must have been from, well, everything.

LUCREZIA: as an aside, I would just like to note that I named my youngest son Francesco

LUCREZIA: that’s right, as in Gonzaga

LUCREZIA: we were still kind of an item

LUCREZIA: it’s called misdirection, look it up

Shortly after little Francesco d’Este’s birth, Lucrezia received word that her brother Gioffre had died. Her mother Vannozza died in 1518. Lucrezia had never been particularly close to either of them — in fact, her main communication with her mother involved the latter constantly writing to ask her for money — but these deaths meant that she had now lost both her parents and all of her siblings. Vannozza being Vannozza, she had organized her own lavish funeral and had arranged to put all of her children’s names and titles on her tombstone, even though she had maintained almost no relationship with any of them (other than Cesare) since they were young children. It’s hard not to respect a baller move like that.

1518 was also the year Alfonso d’Este was summoned by the French king to attend a rapprochement between the French and English crowns. During his absence, Lucrezia, who was in the early months of yet another pregnancy, was left to govern Ferrara in her own name. Once again she did a superlative job. She and her husband had developed a powerful mutual admiration — by this point her relationship with Francesco Gonzaga was a thing of the past — and discovered that their strengths and talents complemented each other. When Alfonso d’Este returned home in early 1519, he went straight to Lucrezia’s chambers.

* * *

This final pregnancy was another difficult one. By June, Lucrezia was barely able to eat, and soon doctors decided to induce labor to save her life. They broke her water, and on June 14 she gave birth to a daughter so weak that Alfonso d’Este rushed to have her baptized; as was predicted, tiny Isabella Maria did not survive. At first Lucrezia seemed to improve, but on June 20 her health went into steep decline. She began to have seizures again and blood poured from her nose. The doctors cut off her hair and bled her, but she continued to worsen, losing the ability to see and speak. On June 22 she rallied, and those around her hoped she might make a full recovery, but Lucrezia knew the end was near. She dictated a letter to Pope Leo X asking him to pray for her. Two days later the seizures started again and that night, just two months after her 39th birthday, she died.

Alfonso d’Este had barely left Lucrezia’s side during her illness, and was inconsolable after her death. In a letter written shortly after, he described her as a “sweet, dear companion” and spoke of “the tender love there was between us.” In another he said that he was left “in the greatest imaginable anguish.” What began as a political match had turned into a loving marriage, and he could not imagine life without her.

How can we view female leaders as being fully human when we’ve spent so long fudging the history of powerful women to suit misogynist agendas?

Lucrezia is a rare case of a historical woman who was, against all odds, actually appreciated in her lifetime; her father, brothers, and husband all recognized her intelligence, administrative skills, and political acumen and, rather than being intimidated by those traits, allowed her to use them. Her story has been twisted into that of an incestuous man-eater who dabbled in murder, but when we look at (relatively) unbiased sources, there’s no evidence that any of this is true.

Many readers suggested that I write about Lucrezia when I first began this series, but for a long time I resisted covering her. My reasoning was pedantic: she wasn’t a queen (even if she was sort of a Vatican princess), and if I expanded my self-created rules then all would soon descend into chaos. But beneath that was another worry: there was too much scandal in Lucrezia’s story and not enough humanity. Like so many others before me, I let her reputation precede her and took it at face value. I should have known better. The way that historians and contemporary observers have twisted Lucrezia’s story over the years tells us a lot about how the Western world views women and power. We’re equally entranced by and terrified of the women who wield it, and those feelings — not the facts — shape their narratives to fit our beliefs. Sometimes this means creating sanitized versions of their lives in which they are indisputably virtuous heroines, but more often, as in Lucrezia’s case, it means arranging facts and rumors into the worst possible interpretation. This does an obvious disservice to the subjects of these biographies, but it also has a larger impact on contemporary politics. How can we view female leaders as being fully human when we’ve spent so long fudging the history of powerful women to suit misogynist agendas? Re-evaluating the stories of scandalous women from history is one place to start.

Long live Lucrezia! Long live the fucking duchess!

* * *

For further reading on Lucrezia:

• Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Live, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy
• Leonie Frieda, The Deadly Sisterhood: A Story of Women, Power and Intrigue in the Italian Renaissance
• John Julius Norwich, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy

* * *

Previously:

• Queens of Infamy: Mariamne I
• Queens of Infamy: Njinga
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
• Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
• Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
• Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
• Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
• Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
• Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

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Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based writer whose bylines can be found all over the internet, including at the Guardian, the London Review of Books and, obviously, Longreads. She truly believes that your favourite Tudor wife says more about you than your astrological sign. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. You can find her on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 141204 https://longreads.com/2019/12/17/queens-of-infamy-mariamne-i/ Tue, 17 Dec 2019 11:00:14 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=135193 In the ancient hot mess known as Judea, a young queen had to navigate a self-destructive royal dynasty and one of history's worst husbands.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | December 2019 | 21 minutes (5,424 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on world-historical women of centuries past.

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The year was 54 BC, but not really, because Christ hadn’t been born yet. In Rome, it was 700 ab urbe condita, or 700 years since the founding of the city; at the northern edge of the empire, Julius Caesar was veni, vidi, vici-ing his way into Britain for a second time. In Egypt, it was the 251st year of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and a 15-year-old Cleopatra was scheming. In Judea, which had recently lost its full sovereignty and become a client state of Rome, the year was… who even knows? The Judeans of the time would count it as year 258 in the Era of Contracts, though for Jewish people living after the 12th century, it’s anno mundi 3707. Either way, it was there that a new princess was born into a royal family torn apart by usurpers, civil war, and aggressive foreign meddling. In spite of all the chaos in the Hasmonean household, no one could have imagined that tiny Miriam would one day be that dynasty’s last hope.

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Like so many women from ancient history, we have very few concrete facts about Miriam, who would gain wider infamy under the Hellenized version of her name, Mariamne. What little information we do have was recorded by men. Even her birth year is pure speculation, based on the typical ages for engagement and marriage in her culture during the 1st century BCE. What we do know for certain is that things were not going well for the Hasmoneans when Mariamne entered the scene.

They had been great, once. Their dynasty had sprung from the revolt led by Judah Maccabeus, the man who drove out the occupying Seleucids, restored the Second Temple, and invented Hanukkah. A strong start, as far as dynasty-founding goes! Judah’s brother, Simon, was then elected leader of the newly semi-independent Judea by a group that, according to the Books of Maccabees, was composed of “the priests and the people and of the elders of the land, to the effect that Simon should be their leader and high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful prophet.” Since prophets are few and far between and no one can live forever (in fact, Simon was murdered eight years into his reign by his son-in-law), this set the Hasmoneans on the throne until further notice.

The Hasmoneans managed to hang on to power for a little over a century, in spite of the usual problems: intrigue, coups, murder. You know, just casual royal stuff. Then, three months into the reign of Hyrcanus II in 67 BCE, his brother Aristobulus II rose up in rebellion against him. Hyrcanus was a bit of a mama’s boy, or at the very least someone who was not afraid to cede authority to strong women. Instead of claiming the throne after his father’s death, he’d been happy to take on the role of High Priest while his widowed mother, Alexandra Salome, took the reins; it was only after her death that he came (ever so briefly) into power. Aristobulus, meanwhile, was more of a kingly (read: bellicose) type, and had no trouble amassing followers as he moved to depose his brother. After Aristobulus II captured Jerusalem, Hyrcanus basically handed over the crown and agreed to go back to being a prince. Some people just don’t have leadership qualities and that’s ok. It takes all kinds to make this world.

The Hasmoneans managed to hang on to power for a little over a century, in spite of the usual problems: intrigue, coups, murder. You know, just casual royal stuff.

That might have been the end of it, at least until the next generation of Hasmoneans started turning on each other, except for one man: Antipater, the governor of neighboring Idumea who had managed to insinuate himself into Hyrcanus’ life. Antipater and his wife Cypros had ambitious plans for their children, and they hoped that his position as royal yes-man would help achieve those dreams. The second of his four sons was the future Herod the Great, the messiest man to have ever graced the land of Judea. Yes, that Herod, old “massacre of the innocents” himself (but not the Herod who cut off John the Baptist’s head; that was his son, Herod Antipas).

ANTIPATER: you should try to get the crown back

HYRCANUS II: I mean … should I?

ANTIPATER: yeah, dude, what if your brother tries to assassinate you?

HYRCANUS II: that seems really unlikely, I already let him be king

HYRCANUS II: mom always said, “be nice to your brother”

HYRCANUS II: “no fighting,” she’d say

HYRCANUS II: “keep it down around here, I’m trying to be queen”

HYRCANUS II: she was just the best mom anyone could ever ask for

ANTIPATER: sure, she was a great broad, but I’m hearing rumors

HYRCANUS II: about my mom?

ANTIPATER: no, about your brother planning to assassinate you

HYRCANUS II: that would make mom so angry!

ANTIPATER: I …. yes, fine, I can work with that

ANTIPATER: I think you should go to war with your brother and take the crown back

ANTIPATER: and make me your chief advisor and give all my sons good jobs

ANTIPATER: it’s what your mom would have wanted

In the middle of the civil war that ensued, the Romans rolled in, as was their wont. Pompey decided that Hyrcanus II would be less of a headache to deal with than his brother, so he re-installed him as High Priest. There would be no king, just a local ruler — an ethnarch — controlled by the authority of Rome. Antipater gleefully moved into the palace and appointed himself chief advisor.

This was the world that Mariamne was born into: a state that had been upended by years of unrest and was about to plunge itself into further turmoil as the successive deaths of Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony reshaped the Mediterranean world. Mariamne’s mother, Alexandra, was the daughter of Hyrcanus II; her father, Alexander, was the son of Aristobulus II. She was a double-Hasmonean whose grandfathers had spent decades trying to destroy each other. She might have inherited an uncertain future, but Mariamne was never confused about who she was or about her place in the world. She wasn’t just royal, she was a descendant of the heroic Maccabees. As she grew up, it became clear that she was going to be an exceptionally beautiful woman. It was only natural that Herod, by then the governor of Galilee and just as much of a social climber as his father, wanted to marry her. What was surprising was that Hyrcanus II agreed, even though Herod was a) an interloper and b) already married to a nice girl from Jerusalem named Doris, who had dutifully provided him with a son.

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A note on Herod: although he had lived in Judea his entire life, he spent much of his time there feeling like an outsider. He did not descend from an old Jewish family; his paternal grandfather was an Idumean pagan who had been forcibly converted to Judaism when the Judeans had annexed his homeland, while his mother, Cypros, was a Nabataean pagan. It’s unclear whether his mother ever converted, but the rule about Judaism being passed down from mother to child would not be codified for another 300 years. Still, Herod was raised Jewish and identified as Jewish. The Judean establishment, however, refused to see him as one of their own. Part of the problem was that Herod turned out to be a Roman boot-licker extraordinaire. He was also loosey-goosey about which Jewish laws he followed; he disrespected the authority of the Great Sanhedrin (the Jewish court in Jerusalem), participated in pagan rituals while in Rome, and adorned buildings with Roman eagles, breaking the Torah’s injunction against the depiction of living beings. Some of the popular antipathy towards Herod’s claims to Jewishness, however, had xenophobic roots. The insecurity Herod felt in his own country, among his own people, troubled him throughout his life and contributed to some of his more tyrannical acts; if he couldn’t make people accept him, he sure as hell was going to make them fear him.

She might have inherited an uncertain future, but Mariamne was never confused about who she was or about her place in the world. She wasn’t just royal, she was a descendant of the heroic Maccabees.

Mariamne loathed Herod. On top of the ick factor of being a 12-year-old engaged to a married, 33-year-old man, she also couldn’t believe that she was going to marry a non-royal. And not just any non-royal — the deeply unpopular governor of Galilee who was known for being a tyrant. But Hyrcanus needed Herod’s money, soldiers, and undying loyalty. The Parthians, who were running a bustling empire based in what is now Iran, were preparing to invade, and they had the support of yet another Hasmonean faction, led by Antigonus Mattathias (for those keeping score: he was the son of Aristobulus II, nephew to Hyrcanus II, and uncle to Mariamne). Antigonus wanted to finish what his father had started and finally wrest power from that weak-willed, Rome-collaborating, Antipater-loving Hyrcanus. Mariamne’s future unhappiness originated in her grandfather’s desperate attempt to stop that from happening.

As the Parthians stormed Jerusalem, they were cheered on by crowds of Judeans. Not only were they thrilled by the thought that the Parthians might get rid of those stinking Romans, they also very much wanted to see Antigonus redeem the glory of the Hasmoneans by taking the throne. Hyrcanus saw that the public had turned against him and knew that even if Herod’s forces won, he would lose his people’s respect forever. With that in mind, he foolishly agreed to negotiate with Antigonus, who promptly took him captive. Antigonus stripped Hyrcanus of his status of High Priest by cutting off his ears (no one with a physical blemish was allowed to hold that office), and then declared himself King of Judea. Herod, who had been suspicious of the negotiations to begin with, yikes-ed himself right out of the country. He fled to Egypt, where he asked for military assistance to retake Jerusalem.

CLEOPATRA: surprise, bitch

CLEOPATRA: it’s called a cameo, sweetie

CLEOPATRA: anyway, that military aid is gonna be a no from me

CLEOPATRA: no offense, but you don’t exactly seem like a great investment

CLEOPATRA: you’re penniless, you have no real claim to the crown, you’re widely hated for being a Roman toady

HEROD: … aren’t we both Roman toadies?

HEROD: didn’t you have a kid with Julius Caesar?

CLEOPATRA: again, no offense

CLEOPATRA: but the differences between our situations are so vast that I couldn’t even begin to describe them

CLEOPATRA: that being said

CLEOPATRA: if you want to stay in Egypt, I’ll give you a job

Herod did not, in fact, want to work for Cleopatra, so she gifted him a galley and sent him on his merry way. From Egypt, he set off to Rome. He knew that the Romans, still reeling from Julius Caeasar’s assassination four years earlier and from the ensuing civil war, would not want to lose Judea to the Parthians.

I’m sure his intentions were purely selfless and that he was only thinking of his people’s — and the Romans’ — best interests. I’m sure that he was totally telling the truth when he said that he walked into the Roman Senate thinking they would appoint Mariamne’s brother, Aristobulus, still in his early teens, King of Judea. Yet somehow, by the time Herod walked out of the Senate arm-in-arm with Octavian and Mark Antony, the crown was his. Whoops! How did that even happen? What a wacky accident! Then they all went up Capitoline Hill and made a sacrifice to Jupiter. I mean, the Ten Commandments are pretty clear about not worshipping any other gods, but I’m sure Herod just crossed his fingers during the sacrifice so that it didn’t really count or something.

Who doesn’t want to be stuck on a hilltop in a remote locale with their future in-laws? Especially when those in-laws are stinky upstarts whose family is trying to take what you believe to be your rightful inheritance.

With the backing of Roman forces, Herod returned to Judea to give his compatriots the king they’d never asked for.

During Herod’s absence, Mariamne was hiding out at the great desert fortress of Masada with Herod’s mother Cypros, two of his brothers, and his sister Salome (no, not the sexy-dance Salome — that was his granddaughter). Cypros and Salome were noted meddlers who were about to take their shit-stirring skills to a whole new level. The Masada situation was surely a fun one. Who doesn’t want to be stuck on a hilltop in a remote locale with their future in-laws? Especially when those in-laws are stinky upstarts whose family is trying to take what you believe to be your rightful inheritance. On the flip side, I’m sure it was a complete pleasure for Cypros and Salome to be ordered around by a 16-year-old princess who treated them like dog poop. It was during this time of forced proximity that mutual disdain really began to take root, a festering resentment that would one day lead to Mariamne’s undoing.

Herod was midway through his military campaign to take Judea when he decided the timing was ideal to marry Mariamne. She was 17 and already renowned for her beauty (by comparison, Cleopatra was considered to be on the plain side, although her charm, wit, and the very sound of her voice were said to bewitch men). Herod quickly finalized his divorce to that pesky Doris, rescued his family from Masada (and each other), and wed Mariamne. In spite of the chaos around her, she accepted the situation with relative equanimity. Maybe she hoped that the marriage of the new King of Judea to a Hasmonean would finally bring about peace for her country. Maybe, like so many royal women before and after her, she’d been raised with the understanding that she would someday have to marry someone she didn’t love, and she was already mentally prepared for it. Or maybe she was operating under the (incorrect, as it turned out) assumption that becoming a queen would give her some autonomy and authority over her life. Who knows?

Nothing starts off a good reign quite like nearly massacring all of your subjects.

After their wedding, Herod left his new wife in Samaria while he went to capture Jerusalem. Roman reinforcements arrived and his men now far outnumbered Antigonus’ forces, but it still took months to take the city. The people of Jerusalem were so horrified by the prospect of Herod’s rule that they thought God would intervene and rescue them, a belief that drove them to astounding acts of bravery. But, finally, Herod managed to break through. When he did, he let the Romans rampage through the city, killing, plundering, and desecrating as they pleased. Herod only put a stop to the carnage because he was worried that he wouldn’t have anyone left to rule. Nothing starts off a good reign quite like nearly massacring all of your subjects.

Herod and his extended family — including his mother, sister, wife, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law (Aristobulus, the teenager he’d allegedly suggested as a possible king during his visit to Rome) — soon settled in Jerusalem. In 34 BCE, Cleopatra stopped by for a visit on her way back to Egypt from Antioch. She wanted to negotiate the terms of several grants Mark Antony had made to her, including the rights to bitumen from the Dead Sea and the proceeds of Jericho’s balsam groves, and Herod was less than thrilled. The last time he’d seen her, he’d begged her for help and she refused his pleas. Now, well into her second pregnancy by Antony but showing no signs of slowing down, she was humiliating him all over again. Everything about Cleopatra got under Herod’s skin: her femininity, her capability, her quick wits, her legitimate royal descent, not to mention the sway she held over Antony, whom Herod much admired. There was at least one person in his household who adored Cleopatra, though: Mariamne’s mother, Alexandra — the one person who hated Herod even more than his wife did.

It makes sense that Cleopatra and Alexandra got along. They were both women from old Mediterranean royal families, and they had both seen those families destroyed by internal feuds. I bet they spent long evenings sipping wine in some palm-fringed palace courtyard, trading parenting tips and bitching about Herod. Whatever happened during those weeks, the two women forged a friendship that would last until Alexandra’s death.

Speaking of death, that scamp Herod was thinking about planning Cleopatra’s. He went to his council to present his idea, explaining that not only would it benefit the whole region to be rid of this awful, grasping queen, but it would also be a personal gift to his old pal Mark Antony. What man doesn’t secretly hope his friends will murder the woman he’s in love with? After explaining all of this, Herod added the clincher: Cleopatra had tried to make moves on him. She was, after all, a known slut, having borne children out of wedlock with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. My god, that woman could catch a famous Roman dick whenever she felt like it! Naturally, it followed in Herod’s mind that she was the type to try to get into his robes as well. He argued he had to stop her before she inevitably betrayed Mark Antony who, Herod imagined, would one day thank him for his service.

COUNCILLORS: yikes

COUNCILLORS: wow, just … yikes

COUNCILLORS: please just absolutely do not murder the Queen of Egypt, that’s a very bad idea

HEROD: but Antony —

COUNCILLORS: will despise you

COUNCILLORS: honestly, it concerns us that you don’t understand this

HEROD: well then what am I supposed to do about this hussy?

COUNCILLORS: absolutely — and we can’t stress this enough — nothing

At the end of the visit, Herod escorted Cleopatra to the Egyptian border, no doubt praying that he was also leading her permanently out of his life. (The answer to that prayer was a resounding no.)

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Back in Judea, Herod was faced with a task that should have been a no-brainer: picking a new High Priest. Although the Hasmonean kings had traditionally held that office, even a man as vain and unselfaware as Herod was savvy enough to know that appointing himself was a terrible idea. Luckily, there was an ideal candidate living under his roof: Mariamne’s 17-year-old brother, Aristobulus. He was a Hasmonean, the people of Judea loved him, and he was apparently just as beautiful as his sister. I picture him as a Timothée Chalamet type, all sensuous lips and dark, tousled hair: the lanky ingénue of the ancient world. For reasons that will soon become clear, though, Herod didn’t choose Aristobulus — instead, he chose a Babylonian bro named Ananel.

Everything about Cleopatra got under Herod’s skin: her femininity, her capability, her quick wits, her legitimate royal descent, not to mention the sway she held over Antony, whom Herod much admired.

Mariamne, who had never been able to hide her disgust for Herod, was outraged by this slight against her family. Alexandra went a step further and wrote to Cleopatra, asking her to have Mark Antony intervene. It was, she said, an “unendurable insult” to have such an obscure person given the office of High Priest when there was a perfectly good Hasmonean male lounging around, suggestively eating peaches. Meanwhile, Quintus Dellius, a close friend of Mark Antony, suggested that Alexandra commission portraits of Aristobulus and Mariamne to send to Antony, presumably because they were his type and, I don’t know, he might be more inclined to help them if he was also sleeping with them? The most astonishing part of this messy, messy story is that Alexandra did exactly as Dellius suggested. Antony was so enthused about Aristobulus that he immediately asked for him to come to Alexandria.

ANTONY: I mean, I would have sent for Mariamne too

ANTONY: but that seemed like a recipe for disaster

ANTONY: jealousy on, uhhh, all fronts

CLEOPATRA: *clears throat*

Herod managed to read the room for a hot second and saw that sending the beautiful Hasmonean prince off to enchant Antony was a terrible idea. After politely declining his friend’s request, he assembled his family and council to unleash his fury on Alexandra. He accused her of being a wicked woman, of trying to undermine his rule, and of plotting against him with that known harridan, Cleopatra. Herod alleged that Alexandra wanted to replace him with Aristobulus. Alexandra broke down, weeping and swearing that none of it was true; like any good mother, she only wanted her son to have his due. She apologized for overstepping, and swore to become a model mother-in-law. Herod placed her under house arrest, but grudgingly made Aristobulus High Priest — after refusing to send him to Antony, he had to find some way to justify keeping him in Judea.

Alexandra was beyond outraged. How was it possible that she, a Hasmonean and mother of both the queen and high priest, could be imprisoned under false charges? Fearing for her life and the life of her son, she wrote to Cleopatra again, begging for help. Cleopatra was sympathetic (and, as always, only too delighted to be a thorn in Herod’s side); she agreed to send a ship to transport Alexandra and Aristobulus to Alexandria. On her end, Alexandra arranged to smuggle herself and her son out of the palace in two coffins that were to be loaded onto the ship. The plan was well in motion when Herod himself intercepted the coffins en route from Jerusalem to the coast; a servant in his mother-in-law’s household had betrayed her. Outwardly, Herod forgave Alexandra and all continued pretty much as it had before, but on the inside he was seething with fury and jealousy.

MARIAMNE: meanwhile, was anyone thinking about me?

MARIAMNE: while my husband was torturing my family, was anyone concerned for my safety?

MARIAMNE: you know, me, the person who shares his bed

MARIAMNE: the person who endures the front line of his wrath

MARIAMNE: the person who is arguably in the most danger

MARIAMNE: was anyone making any plans to whisk me out of the country?

MARIAMNE: the short answer is no

MARIAMNE: the long answer is also no

In the fall of of 35 BCE, Aristobulus presided over the Sukkoth festivities in his new role as High Priest. Beautiful any day of the week, he was especially resplendent in the gold diadem and floor-length, gem-speckled blue robes of the office. It was clear from the reactions of the crowd, who were randomly shouting out praise for the teenager along with the customary prayers, that he was more beloved than Herod would ever be. The king grew worried that some kind of coup would place his brother-in-law on the throne. So a few days later, at his palace in Jericho, Herod instructed a few of his trusted attendants to play a fun game with Aristobulus in the enormous swimming pool. The game involved holding the boy underwater for longer and longer periods until — whoops — he drowned. Who could have foreseen that this highly attractive royal youth would lose his life playing a fun and hilarious game? Certainly not Herod, who mourned the loudest and organized a lavish funeral.

Alexandra knew what had really happened, of course. Did Mariamne? Probably, although she might have been afraid to say so. Her mother had no such fear, and immediately wrote to Cleopatra, even though every other instance of doing so had led to disaster. The Queen of Egypt in turn pressed Mark Antony to confront Herod about Aristobulus’ death. Antony did, in the end, summon Herod to a meeting, but let him off with a slap on the wrist. Antony didn’t really care much what happened to the young Hasmoneans (beyond his desire to fuck them, presumably) as long as Judea was at peace and the taxes were paid on time. Unlike Cleopatra, he actually liked Herod. Plus, Herod was a much safer bet as a client king than the Hasmoneans, who were constantly troubling Rome with their uprisings and family drama.

While Herod was away, he left his wife in the care of Salome’s husband, Joseph, and ordered that if he was to die while in Egypt then Joseph should kill Mariamne. Herod explained that it wasn’t out of a lack of love for Mariamne — it was just that he loved her so much that he couldn’t stand the idea of her being with another man after his death. A perfectly reasonable, healthy relationship dynamic! Herod’s instructions to Joseph might have remained a secret if a rumor hadn’t begun circulating around Jerusalem that Mark Antony had decided to execute the King of Judea. Joseph, who obviously wasn’t thrilled at the idea of murdering the young queen, broke down and told Mariamne about his orders, and urged her and Alexandra to flee. Before she could do anything, messengers arrived bearing the news that Herod had emerged unscathed from his meeting with Antony and was on his way back.

When Herod returned home, he stepped right into a hornet’s nest of his own making. Mariamne was, naturally, furious. Joseph was apologetic. Salome, who was angling for a new husband, inserted herself into the drama and claimed that Mariamne and Joseph had been having an affair in the king’s absence. Herod, true to form, lost his shit. He executed Joseph, put Alexandra back under house arrest, and, for good measure, entertained the idea of executing his wife. Mariamne vehemently denied that anything had happened between her and her brother-in-law, and was so frenzied in her seductions of her newly returned husband that Herod believed her. Still, his paranoia was piqued.

Things were relatively tranquil in Judea for the next few years, at least from the outside. Herod dedicated most of his time to architectural projects, designing and building palaces, harbors, and even entire Roman-style cities. Mariamne popped out a bunch of babies, including several sons, just like she was expected to do; through his Hasmonean-blooded heirs, Herod finally had the legitimate royal dynasty he’d craved. But aside from the queen’s reproductive success, the domestic scene was shitty. Alexandra and Mariamne continued to condescend to Herod and his family; meanwhile, Salome and Cypros turned up the dial on their intriguing, trying to undermine the Hasmoneans on every front. This awkward holding pattern kept up until an event that shook the entire Roman world: Octavian declared war on Mark Antony.

Over the years, historians have portrayed Mariamne in a range of misogynistic and anti-Semitic stereotypes: she was too proud, thought too highly of herself, and was a frigid, nagging wife.

Things might have turned out differently for Herod if he had followed through on his first instinct, which was to rush to Antony’s side and defend his friend. But Cleopatra, still machinating away in Alexandria, couldn’t handle the thought of Herod gaining any further traction in Antony’s affections. Instead, she had Antony order Herod to fight the Nabateans to get some back taxes they owed her, but then sent forces of her own to shore up the Nabatean side and make sure they humiliated Herod on the battlefield. Her plan initially seemed to succeed, until she needed to withdraw those troops and send them to support her lover. The upshot of all this? When Octavian defeated Mark Antony, Herod came out looking much less culpable than the other client kings who had actually fought alongside Antony. Herod nonetheless knew that it would take a lot of buttering up to convince Octavian of his loyalty. So he headed off to Rhodes to meet Rome’s newest commander-in-chief, soon to be known as Augustus Caesar.

This time, Herod made the wise decision to separate Mariamne and Alexandra from Cypros and Salome while he was away. He sent the latter two back to Masada, and the former two to Alexandrium, another desert fortress, under the care of a man named Sohemus. He once again left instructions that his wife was to be killed if he should die abroad, this time adding that his mother-in-law should perish with her. While Herod was away, Alexandra urged her father, Hyrcanus II, to take refuge with the King of Nabataea; she was terrified that, as the last male Hasmonean, he would be the next person that the king targeted. Hyrcanus agreed and wrote to the Nabatean king, but his message was intercepted and delivered to Herod. The Judean king was thrilled to have an excuse to dispatch old Hyrcanus, and speedily ordered his execution. On the plus side, Herod’s paranoia had finally paid off and he had managed to uncover a plot. But in typical fashion, he had completely ignored how his reactionary ways would impact the people around him.

HEROD: things with Octavian were resolved pretty quickly

HEROD: I was like, bro

HEROD: don’t look at who my friends were, but look at how loyal of a friend I was!

HEROD: like, let my actions speak for themselves kind of thing

HEROD: I didn’t mention the pool incident

HEROD: pools can be really dangerous, though

HEROD: water safety is so important, and it’s sad that Aristobulus didn’t know that

HEROD: the youths just love indulging in risky pool behavior, it’s a scourge to be honest

HEROD: anyway. I got back from Rhodes in a celebratory mood

HEROD: but weirdly no one felt like celebrating?

Mariamne was distraught when Herod returned. She refused to share his bed and accused him of murdering her grandfather and brother. Herod, in return, was furious that his wife just couldn’t see things his way. Salome and Cypros once again began stirring the pot and claimed that Mariamne had been unfaithful with Sohemus, her guardian. Mariamne was too angry to employ her usual tactic to manage Herod’s rages, namely luring him to bed, so his doubts about her began to grow. After months of pressure from his mother and sister, Herod ordered the torture of Mariamne’s favorite eunuch to get the dirt on his wife. The eunuch knew nothing about cheating or regicidal plots, but he admitted under duress that Mariamne had been upset to learn that Herod had again ordered her execution in the case of his death. Outraged that he had been undermined, Herod ordered Sohemus’ execution and put Mariamne on trial. Alexandra, apparently doing her best to save her own skin, testified that Mariamne had indeed planned to murder her husband.

Mariamne was found guilty by Herod’s stacked jury, and for a while he contemplated locking her up as he had Alexandra. But Salome and Cypros were whispering in his ear: an imprisoned Hasmonean princess would be an object of public sympathy, which could lead to an uprising. Wasn’t it best just to kill her and get it over with? Eventually, an agonized Herod agreed.

Mariamne walked proudly and silently to her death, her head high and her face unafraid. After her execution, Herod was frantic with grief. He couldn’t believe he just killed the woman he had loved with such burning intensity. He is said to have ordered Mariamne’s body to be embalmed in honey to preserve her beauty; then, sickened by his guilt, Herod retreated to the desert. Rumors that he was dying began spreading throughout Judea, and Alexandra took control of two of his fortified bases. As soon as word reached the king, he returned to Jerusalem and dispatched his unruly mother-in-law. The Hasmonean dynasty, which had been declining since before Mariamne’s birth, was extinguished forever.

The corpse embalmed in honey almost becomes a perfect metaphor for Mariamne: a woman stripped of her very self, preserved forever in a form meant to please men.

Over the years, historians have portrayed Mariamne in a range of misogynistic and anti-Semitic stereotypes: she was too proud, thought too highly of herself, and was a frigid, nagging wife. Even more troubling, there are versions of Mariamne’s story that depict her and Herod as star-crossed lovers, two kids who might have made it if it hadn’t been for their meddling families. Herod’s distress over her death has been romanticized over the years, with people like Byron portraying him as a doomed hero. All I have to say is: If Lord Fucking Byron is writing sympathetic poems about you, you are not living your life right.

Given the few facts about Mariamne that we do have, what can we surmise about her? Surely she must have had a strong sense of self and was unafraid to speak her mind. She repeatedly went toe-to-toe with the man who had murdered half of her family, even though she must have known that her life was on the line. And, like so many other queens, she was a survivor, twisting and slipping through the many snares life had set out before her. She and Cleopatra had several things in common — they lived at the same time, in roughly the same neighborhood, under similar pressure from Roman politics. But the most important common thread in their legacy is that their stories have been twisted and compressed over the centuries to fit various men’s agendas. The corpse embalmed in honey almost becomes a perfect metaphor for Mariamne: a woman stripped of her very self, preserved forever in a form meant to please men. As with so many other queens, the best we can do for Mariamne is conjure up an idea of what she might have been like. It won’t be exactly accurate, but what history is? It’s better than losing the memory of her altogether.

With that in mind: long live Mariamne! Long live the fucking queen!

* * *

For further reading on Mariamne:
Norman Gelb, Herod the Great: Statesman, Visionary, Tyrant
Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life
Peter Richardson, Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: Njinga
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based writer whose bylines can be found all over the internet, including at the Guardian, the London Review of Books and, obviously, Longreads. She truly believes that your favourite Tudor wife says more about you than your astrological sign. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. You can find her on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Fact-Checker: Steven Cohen
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 135193 https://longreads.com/2019/10/03/queens-of-infamy-njinga/ Thu, 03 Oct 2019 11:00:09 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=131073 The Portuguese colonizers of West Central Africa learned it the hard way: you mess with the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba at your own peril.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | October 2019 | 23 minutes (5,741 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

Late into the 16th century, Kengela ka Nkombe gave birth to her second child. Her first had been a son, and she had dutifully named him after his father, Mbande, the future king of Ndongo. This one was a girl. The birth was difficult; the baby was breech, her face was upturned, and the umbilical cord was wrapped firmly around her neck. Royal attendants were able to safely guide the baby out of her mother’s body, but everyone present agreed that the birth foretold an unusual life. Mbande, who openly doted on Kengela as his favourite concubine, was immediately smitten with his newest child. He named her Njinga, from the Kimbundu verb kujinga, which means to twist or turn — ostensibly a reference to the cord wrapped around her neck. But perhaps as he held his daughter for the first time, he caught a brief glimpse of her future: how she would twist and turn to outwit her enemies, gain the throne, and, ultimately, fight for her country’s freedom.

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The kingdom of Ndongo was an early-modern African state located in present-day Angola, and, at the time of Njinga’s birth, a rancid combination of white people, colonialism, and the Atlantic slave trade were tearing it apart. The Portuguese had shown up in Ndongo in the late 15th century and had quickly realized that they could exploit the rich coastal lands for the glory (read: financial gain) of their empire. Of course, they claimed to be doing it in the name of bringing Jesus to the locals and saving their souls, but their definition of salvation included the transportation of millions of people across the Atlantic, where they forced them to work in brutal, degrading, and deadly conditions. The first direct slave voyage from Africa to the Americas happened by the early 1520s; by the time the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in North America in 1619, the Atlantic slave trade was already in full swing in South America. The enormous scale of the operation is hard to wrap one’s mind around; tens of thousands of enslaved people were sent from Angola to Brazil between 1575 and 1595, a number that would climb into the millions before the practice was abolished in Portugal a few centuries later.

Because this type of discussion always generates some version of “but the Africans also enslaved each other,” allow me just to state up front that, yes, the people of Ndongo had a system of free and unfree individuals. People who were unfree fell into two categories: kijikos, similar to the serfs that had existed in Western Europe before the socio-economic upheaval of the Black Death, and mubikas, enslaved people who could be sold as property, most of whom had been captured in battles with other kingdoms. Of course any theft of human freedom is horrific, and the complexities of pre-colonial slavery in what would later become Angola are worth discussing within their own context. There is still a vast, vast difference between the system that existed before colonization and the operation the Portuguese created. Any comparison between the two in the year of our lord 2019 is made in bad faith.

The Portuguese presence in West Central Africa was limited at first to their trading posts and missions, but in 1571, Sebastian of Portugal — a pouty blond with firm calves — ordered the conquest and subjugation of all of Ndongo. All in Jesus’s name, no doubt. By the time Njinga’s father became king in 1593, her country had been at war for over a decade.

Much of Njinga’s legacy in the West has been rooted in racist, sexist propaganda created by white people; it’s only recently that a more accurate depiction of her life has begun to gain traction outside of her homeland. The credit for this shift goes to scholars like Linda M. Heywood, who have meticulously stitched together academic sources, contemporary documents, and details passed down through oral traditions to create a fully fleshed-out portrait of Njinga and her accomplishments. Heywood’s book Njinga of Angola is considered to be one of the most authoritative biographies of the queen and is the source for most of the facts in this piece.

* * *

Njinga was her father’s clear favorite throughout her childhood. She was 10 when Mbande became the ngola, or king, of Ngondo (“Angola” comes from the Portuguese misunderstanding the meaning of ngola and thinking it was the name of the kingdom). He often involved her in his official duties: she attended many of the legal councils that her father oversaw, received military training, and participated in the ritual activities that were so vital to their culture. The fact that she was a girl and not even the child of his principal wife made all of this very unusual, but then again maybe this explains why Mbande a Ngola felt comfortable to display his preference so publicly. It would have been unheard of to lavish that kind of individual attention on any of his sons; to do so meant risking jealousy not only among them, but also among their mothers, many of whom came from powerful families. A daughter, though, was different — for one thing, no one really viewed her as direct competition. Besides, everyone agreed that Njinga was special. She outperformed her brothers in every capacity, including with the battle axe, which was the royal weapon of choice.

NJINGA: boys!

NJINGA: they’re such simple creatures

NJINGA: so thirsty for their father’s affections

NJINGA: so easy to humiliate

NJINGA: it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, if all the fish also had serious daddy issues

Even as Njinga was living large and serving up slices of emasculation pie to her brothers, Ndongo was deeply embroiled in conflict. The Imbangala, a militarized nomadic society of young people living in war camps, had long been harassing Ndongo on their own; now they joined up with the Portuguese. The Imbangala wanted the Ndongo territory, and the Portuguese wanted to destabilize the kingdom and enslave the refugees created by the Imbangala invasion. It was a powerful alliance, and one that Njinga’s father struggled to counter with the men or arms at his disposal.

The king tried everything — open warfare, diplomacy, negotiation — but the forces he was facing were implacable. To make matters worse, many regional Ndongo leaders began defecting to the Portuguese once they saw which way the tide was turning. This shocking betrayal gutted Mbande a Ngola. Not only had those regional leaders been contributing manpower to the fight, their annual tributes to the king had underpinned the financial and administrative cohesion of Ndongo. With these tributes going to the Portuguese instead, the kingdom began to crumble in earnest. By the time his own men ambushed and murdered Mbande a Ngola in 1617, he held just a fraction of the territory his father had passed on to him. What was left of Ndongo soon fell into a succession crisis.

Her game was a universe unto itself, expanding ever outwards and snickering cosmically at anything that might cross its path.

The king-making system in Ndongo was complex. Claimants to the throne had to be of noble lineage, which made for a large pool of candidates, as kings tended to have many children by both wives and concubines. They also had to be elected into the position by specially-designated court officials. Having a multi-level qualification process typically resulted in a peaceful transfer of power, but the chaos following Mbande a Ngola’s death meant that business was not proceeding as usual. Njinga’s older brother Ngola Mbande, with whom she shared both parents, decided to make his move. Normally a concubine’s son would have had a weak claim to the throne, but he worked the political turmoil following his father’s death to his advantage and staged a coup in the capital before the traditional electors could assemble. He consolidated his power by making sure that he had no male relatives who might interfere with his accession, swiftly killing off his half-brother (who, as the son of Mbande a Ngola’s chief wife, represented his main competition), the rest of his half-brother’s family, and many prominent members of the court. Then he came for his sisters.

First, Ngola Mbande murdered Njinga’s newborn son, her first and only child. Next, he purportedly ordered the sterilization of Njinga and their sisters, Kambu and Funji, with herbs and boiling oils. Satisfied that none of his full-blood siblings would be able to produce a male heir, he let them live.

NJINGA: obviously I’m glad I wasn’t killed

NJINGA: but, objectively, it wasn’t a very smart move on his part

NJINGA: a lot of assumptions going on there

NJINGA: that women aren’t a threat unless they have sons

NJINGA: that they won’t seek revenge

NJINGA: just a whole lot of assumptions

Ngola Mbande may have thought he was playing the long game, but Njinga was on a different level entirely. Her game was a universe unto itself, expanding ever outwards and snickering cosmically at anything that might cross its path.

* * *

Njinga plotted and bided for so long that eventually Ngola Mbande just assumed things were cool between them again. That time he murdered her only child? Water under the bridge, probably! Women get so emotional about these things but you’ve just got to give them time to calm down. Things in fact seemed so chill to the king that he decided to turn to his sister for help. You know how it is when you’ve poured boiling oil on a person’s reproductive organs but then, haha oh man awkward, you need to ask them to do you a solid.

By 1621, Ngola Mbande’s rule was in a precarious position. The Portuguese were pressuring him on all sides, with increased violence, an expansion in the Atlantic slave trade, and the kidnapping of several highly-placed members of the royal family. Njinga was 39 years old at this point, estranged from her brother and living to the east of Ndongo in the kingdom of Matamba; in the years since her brother’s attack, she had spent her time honing her reputation for leadership both on and off the battlefield. When a new governor of Portuguese Angola was appointed, the king sensed that the moment for negotiating was ripe, and asked his sister to be his ambassador to the Portuguese Angolan capital of Luanda. Njinga, amazingly, did not immediately respond with FUCK YOU FOR KILLING MY KID, but instead agreed. In early 1622, she entered Luanda with an impressive retinue. It must have seemed like she’d been training for this moment her whole life. After all those years of learning at her father’s feet, of honing her skills, of pushing through her degradation and pain, she was finally going to show the Portuguese that the Ndongo people were a force to be reckoned with. The fact that she would also publicly humiliate her brother by outshining him once again was just icing on the cake.

Caught in a Jesus snare of their own making, the Portuguese didn’t have much choice but to agree to Njinga’s conditions.

Njinga arrived in Luanda dressed in traditional clothing, which was unusual given her station. Most dignitaries from Ndongo would wear opulent Portuguese fashions when meeting with them as a way of sartorially placing themselves on the same level, but Njinga felt that would be a tacit acknowledgement that the people of Ndongo were inferior to the colonizers. Witnesses describe her as being draped in expensive fabrics, dripping with priceless jewels, colorful feathers bedecking her elaborate hairstyles. During the negotiations, Governor João Correia de Sousa tried to humiliate her by having her sit on the floor while he perched on a velvet chair, but Njinga was equal to this: she ordered a female attendant to get on her hands and knees and sat on her the entire time. It was a dense lasagna of power moves, with layers targeting not just the governor, but also her own people, especially those who might doubt her abilities. The message was: none of you had better step the fuck out of line.

She flattered the Portuguese and acceded to many of their requests, promising them that her brother would cease military operations if they did the same. The only issue on which she remained unbending was the governor’s demand that Ngola Mbande pay an annual tribute to the Portuguese king. This, she said, would have been fair if they were a conquered state, but her brother was not a vassal. He was a sovereign king negotiating with an equal. When the governor expressed suspicion at the idea that Ngola Mbande actually wanted peace, Njinga played her trump card: if the Portuguese agreed to her brother’s terms, she would agree to study the Christian catechism and to be baptized. After all, hadn’t the Portuguese invaded Africa in order to save souls? And here was a royal soul fresh for the picking. Were the Portuguese implying that her soul was worth less than an earthly tribute? Caught in a Jesus snare of their own making, the Portuguese didn’t have much choice but to agree to Njinga’s conditions.

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Njinga seemed to embrace her new religion, studying its rituals with enthusiasm. She took the baptismal name Ana de Sousa after her godparents, Ana da Silva (whose family she stayed with during the negotiations) and Governor de Sousa. The government officials came to greatly respect Njinga, and she later said that this was a time of great happiness in her life. It was also a diplomatic success; by the time she left Luanda, Njinga had secured a promise for a peace treaty.

* * *

In spite of Njinga’s ingenious politicking, the promise of peace did not last. An alliance that Ngola Mbande had made with the Imbangala collapsed and the Ndongo court was driven out of their capital of Kabasa. The Portuguese wouldn’t put the treaty into action while the king was in exile and unbaptized, and Njinga, in turn, was pressuring her brother into refusing the latter of these terms. In the wake of his sister’s success in Luanda, Ngola Mbande had come to rely heavily on her counsel. Now he listened attentively as she swore that it would be humiliating for the King of Ndongo to submit to a foreign power, and would amount to a betrayal of their customs. A conversion, Njinga said, would cause all of his supporters to abandon him. If this seems a little much coming from the person who had just gone through a strategic baptism, it might be worth considering Njinga’s private desire to undermine her brother. Of course, every word she said was completely true! But also: she had a slow revenge to wreak.

NJINGA: the Portuguese betrayed us in the end

NJINGA: in case you haven’t quite caught the theme of colonialism yet

NJINGA: as it turns out, their promises are worth less than shit

NJINGA: shit is useful for fertilizing, at least

NJINGA: anyway, my brother died by poisoning two years after my trip to Luanda, a broken man

NJINGA: some said the poison was self-administered

NJINGA: some said that I did it

NJINGA: but, truly, secret killings are not my style at all

Ngola Mbande had made it clear in his last years that he wanted Njinga to succeed him, and after his death she worked quickly to secure her position. She organized a lavish funeral for her brother and preserved some of his remains in a traditional reliquary called a misete so she could consult him as an ancestor, thus establishing herself as the spiritual heir of Ndongo. She hurriedly assembled the court officials necessary to vote herself into power. Although records aren’t clear on whether her title at this point was queen or “Lady of Angola,” what is certain is that she was the leader of the people of Ndongo who still refused to submit to colonial rule.

Njinga’s first order of business as queen was apparently a chilled bowl full of revenge. She accomplished this by seducing and marrying a much younger Imbangala leader named Kasa, to whom Ngola Mbande had entrusted his oldest son’s care during a brief alliance. According to some reports, after the wedding Njinga immediately murdered her nephew and several other family members, saying that she had finally avenged her own son’s death.

NJINGA: I will neither confirm nor deny whether this is true

NJINGA: I just have three words for you

NJINGA: the

NJINGA: longest

NJINGA: game

Njinga tried to engage diplomatically with the Portuguese once again, but it did not go very well. Another governor had been appointed in Luanda, and he was sharp enough to know that the new leader of Ndongo was someone who could inflict some serious damage on the colony. Eventually the Portuguese refused to recognize the queen’s rule and set up a puppet regime. Njinga, with the support of her people, moved into full rebellion. She wasn’t the kind of ruler who plotted military tactics from the safety of a desk, either; the Portuguese often spotted her just behind the front line, rallying and directing her troops under a hail of arrows and mustketballs. She did her best to rout the Portuguese in other ways, too, cutting supply lines and limiting their access to slave markets. She also encouraged those enslaved by the Portuguese to escape, offering them refuge and protection if they joined her.

Njinga’s first order of business as queen was apparently a chilled bowl full of revenge.

Given all these tactics that she was deploying against the Portuguese slave trade, it’s tempting to view Njinga as a grand crusader against slavery, but the truth is much thornier. Njinga had grown up in a culture where slavery was commonly practiced. Her family had always owned enslaved people and she personally continued to do so throughout her life. She had given enslaved people as gifts to the Portuguese while making diplomatic overtures, and during treaty negotiations her power to re-open slave markets was always in the background. But — and this is an important but — it is also true that she spent considerable time and resources on thwarting the Portuguese slave trade. Historical records show that the number of enslaved people departing Luanda for the Americas dropped in 1623 just as Njinga was beginning to consolidate her power; this number would fluctuate over the coming years as the balance of power shifted between the Queen of Ndongo and the Portuguese, finally falling to zero in 1642 and staying low for the rest of Njinga’s life. It’s possible that her claim of supporting the Portuguese slave trade was all part of her statecraft, an empty show of alliance that distracted them while she worked to circumvent them. We can only guess at what her actual intentions were, but the numbers tell a compelling story.

In spite of Njinga’s prowess on the battlefield, she encountered the same problems as her father and brother: they just couldn’t match the numbers or firepower of the Portuguese and their allies. By 1626, the queen was struggling. The Portuguese kept coming, and her troops were reduced to employing guerilla tactics as they retreated. Worse, some of her early supporters were now deserting her and pledging loyalty to her enemies. After enduring heavy losses that year, the Queen of Ndongo found herself cornered on an island in the Kwanza river. All might have seemed lost to a lesser leader, but Njinga was determined to keep fighting at any cost. She decided to use her brother’s relics, partaking in a ritual where his spirit possessed a priest to communicate with the living. Through this priest, Ngola Mbande told his sister that she must refuse to become a vassal to the Portuguese at any cost, and that it was better to “retain one’s liberty through flight” than submit to the enemy.

NGOLA MBANDE: I’m just doing my best to be a good ghost-sibling

NJINGA: you’re a great ghost-sibling!

NGOLA MBANDE: I just want to be supportive, you know?

NJINGA: I like you way, way better as a ghost than as a human

NJINGA: leaving this realm has really matured you

NGOLA MBANDE: I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a compliment but I’m just going to take it as one

With the assumed approval of their ancestors, Njinga convinced her remaining followers to escape under the cover of darkness, somehow avoiding the detection of the Portuguese troops surrounding the island. After taking some time to regroup and shore up support in the eastern part of her kingdom, Njinga came back stronger than ever. She spent the next three years harassing and striking the Portuguese, who became increasingly alarmed over the fact that this woman just would not go away.

Then, in 1629, the queen was dealt a crushing blow: her camp was invaded by the enemy, and while she was able to escape by rappelling down a cliff into a ravine, her sisters, Kambu and Funji, were captured. This was a devastating loss: they were the closest thing she had to social peers, and the only people she fully trusted. After learning that Portuguese troops had dragged the royal sisters to Luanda and forced them to convert to Christianity, Njinga swore that she wouldn’t rest until she freed them.

* * *

This latest attack had left Njinga with greatly depleted troops and a considerably smaller territory. She sent a messenger to Kasanje, the leader of a powerful Imbangala war camp, begging him to shelter her from the Portuguese. He agreed, but only on certain conditions: that Njinga submit to him as his wife, that she dispose of her lunga (a large bell symbolically carried by military leaders during times of war), and that she live by his traditions. Surprisingly, she agreed. Now entering her late 40s, the Queen of Ndongo began the intensive training necessary to become an Imbangala warrior. She had spent her entire life besting those around her and had used her grit and resilience to rise from favorite daughter to brilliant negotiator to queen of the battlefield. Now she realized that, somehow, she had to find it within her to be even better than her best. Humility is a bitter pill, but it was one Njinga was willing to swallow in order to be reborn once again.

Njinga thrived in Kasanje’s camp. She learned the exhaustive set of rules and traditions that guided the Imbangala. Many of these reflected their belief that hierarchies should be based on merit instead of bloodlines; one of the ways this was reinforced was by strictly forbidding childbirth within the camp. This meant that even the children of the Imbangala elite could only enter the camp as young adults and had to endure the same initiation ordeals as anyone else. Njinga, of course, managed to work this to her advantage, throwing herself body and soul into her new life. Much like at her father’s court, she displayed great prowess and athleticism during her physical training. After a few years, she was skilled enough to become an Imbangala leader in her own right, establishing a new war camp and taking the name Ngola Njinga Ngombe e Nga (Queen Njinga, Master of Arms and Great Warrior). From there, she invaded the nearby kingdom of Matamba, and, after a brief and victorious battle, declared herself its queen. Now the undisputed ruler of an established territory, Njinga finally had a secure base from which to attack the Portuguese, free Ndongo, and rescue her sisters.

NJINGA: thought I forgot about them, didn’t you?

NJINGA: as the kids might say, I would never

NJINGA: everything, literally everything I do, is a means to an end

Njinga immediately began negotiations with the Portuguese to release her sisters. Throughout the 1630s she kept pushing back at her enemies from every angle, leaning on both diplomacy and military actions. When the Dutch arrived in central Africa in 1641, Njinga immediately sensed an opportunity to forge an alliance and get rid of the Portuguese once and for all. She managed to contact her sister Funji, who became Njinga’s spy. Between this bit of luck and a decent working relationship with the Dutch (who had a beef with Spain and Portugal that they imported all the way from Europe), there were a few years where it seemed like Njinga was finally about to triumph. Then, in 1647, the queen received terrible news: Funji’s cover had been blown and the Portuguese had drowned her in retaliation. Another piece of terrible news swiftly followed: the Dutch, sensing that they couldn’t defeat the Portuguese, had betrayed Njinga and made a treaty with her greatest enemies.

Humility is a bitter pill, but it was one Njinga was willing to swallow in order to be reborn once again.

By the time of the Dutch betrayal in 1648, Njinga was in her mid-60s. She had been queen for two and a half decades and had spent most of that time fighting for her nation’s independence, and now she once again had to find an entirely new strategy to rid her land of the colonizers and reunite what was left of her family. It was at this point that two men appeared on the scene: a pair of captured Spanish Capuchin friars who ended up shaping the rest of Njinga’s life.

The Capuchins were the first missionaries Njinga had met who weren’t also actively promoting Portuguese interests. And even though their relationship got off to a bit of a rocky start (the Capuchins came to the queen as plunder from a battle in nearby Kongo), pretty soon things were going along swimmingly: the missionaries were plotting conversion, and Njinga was thinking big picture. Thanks to the arrival of the Capuchins, she conceived of a bold new plan — to develop her own relationship with Rome and convince the Pope to recognize her as a bonafide Christian ruler. After all, if she had the support of the almighty Vatican, surely the Portuguese could no longer challenge her right to the throne. And so began Njinga’s strategic re-conversion to Christianity in order to beat the colonizing Catholics at their own game.

NJINGA: and, again, going back to the issue of my sister Kambu

NJINGA: now living an exemplary Christian life under the name Barbara

NJINGA: I got the church to pressure the Portuguese into releasing her

NJINGA: you know, to teach me the ways of Christ

NJINGA: not to brag, but … genius, no?

On October 12, 1656, 27 years after the capture of her sisters, the 74-year-old queen finally reunited with her last surviving sibling. As soon as she saw her, Njinga collapsed to the ground and began rubbing soil on herself, the custom for someone paying homage to their superior or receiving a favor. Then the queen approached her sister and, after kissing her hands and kneeling before her, dropped her head to the ground again. After that, the two held and kissed each other wordlessly, too overcome with emotion to speak.

* * *

Barbara arrived with a retinue of Portuguese diplomats who were ready to sign a peace treaty. Njinga agreed to all the terms, including a formal reconciliation with the Catholic church and a promise to baptize all children born after the treaty was signed. The next few days were given over to celebrations that lasted late into the night, much to the chagrin of the queen’s new spiritual directors.

Of course, not all of Njinga’s people were thrilled about the Christianization of Ngondo. Had she really spent so many years fighting the colonizers only to now submit to their religion? Traditional Ndongo priests were especially alarmed. So, just like she had done so many years before when she had to justify her retreat from the Portuguese, Njinga used the relics of her brother and several other ancestors to receive supernatural support. In a carefully staged rite, Njinga asked them if they approved of her obeying Christian law and giving up their traditional beliefs. The spirit of Ngola Mbande told her that he would prefer that she follow the ancient ways of their people, but if Christianizing their nation was what it took to bring about peace and prosperity, then he would accept it. The rest of the ancestors agreed. Satisfied, Njinga began the process of conversion in earnest.

NJINGA: I’m officially a Christian!

NJINGA: again, lol

CHURCH: ok, but there are a few things you’re going to need to change about your life…

NJINGA: like what?

CHURCH: uhhhh your many concubines, for one thing

NJINGA: what about them?

CHURCH: you’ll have to give them up and get married in a Christian ceremony

NJINGA: oh

NJINGA: ok, well

NJINGA: for my Christian husband, I have chosen a beautiful youth many decades younger than me

NJINGA: this is my Christian marriage, take it or leave it

CHURCH: …..

CHURCH: fine, as long as it happens in a church

Njinga also redoubled her efforts to have the church recognize her reign, sending letter after letter to the Vatican. Finally, in 1660, the Pope responded to her personally, calling her his daughter in Christ and saying that he would pray for her country to be prosperous and virtuous. Finally, Njinga had received recognition of her queenhood from an authority that the Portuguese would have to respect.

By the time of her death at the age of 81, Njinga had managed to achieve what she’d always longed for: a stable, independent nation no longer living under the threat of the Portuguese.

With this letter in hand, the queen set about her mission of converting her country with as much zeal as she had used for everything else in her life. She erected an enormous, European-style church in her new capital in Matamba, importing materials from across the country. She did her best to keep her promise to baptize the babies of Ndongo and Matamba, even though it was an uphill endeavor; in spite of Njinga’s new enthusiasm for Christianity, most of her subjects were (rightfully) wary of it. She also dedicated herself to learning the specifics of Catholic rites and lore. While some of this might seem as staged as her final ritual invoking her brother — especially given her former stated desire of preserving traditional Ndongo spiritual practices — her sincerity convinced many eyewitnesses, including Catholic priests.

By the time of her death at the age of 81, Njinga had managed to achieve what she’d always longed for: a stable, independent nation no longer living under the threat of the Portuguese. Shortly before she died in late 1663, she communicated exactly what she wanted to happen after her death: a Christian burial in a plain Capuchin habit with none of the traditional Ndongo funerary rites. She appointed an interim viceroy and pronounced her sister Barbara to be her successor. She had been queen for nearly four decades; she had been fighting for her nation’s sovereignty for even longer.

After she died, Njinga’s body was carefully washed by her attendants, who annointed it with herbs, perfume, and powders. Her hair was styled with corals, pearls, and feathers, and her crown was placed on her head. Her limbs were loaded down with jewellery and arrangements of elephant hair, a symbol of royalty. Her body was wrapped in two richly wrought brocade cloths, and velvet slippers were placed on her feet. Then, mindful of her instructions, her attendants replaced all of this with a habit, a crucifix, and a rosary (although they left her hair and crown as they were). This ceremonial dressing and re-dressing represented a middle ground between the two traditions Njinga had spent decades navigating.

News of Njinga’s death didn’t become public right away; her councillors worried that it would invoke mass panic. Njinga had ruled for so long and her fate seemed so tied up with that of Ndongo that most people couldn’t imagine a nation without her. When court officials finally did disclose the truth about her death, after they had first crowned Barbara to demonstrate their commitment to a peaceful transition of power, Njinga’s body was carried through the streets in a funeral procession. The crowds wailed and fell to the ground as she passed by, symbolically rubbing soil on themselves to show submission to their queen.

There are few monarchs in recorded history who are Njinga’s peers when it comes to longevity, skill, or achievement, yet she’s rarely included in Western lists of great kings and queens.

Njinga’s subjects were so adamant in their desire to partake in customary Ndongo funeral rites — the rites that they had grown up with and that they associated with sovereignty in the face of the Portuguese — that eventually Barbara and Njinga’s chief Capuchin priest gave in (on the condition that there be no “immodest” dances). Twenty thousand people showed up and had to be housed in a temporary village constructed in the city centre. The rites included a lengthy performance in which every aspect of the queen’s life was re-enacted, from her military triumphs to her renowned debating ability to humorous sketches about her strong personality. Many of the scenes ended with shouts of “Long live the queen, I am ready to give my life to defend her from her enemies!” The celebration of Njinga’s rule concluded with an opulent meal served by the new queen, Barbara.

There are few monarchs in recorded history who are Njinga’s peers when it comes to longevity, skill, or achievement, yet she’s rarely included in Western lists of great kings and queens. While she was able to enchant — or at least grudgingly impress — many people during her life, racism and misogyny soon began to distort her legacy in Europe. Father Cavazzi, an Italian priest who lived at her court, wrote a scathing biography of her that included some choice lines about her sexuality (“She was a sea of lust and had more concubines than the three most famous concubines in the world had lovers.”) Over the years, various white chroniclers wrote works about her that strayed further and further from the truth, describing her as a depraved, bloodthirsty despot who ate the hearts of her enemies. Even Njinga’s quick wits were considered suspect, too “masculine” to belong to a proper queen.

The Angolans kept the memory of Njinga’s brilliance alive, and in the tempestuous years that followed her death they passed her story from one generation to another. She was remembered as a great ruler, someone whose resilience, determination, and sheer genius had led her to succeed against all possible odds. By the time Angola wrested its independence from Portugal in 1975 — just over 400 years after Sebastian gave the order for its conquest — Njinga had become firmly entrenched as a symbol of independence and the Angolans referred to her as the Mother of the Nation. In 2002, a massive statue of her was unveiled in a public square in Luanda; it was later moved to the Museum of Armed Forces, where it still stands today. While it was still in public, the statue became a popular gathering spot, and newlyweds often posed for pictures in front of it, as they might with their actual parents. As in life, Njinga’s monument overshadows everything around it, her feet planted firmly and her face raised and defiant, ready to take on whatever comes next.

Long live the fucking queen!

---

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Malmaison to More-Than-Monarch
Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Njinga:
Linda M. Heywood, Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen
Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660

* * *

Anne Thériault is a is a Toronto-based writer whose bylines can be found all over the internet, including at the Guardian, the London Review of Books and, obviously, Longreads. She truly believes that your favourite Tudor wife says more about you than your astrological sign. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. You can find her on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Fact-Checker: Matt Giles
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 131073 https://longreads.com/2019/04/04/queens-of-infamy-josephine-bonaparte-part-two/ Thu, 04 Apr 2019 10:00:14 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=122913 In fraught games of power politics, sometimes the best revenge is not being exiled to die alone on an island in the South Atlantic. ]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | April 2019 | 23 minutes (5,836 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

When we left the future Empress, she was 32 and had just completed her third transformation — and name change — in as many decades. First she had been Yeyette, the coarse, uneducated girl from the colonies struggling to find her place in Paris society; then she had been Marie-Josèphe, the beautiful and popular estranged wife of a Revolutionary hero with a whiff of the courtesan about her; now she was a survivor of the Reign of Terror, a Merveilleuse famous for her revealing clothing, and a semi-professional mistress to the rich and powerful. It was in this latest incarnation that she was christened Josephine by her newest bedmate, a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte.

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The young lovers had met through Paul Barras, who was both Napoleon’s boss and Josephine’s sugar daddy. After being aggressively pursued by the famously uncouth Corsican for months, Josephine had, for her own inscrutable reasons, decided to give in to his advances.

If she’d hoped that sleeping with him would somehow slake his obsession with her, she was wrong. Very wrong.

Napoleon’s fixation on Josephine only deepened once they became lovers, and often it tipped over into vicious fits of jealousy. In a letter to a friend, Josephine wrote, “I am afraid, I admit, of the empire he seems to want over all those who surround him.” She also wrote that the “force of [his] passion” made her uncomfortable, although she couldn’t quite articulate why; she knew that she should find his devotion to her attractive, but it creeped her out. Still, after weighing the pros and cons, she eventually gave in to his marriage proposal. She was getting older, and she wanted the security of a husband. Plus, he did seem to genuinely love her, even if his particular brand of love sometimes had a frightening edge.

The wedding was set for March 9, 1796. Since Catholicism was still banned in France, it was a civil service held at a small town hall. Napoleon arrived two hours late, a total asshole power move. The rest of the event was as messy as its beginning: the ages on the marriage certificate were wrong, one of the witnesses was too young to legally be a witness, and everyone was in a bad mood. It almost certainly wasn’t the wedding Josephine had expected, but she grimaced her way through it. When they got home, Josephine refused to move her beloved dog Fortuné off the bed to make room for Napoleon. When his mistress’ new husband tried to push him aside, the pug bit him. Sometimes dogs just know.

If Josephine found one bright spot on her second wedding day, it might have been the inscription on the wedding band Napoleon placed on her finger: “au destin,” to destiny. Both husband and wife believed that they were marked by fate, and nothing could have been a more fitting motto for them. Their shared faith that their marriage — and, indeed, their entire lives — had been predestined would shape many of their choices in the coming years.

* * *

Two days after the wedding, Napoleon left for a military campaign in Italy. His letters from this time are textbook examples of the cycle of abuse, heady declarations of love alternating with vicious scolding for not writing back often enough or with the right emotion. That being said, Josephine’s reasons for not replying in a timely fashion were less than virtuous: she’d begun an affair with a beautiful young soldier named Hippolyte Charles and, through him, had become involved with some shady backroom arms dealing. In Josephine’s defense, taking a lover or two on the side was a normal part of the world she lived in; after all, it hadn’t been that long since she’d been a fixture at Thérésa Tallien’s orgies. Still, she must have known that Napoleon expected monogamy. She must have known that she was playing a dangerous game.

While Josephine was ignoring her husband’s letters and living the high life in Paris, Napoleon was growing more and more anguished, and when he told Barras that he hated all women and was consumed with despair, the older man decided that he needed to step in. Napoleon had been racking up astonishing victories in Italy, and Barras couldn’t afford to have him distracted from his work. So one night, after a dinner given in her honor, he muscled Josephine into a carriage bound for Milan. She cried and begged him to let her stay, but Barras was adamant. He was going to give Napoleon whatever he wanted, including, once again, Josephine.

When they got home, Josephine refused to move her beloved dog Fortuné off the bed to make room for Napoleon. When his mistress’ new husband tried to push him aside, the pug bit him. Sometimes dogs just know.

Napoleon was overjoyed by his wife’s arrival. Their time apart had only heightened his obsession and when they met in Italy, he couldn’t stop fondling her, even in front of his staff. Josephine found his attentions overwhelming. “My husband doesn’t love me, he worships me,” she wrote to an acquaintance. Even though her life in Milan was lavish — she was staying in a literal palace — Josephine was miserable. She missed her life in Paris, she missed her children, she missed her freedom.

Napoleon had to return to the front lines soon after Josephine’s arrival, from whence he sent her letters about her vagina, calling it “the little black forest” and writing that “[t]o live within Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields.” Truly, this man missed his calling as a romance writer.

JOSEPHINE: on the whole, Italy was kind of a wash

JOSEPHINE: I mean, the plundering part was pretty fun

JOSEPHINE: the Italians make great art, I’ll give them that

JOSEPHINE: but then Napoleon’s family arrived from Marseilles

JOSEPHINE: I mean, they basically moved in with us!

JOSEPHINE: and there are not enough Correggio paintings in the world to make it worth putting up with them

Napoleon’s family had been less than enthused to learn about his marriage.  Josephine was infamous by this point, and her scandals well-known. Napoleon’s mother opposed the match from a moral standpoint as well as a financial one — her son had been supporting the family ever since his father’s death several years earlier, and she didn’t relish seeing that support drained away by a depraved slattern from the colonies. In spite of Josephine’s attempts to charm her new husband’s family, they would openly loathe her for the rest of her life. His 16-year-old sister Pauline was especially heinous to Josephine: she referred to her as “la vielle” (the old woman), stuck her tongue out at her behind her back, and did her best to outdress her sister-in-law on every occasion.

Josephine left Italy in November, ostensibly bound for Paris. Napoleon left at the same time, but headed to peace talks in Austria first. He was shocked when he returned to Paris in December and his wife still wasn’t there. Instead of going straight back, Josephine had met up with Hippolyte in Nevers, and the two were leisurely fucking their way across France. A ball dedicated to her was organized by Napoleon’s ally Talleyrand in Paris for December 25th, but when she still hadn’t arrived it was postponed until the 28th. Josephine didn’t show up until January 3rd, by which point organizers had been forced to throw out two rounds of food and flowers. The event went grimly ahead but Napoleon was furious, as Josephine must have known he’d be. Josephine and Napoleon reconciled with a Big Dramatic Scene, a completely healthy relationship dynamic they both seemed to relish. This was something that played out over and over again throughout their time together: Napoleon would stomp around and yell, while Josephine wept and begged for his forgiveness. Eventually he would play the part of Big Merciful Daddy and take her into his arms and comfort her; nothing made Napoleon feel more secure in his masculinity than reducing his wife to tears and then comforting her. Josephine, for her part, seemed to feel like she could get away with almost anything as long as she cried hard enough about it later.

In 1797, Napoleon began planning his next big military campaign.

NAPOLEON: babe, I’m going to conquer Egypt

JOSEPHINE: can I ask why?

NAPOLEON: for the empire

JOSEPHINE: sure, but, why Egypt specifically?

JOSEPHINE: I mean, isn’t it kind of … out of the way?

NAPOLEON: Alexander the Great conquered Egypt

JOSEPHINE: I don’t know if that’s really a reason

NAPOLEON: it’s an empire-building thing, you wouldn’t understand

If Josephine had been reluctant to join Napoleon in Italy, she was now desperate to accompany him to Egypt: her involvement in Hippolyte’s shady business had been revealed and the resulting scandal had been deeply unpleasant; she wanted to have Napoleon’s baby and solidify her position as his wife; she owed a lot of people a lot of money. But Napoleon refused to take her, so instead she headed to the spa town of Plombières, where she hoped to recover her fertility. Both she and Napoleon were desperate for a baby, but lingering physical trauma from her time in prison coupled with years of using what then passed for the morning-after pill (highly toxic douches, mostly) had left her unable to conceive. She hoped that “taking the waters” would improve her reproductive system. Instead, her time at Plombières made her chances of getting pregnant even more remote when a balcony she was standing on collapsed, leaving her with a broken pelvis and a severe spinal injury. Although she would go on to make an incredible recovery, the incident almost guaranteed that she would never have another child.

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Meanwhile, things in Egypt weren’t going so great. The British were sinking Napoleon’s ships, and his friend Junot was sinking his hopes by telling him what everyone in Paris already knew — that Josephine was fucking Hippolyte. You would think Napoleon might have figured this fact out on his own, but denial is a powerful drug. Admitting that Josephine had betrayed him shook not only his relationship with her, but also his relationship with himself: maybe he wasn’t actually the most virile and powerful man in the world, but a cuckold and a laughingstock. He swore to divorce Josephine, and for once she wasn’t there to weep and rend her garments and beg forgiveness.

And then the unthinkable happened: the British seized a French mail ship containing a letter from Napoleon to his brother about Josephine’s unfaithfulness. Then, like an 18th-century WikiLeaks, the London Morning Chronicle published selections from the letter. If the French had been tittering behind their hands about the military genius and his cheating wife, the English were outright guffawing.

* * *

Now the entire world knew about Napoleon’s humiliation.

Josephine, ever practical, decided that this would be a great time to buy a house. Actually, not just a house — a proper country estate called Malmaison (a name that roughly translates to “bad house,” which is … a choice). Josephine’s reasons were twofold: she wanted somewhere to live if Napoleon divorced her, but she also hoped that a beautiful property like Malmaison might lure him back. Barras, who obviously had a vested interest in her marriage, loaned Josephine the money she needed. She moved in almost as soon as the sale was completed, and quickly realized Malmaison was a great place to carry on her relationship with Hippolyte away from prying Parisian eyes.

Napoleon didn’t return to France immediately after finding out about his wife’s relationship with Hippolyte, partly because he preferred to bury himself in his work, partly because the situation he’d started in Egypt was still unstable, and partly because he wanted to have his own revenge affair. Josephine spent the better part of a year on tenterhooks, waiting for her husband and praying that she could pull off the most audacious weep ‘n’ beg of her life. Finally, in October of 1799, while dining at a friend’s house, she received word that Napoleon was back in the country. She dashed from Paris to Lyon, hoping to get to him before anyone else could, but arrived to find that he had already left by a different road. When Napoleon arrived in Paris and found his house empty, he assumed Josephine was off with her lover. Furious, he ordered his staff to begin packing up her clothes.

When Josephine finally got back to Paris she went straight to Napoleon, but he had locked himself in his room and refused to see her. She sat on the floor outside of his door and cried all night, but her old tricks failed to move him. At 5 o’clock in the blessed morning, Josephine sensed she would need stronger ammunition, so she roused Eugène and Hortense. The two sleepy teenagers, still in their nightwear, joined their mother and begged their stepfather not to abandon them. Napoleon was genuinely fond of Josephine’s children, and it was their pleading that finally softened his heart. He allowed Josephine to come into the room and then, not long after, into his bed. Plus ça change!

Napoleon did not live to regret this decision. Josephine’s ability to wield soft power — flattery, distraction, general diplomacy — soon came in very handy. While Napoleon was in Egypt, several of his sources informed him that the current government was deeply unpopular and France was in dire straits. The rumors were not an exaggeration. He plotted with Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, one of the five leaders of the Directory — the committee that had governed France since the end of the Revolution — to overthrow the other four. As soon as that was done, Napoleon immediately double-crossed Sieyès and declared himself First Consul of France, an authoritarian title that basically put him in complete control of the country. Like many two-bit despots, Napoleon claimed to be acting in the interests of liberty and democracy; like many two-bit despots, he felt that this was a personal victory that he had earned because he was destined to rule. But the truth was that Josephine had done much of the backroom work for him: hosting dinners, inflating egos, and diverting attention. Without her, it’s unlikely that the rough-mannered general would have succeeded.

Shortly after his coup, Napoleon decided that he needed a residence more befitting a ruler. First he and Josephine moved into the Luxembourg Palace, and a few months later into the Tuileries. The latter was a symbol of the ostentatious excesses of the French monarchy; built by Catherine de’ Medici in the 16th century, the Tuileries was where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were kept after their removal from Versailles. Napoleon’s choice to align himself with the kings of the Ancien Régime was obviously intentional, and he immediately installed his wife in Marie Antoinette’s old chambers. Josephine, though, was ill at ease. She hated the stiffness and formality of her new role, and complained to Hortense that she felt haunted by the dead queen’s ghost. Still, she did her best to fulfill her new role as consuless, even though her heart longed to return to Malmaison.

She soon had her chance, as Napoleon gave her permission to renovate Malmaison to use as a country estate for entertaining guests. Once that was completed, Josephine began working on the estate’s grounds. She discovered that she had a natural aptitude for horticulture, and began cultivating as many species of plants as she could. Tired of the formal gardens of Paris, Josephine hired an English gardener to achieve the jardin à l’anglaise look, much to Napoleon’s horror; she also used her husband’s connections to solicit seeds and plants from around the world, delighting especially in the rare and difficult to grow. Although she was entirely self-taught, Josephine’s botanical knowledge and ability impressed even the experts, and gardening was a passion she would keep up for the rest of her life. She even convinced Napoleon to let her import plants from England during the trade blockades that would mark the wars between Britain and the Napoleonic Empire.

JOSEPHINE: I also built a giant greenhouse and started importing exotic animals

JOSEPHINE: I had llamas and an orangutan that could eat with a knife and fork

JOSEPHINE: I know this all sounds ridiculously expensive

JOSEPHINE: but if life has taught me anything, it’s that you should spend money while you can

JOSEPHINE: because tomorrow you could go to jail

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: seriously, that’s your takeaway from the Revolution?

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: not that monarchy is oppressive, or that we should strive for freedom and equality

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: you’re as bad as any of those Bourbon kings

JOSEPHINE: stay away from my fucking llamas, Robespierre

* * *

Josephine succeeded in building an estate that both she and the First Consul could love. Napoleon began to use Malmaison to meet with all kinds of dignitaries and officials; in the early years of his rule, much of his government business was conducted at the country estate. They hosted days-long events that involved outdoor dinners and games, and even theatrical interludes starring Bonaparte family and friends. Josephine had transformed herself once again, from sexually adventurous good-times Merveilleuse into a consuless at the height of sophistication and good taste. Unfortunately for her, this state of affairs couldn’t and wouldn’t last long.

As Napoleon’s authority grew, so did his royal ambitions. He began to consider Malmaison beneath his station, preferring life at the Tuileries. Josephine was forced to spend more and more time in the city (and more and more time with her miserable in-laws). Napoleon, meanwhile, was sleeping with as many women as possible. These affairs — if you can call them that — took an odd form. The consul would have the women he chose wait for him, naked, in bed; he would be in and out (so to speak) in a matter of minutes. More than sex, he seemed to enjoy his ability to order his mistresses around, to control how they interacted with him. These liaisons also gave him another type of power, over Josephine: the ability to reduce her to tears, push her to the brink of despair, then soothe her like a fretful child.

Napoleon’s attitudes toward women oscillated between furious resentment and paternal infantilization. Both of these were reflected in his Napoleonic Code, which severely restricted the rights women had gained during the Revolution and even the few they’d held under the Ancien Régime. He also made chattel slavery legal again, in spite of his promises to uphold abolition, a decision many blamed on Josephine’s influence. Whether or not she advocated for the reinstatement of slavery, Josephine certainly didn’t seem to oppose it, writing to her mother that Napoleon was “very attached to Martinique and is counting on the support of the planters of that colony.” Josephine was uniquely positioned to understand both the brutality of chattel slavery — she had witnessed it firsthand, after all — as well as the Revolutionary arguments that had led to its abolition. Her entire personal brand was built on the indignities of losing her freedom during the Reign of Terror. She either knew on every level that slavery was a violation of basic human rights and didn’t care, or she found some way to rationalize it to herself, which is functionally the same as not caring.

To justify his regressive laws, Napoleon reinstated Catholicism as the state religion. He explained his rationale to the senator Pierre Louis Roederer succinctly: “Society cannot exist without inequality of wealth and inequality of wealth cannot exist without religion.” With the Catholic Church back in business, nearly every change wrought by the Revolution was undone.

* * *

As time went on, Napoleon became increasingly preoccupied with having a child. It was becoming clearer and clearer that Josephine was not going conceive, although she suggested that the problem lay with him — after all, hadn’t she already had two healthy pregnancies? Her fertility was, according to her, demonstrably fine. But still Josephine was terrified that her husband would leave her for a younger woman who might provide him with a baby. Eventually, she came up with an idea straight out of Aunt Edmée’s playbook: Hortense, now 18, could marry Napoleon’s brother Louis. The children of that union would bear both Napoleon and Josephine’s blood, and would make the perfect Bonaparte heir.

HORTENSE: but Louis is awful!

JOSEPHINE: well, we all have to do our duty

JOSEPHINE: to the empire, you know

HORTENSE: this feels more like me taking one for the team so that you can get what you want

JOSEPHINE: aren’t we all on the same team?

JOSEPHINE: really, you’re helping me to help yourself

Louis, like the rest of Napoleon’s extended family, hated Josephine and spent his wedding night reciting all the reasons why his new bride’s mother was a slut. In spite of this, Hortense gave birth to a son almost exactly nine months later, who she christened Napoleon Louis Charles. Her mother and stepfather were exultant.

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Shortly before the birth of his heir, Napoleon was made “Consul for Life.” He officially moved his country seat from Malmaison to the Chateau de Saint-Cloud, one of Marie Antoinette’s former residences, where he did his utmost to recreate the court life of the Bourbon dynasty. He dressed his staff in red velvet and gilded everything in sight. He insisted that Josephine order extravagant new gowns for every occasion — including one covered with real rose petals — although he balked when her bills arrived. Few people remembered all the arcane rules and rituals of court, so Napoleon had Josephine consult with Henriette Campan, who had been Marie Antoinette’s First Lady of the Bedchamber, about things like who was supposed to bow when.

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: what was the point of even having a revolution??

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: did 40,000 people die in vain?? So that we could have another KING?

NAPOLEON: well, I didn’t start the Revolution, I just finished it

NAPOLEON: so that sounds like more of a you problem than a me problem

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: I’m dead, I don’t have any problems

NAPOLEON: with all due respect, Max, I would say that even in death you have a lot of unresolved issues

If Josephine had been overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Tuileries, Saint-Cloud was even worse. She missed the casual country vibes of Malmaison, not to mention the public affection her husband had showered her with there. His liaisons were becoming more and more public, and Josephine knew that pushing back against his infidelity would only put her position at risk; in spite of Hortense’s child, Josephine was still terrified that her husband would leave her. Napoleon wielded his new relationships like weapons — he loved to recount graphic details about his conquests to Josephine, demanding that she applaud his sexual prowess. If she got upset, he grew vicious, reminding her that she had been unfaithful first. By Napoleon’s logic, she deserved payback for humiliating him in front of the entire world.

In January of 1804, a plot to assassinate Napoleon was discovered. The Duc of Enghien, a nephew of Louis XVI, was arrested at his home in Baden (even though there was no evidence linking him to the plot), found guilty in a secret military trial, and summarily executed. The rest of Europe was appalled — Baden was a neutral territory, and the legal proceedings had hardly been fair. But in France, Napoleon successfully spun the story; he was the hero his country needed, protecting it from anarchy and the dregs of the Bourbon dynasty. Riding a wave of popularity, Napoleon launched a referendum and was elected Emperor of the French. “I am the man of the State,” he declared. “I am the French Revolution.”

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: I just want to say I totally called it that you would make yourself king

NAPOLEON: technically, an emperor is not a king

NAPOLEON: spiritually, it’s more in the tradition of the Roman Empire? Anyway, it polls well

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: I fail to see how the Roman emperors were less oppressive or corrupt than the French kings

NAPOLEON: Max, you know I always treasure your input

NAPOLEON: but don’t you have anyone else to haunt?

GHOST OF ROBESPIERRE: you know I don’t, I beheaded all of my enemies 10 years ago

Josephine was going to be “greater than a queen,” just as Euphémie had said — she was going to be an Empress. Or was she? Even though her husband was going to be Emperor, she didn’t have an official title. Napoleon himself didn’t seem to be too sure about which direction to jump. On the one hand, crowning Josephine as Empress would make it a lot harder to get rid of her if and when he wanted to take a new wife who would give him an heir. On the other hand, he was deeply superstitious and believed that his wife was his good luck charm; without her, he worried that his winning streak would break. Plus, every time he leaned toward not crowning Josephine his terrible family rejoiced, which infuriated him.

Josephine and Napoleon began playing a dangerous game of chicken. He told her that he was too loyal to leave her, and begged her to do the leaving for the sake of his dynasty. She retaliated by saying that she would separate from him as soon as he gave her a direct order to do so. Every time Napoleon was on the brink of breaking it off, something — his love for his stepchildren, his fear of a life without Josephine, her ability to lure him into the bedroom — stopped him. Finally, less than a month before his coronation, his family made up his mind for him. The Bonapartes, feeling triumphant, had spent weeks alternating between snubbing and teasing Josephine, sure that her downfall was imminent. Piqued by their disrespect, Napoleon publicly announced her coronation, then rubbed salt in the wound by telling his sisters that they’d be carrying Josephine’s train during the ceremony.

The night before the coronation, Josephine made the ultimate move to keep her husband at her side. The Pope was in town to do the coronating — although Napoleon actually ended up crowning himself, because despots will despot — and Josephine sought a private audience with him. She confessed that her wedding to the Emperor had been a civil service, which meant that they weren’t truly married in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Horrified, the Pope refused to participate in the coronation unless Napoleon and Josephine were married in a religious ceremony. Knowing that the Pope’s support was key to legitimizing his reign, Napoleon gave in. Josephine’s gamble had paid off.

* * *

On December 2, 1804, Josephine — heroine of the Reign of Terror, scantily clad Merveilleuse, former mistress of half a dozen men — was crowned Empress of France in front of the Pope himself.

All of this was, of course, set against the backdrop of Napoleon’s military career. He managed to spin even his defeats as successes, and used them to justify further expansion of his empire. In the summer of 1805, he turned his attention once more toward Austria, which was still salty about the whole Marie Antoinette thing and allied with Britain and Russia against France. Napoleon abandoned his plans to invade England in order to head east to quash the Austrian army, and he was hugely successful. The next year, he pressed even farther, into Prussia, and in early 1807, into Poland. He wrote to Josephine often, but even as he proclaimed his love, he was distracted by news out of France: one of his mistresses was pregnant. Josephine, who had traveled with Napoleon as far as Mainz, knew exactly what that pregnancy could mean for her marriage. She begged her husband to let her join him in Warsaw but he ordered her back to Paris, where she spent the winter white-faced and weeping, certain that orders for a divorce would come through any day.

Josephine had little reprieve from her unhappiness. In the spring of 1807, her grandson and heir Napoleon Louis Charles died. Hortense and the Empress were inconsolable; Napoleon, who thought they should be paying attention to his victories in the east, grew impatient with their grief. Less than a month later, Josephine’s mother died in Martinique. Napoleon refused to make the news of his mother-in-law’s death public, claiming that it would cast a shadow over his victories, and refused to name Hortense’s younger son his heir, which Josephine took as a further sign that he was about to leave her. When the Emperor returned to France after sealing an armistice with Tsar Alexander, his manner toward his wife was noticeably chilly.

Now that he was secure in his fertility, Napoleon began to consider a divorce in earnest. The idea of solidifying his new alliances with Austria and Poland with a marriage was deeply appealing and, he reasoned, the death of his heir was a good excuse to find and impregnate a new wife. Josephine, knowing she was about to be discarded, fell into an emotional spiral, dragging Napoleon with her: the more miserable she became, the more he resented her. But he still loved her, too, and couldn’t picture life without her gentling influence. Plus, he was sure that she brought him luck; his greatest victories had come after their wedding, and after all, what about “au destin”? Would his military winning streak continue without her? But in 1809, after learning that a Polish mistress was pregnant with another one of his children, he made up his mind: he had to divorce Josephine.

On November 30th, just two days before the 5th anniversary of their coronation, Napoleon and Josephine dined together. At the end of a nearly silent meal, the Emperor took his wife’s hand and told her that, while he would always adore her, he had to put the interests of France in front of his own wants. Josephine fell into hysterics, and Napoleon began to cry too, becoming even more upset when he realized that losing his wife meant losing his stepchildren. He had thought this through thousands of times, but faced with the reality of divorce, he blanched. In the end it was Eugène who insisted that the separation happen. He knew that a reconciliation would be brief and ultimately unhappy for everyone.

On December 14, 1809, Napoleon and Josephine convened a grand ceremony in the throne room to announce their divorce. The Emperor wept as he described what a wonderful wife the Empress had been. Josephine — whose face was a mess of tears and makeup — swore that Napoleon would always be her dearest love. Together, they signed the record of proceedings. That night they clung to each other in Napoleon’s bed, both sobbing, before Josephine retreated to her own chamber.

Josephine decamped to Malmaison, where Napoleon visited her. The pair continued to cry together over the dissolution of their grand love affair, more united in their separation than they had been over the last year of their marriage. But the Emperor’s grief didn’t stop him from marrying 18-year-old Marie Louise of Austria (who happened to be Marie Antoinette’s great-niece) on March 11th, 1810, just months after his divorce. He told Josephine that she would have to leave Paris before his new wife’s arrival, and at the end of March the deposed Empress set off for a chateau in Navarre.

Josephine did her best to rally her spirits, even though the lovely new home Napoleon had promised was a damp, drafty monstrosity, so hideous that people called it “la marmite” (the cooking pot). She began renovating its gardens, and occupied her evenings doing tarot readings for her ladies; years before, she had developed a close relationship with cartomancer Marie Anne Lenormand, and remained obsessed with Lenormand’s fortune-telling deck of cards for the rest of her life. Between her love of plants, her tarot fixation, and her (still ongoing) debt, Josephine was basically a prototype for the modern millennial lady.

* * *

In March of 1811, Marie Louise gave birth to a son. Napoleon was beyond exultant — he finally had a legitimate child and heir. In a fit of good temper, he allowed Josephine to return permanently to Malmaison (she had been there the year before, but was only allowed to stay briefly before traveling onward to Aix-en-Provence). She began to build a quiet life for herself — collecting art, hosting intimate soirées, and spoiling her grandchildren. She grew sugarcane in her greenhouse and let Hortense’s young sons suck on it just like she had as a child. Napoleon remained close to her, writing to her often and spending two hours visiting her before he left to conquer Russia; he even let her kiss and cuddle his son, although Marie Louise was furious when she found out.

I probably don’t have to tell you that things didn’t go well in Russia. Things never go well for invading armies in Russia. Over 500,000 French soldiers died; fewer than 100,000 came home. Napoleon was ousted from power in the spring of 1814, and Paris was soon overrun with triumphant Cossack forces. By the beginning of May, they would restore the Bourbon dynasty to the French throne. Napoleon, meanwhile, had been exiled.

Tsar Alexander, who was in Paris to ensure that Louis XVIII acceded peacefully, began visiting Josephine. He was fascinated by the legendary woman who had held his enemy in thrall for so long, and the former Empress, for her part, received him graciously. She understood that this man held her life — and the lives of her children and grandchildren — in the palm of his hand, and turned on the charm accordingly. Other conquering dignitaries began to visit her as well; she was, after all, one of the spoils of war. She belonged to them now.

Stay away from my fucking llamas, Robespierre.

In the middle of May, Josephine caught a chill while out walking around the grounds of Malmaison with the Tsar. By the end of the month, she was desperately ill with a high fever and a rash. On the morning of May 29th, delirious but still the same old Josephine, she insisted on being dressed in a pink satin gown and rubies in case the Tsar came. She was dead by the time the clock struck noon.

French public opinion had run hot and cold on Napoleon — mostly cold over the last years of his reign — but Josephine had been almost universally beloved. She represented so many things to so many people, from the wild hope of the early days of the Revolution to the desperation of the Reign of Terror to the grandeur of the French Empire. Perhaps above everything else, she represented pragmatism and tenacity; she’d never been ashamed to do what was necessary to survive. Thousands upon thousands attended her funeral, weeping for their Empress. Her legacy was complicated, but it was the legacy of their people.

And Napoleon? In his disgrace, he was abandoned by almost everyone, including Marie Louise; Eugène and Hortense were among the few that remained loyal to him. He died seven years later, exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. His last word was “Josephine.”

There is a statue of Josephine in Fort-de-France, Martinique. In 1991, it was beheaded, just as she would have been if not for Robespierre’s timely downfall. It was a fitting tribute to the heroine of the Terror who had watched the restoration of slavery with the same secretive Mona Lisa smile she wears in all of her portraits.

Long live the dissolution of oppressive monarchies. Long live freedom. Liberté, fraternité, égalité forever.

---

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: Josephine Bonaparte, from Martinique to Merveilleuse
Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Josephine:
Kate Williams, Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte
Andrea Stuart, The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon’s Josephine

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based feminist killjoy. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. If she has a looming deadline, you can find her procrastinating on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Michelle Weber
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 122913 https://longreads.com/2019/03/28/queens-of-infamy-josephine-bonaparte-part-one/ Thu, 28 Mar 2019 11:00:47 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=122401 Even the Reign of Terror was no match for a determined young woman with a pug and a prophecy on her side.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | March 2019 | 22 minutes (5,569 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

In 1768, a 15-year-old girl traveled to the hills near her family home in Martinique to visit a local wise woman. Desperately curious to know what her future held, the girl handed a few coins to the Afro-Caribbean obeah, Euphémie David, in exchange for a palm reading. Euphémie obligingly delivered an impressive-sounding prediction: the girl would marry twice — first, unhappily, to a family connection in France, and later to a “dark man of little fortune.” This second husband would achieve undreamed of glory and triumph, rendering her “greater than a queen.” But before the girl had time to gloat over her thrilling fate, Euphémie delivered a parting blow: in spite of her incredible success, the girl would die miserable, filled with regret, pining for the “easy, pleasant life” of her childhood. This prophecy would stay with the girl for the rest of her life, and she would think of it often — sometimes with fervent hope, sometimes with despair, always with unwavering belief that it would come true.

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That girl was the future Empress Josephine Bonaparte. Everything Euphémie predicted would come to pass, but young Josephine could not have imagined the events that would propel her to her zenith: the rise through Paris society, the cataclysm of the French Revolution, the brutal imprisonment during the Reign of Terror, the transformation into an infamous Merveilleuse, the pivotal dinner at her lover’s house where she would meet her second husband.

She wouldn’t even have recognized the name Josephine — that sobriquet would be bestowed by Napoleon some 18 years hence. The wide-eyed teenager who asked Euphémie to tell her fortune still went by her childhood nickname, Yeyette.

* * *

Josephine was christened Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie, and was known formally as Rose, though to family and close friends she was Yeyette. Born on June 23, 1763, even Josephine’s earliest years seemed touched by fate; just four months before her birth, Martinique had been restored to France from Britain. Had the timing been a tiny bit different, Josephine would have been born a British citizen.

Josephine’s mother, Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois, was a member of one of Martinique’s wealthiest families; her father was Joseph-Gaspard de Tascher de La Pagerie, an incompetent pretty-boy who had once been a page in the French court and spent the rest of his life telling anyone who would listen about his glory days at Versailles. The La Pagerie family owned a sugarcane plantation, where acres and acres of crops flourished thanks to the labor her family stole from hundreds of enslaved African men and women.

You might think that Josephine’s father must have been turning a tidy profit, since he had three hundred people tilling his fields and zero wages to pay, but apparently serving bonbons to royalty isn’t great preparation for a career in plantation management. Oh, he excelled at some parts of it, like degradation and casual cruelty, but the whole finance part eluded him and any money that he made in spite of himself was squandered on mistresses and gambling. Under his hand, the plantation’s finances declined — slowly, at first, and then, after a deadly hurricane in 1766, much more quickly. Many of the enslaved people were killed, and the shacks where they lived completely razed. The main house was also destroyed, and Josephine’s family moved into the upper floor of the plantation’s sugarhouse, where the cane juice was boiled into syrup. Despite swearing that the sugarhouse would be a temporary residence, Joseph eventually added a veranda and called it a day.

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Hurricanes aside, Josephine described her childhood as happy. Martinique was not just geographically but also culturally distant from France; instead of the restrictive clothing and rigid rules to which French children were subjected, Josephine’s life was loose cotton dresses, county rambles, and raw sugarcane snacks. Most children in Josephine’s position were sent to France at a young age to receive a formal education, and her Aunt Edmée offered to host her in Paris, but her father claimed not to have enough money to send her so most of Josephine’s days were dedicated to unrestricted play with her sister, Catherine, 18 months her junior, and the enslaved children on the plantation. (Did the gulf between Josephine’s position and that of the children she played with ever cause her cognitive dissonance, especially since she would have been witness to the violence they endured? Probably not. That’s not to say that she never felt affection for her enslaved playmates, but the generational propagation of chattel slavery depended on children like Josephine accepting that this was the way of the world. Like the children of most plantation owners, Josephine had been raised to believe that she could get whatever she wanted from the enslaved people on the plantation, whether that was food, or care, or even entertainment.)

When Josephine was 10, her mother finally decided to do something about her education and sent her off to a boarding school in Fort Royal. Life at the Maison de la Providence involved rising at 5 a.m., wearing an ugly uniform, and spending all day indoors practicing things like embroidery, penmanship, and religious studies; the school’s aim was to turn its students into modest, gracious plantation ladies, so the curriculum didn’t involve any pesky subjects like literature, history, or science. Josephine was less than enthused and made a poor student, returned home four years later with her knowledge of the world nearly as scanty as when she’d left.

JOSEPHINE: really, what does a girl need an education for?

JOSEPHINE: I have plenty of life skills

JOSEPHINE: I can dance, I can toss my hair, I can coquettishly wave a fan in front of my face

JOSEPHINE: I can reel a man in with my eyes from across a crowded ballroom

JOSEPHINE: they don’t teach you that shit in school

It’s true that Josephine did have a distinct talent for flirtation — one that would serve her well in years to come — but the high-society men in Martinique didn’t exactly see her as marriage material. After all, her family couldn’t even afford a real house, let alone a dowry. Josephine wasn’t too concerned, though: she had bigger ambitions. After years of listening to her father wax poetical about Versailles, what Josephine wanted more than anything was to go to France. Her family didn’t even have enough money to marry her off to one of her island peers, let alone send her on a chaperoned trip across the Atlantic, but when she was 16, life dropped a dream husband in Josephine’s path.

Alexandre de Beauharnais was a beautiful, cultured 19-year-old with an army commission who also happened to be the son of a marquis, and he was the family connection in France that Euphémie had foreseen. Josephine’s Aunt Edmée had been the marquis’ mistress for nearly two decades, and by the time Alexandre was of marriageable age, her position was a bit precarious; the marquis was getting on in years, and Edmée knew she’d be left with nothing when he died and his estate passed to Alexandre.

EDMÉE: so, I hatched a brilliant scheme

EDMÉE: a way to keep it all in the family, as it were

EDMÉE: I mean, here I have this young man who’s going to be very rich someday

EDMÉE: and I also have a niece who, if I arrange a good marriage for her, will be grateful enough to support me when I’m a doddering widow

EDMÉE: it’s just basic math!

EDMÉE: which, unlike Josephine, is something I bothered to learn

The marquis, who didn’t want to leave his beloved destitute after his death, agreed to the plan. Alexandre also went along with it, mostly because he couldn’t come into his inheritance until he married. Josephine’s father was eventually convinced, and, in the fall of 1779, he and his daughter boarded a ship bound for France.

* * *

Everything was working out just as Edmée had imagined! The only hitch was that the groom was in love with someone else and Josephine was gauche enough to care.

There was no danger that Alexandre would marry this other woman, since she was already married. Marie Françoise-Laure de Girardin de Mongérald, Madame de Longpré, was a decade older than Alexandre and well-skilled in all the high-class French arts: seducing, dropping bon mots, lounging languorously. Little Yeyette — chubby, physically awkward, and artless enough to have fallen in deep smit with Alexandre as soon as she stepped off the boat — didn’t stand a chance. What had passed for romantic skills in the colonies were considered coarse and unsophisticated in the motherland. Even her name was unsuitable; the first thing Alexandre did was re-christen his new wife. Yeyette, he said, was juvenile and silly. From now on she would be known as Marie-Josèphe, which Alexandre thought had more of an aristocratic gloss.

Speaking of aristocrats, Josephine’s dreams of joining the court at Versailles were dashed almost as soon as she arrived in France. Alexandre had recently given himself the title of vicomte, and when the king found out, he was furious. Instead of inviting the Beauharnaises to court, Louis XVI fined them for illegally creating a new title. Alexandre, a grudge-master extraordinaire, began nursing a secret resentment for the royal family.

Even her name was unsuitable; the first thing Alexandre did was re-christen his new wife. Yeyette, he said, was juvenile and silly.

Alexandre wasn’t alone in feeling this way. In 1779, it was (unsurprisingly) quite fashionable for French aristocrats to talk shit about the monarchy. For Josephine, who had grown up with a father who was starry-eyed about all things royal, this was one more of the many ways that the reality of France was at disorienting with odds her expectations. Part of the problem was that Josephine was 16, with all the gawkiness of a typical teenager. But she was also struggling with the expectations of womanhood, vastly different in France than in the Caribbean. She was too childish, too exuberant, and still wearing her loose cotton dresses from Martinique. Parisian women were expected to be sexily aloof, and women’s clothing was still very Marie Antoinette, with high, powdered hair and panniers so wide that women had to turn sideways to get through doors. And it was the age of the Paris salon; Alexandre’s Aunt Fanny hosted one of the most popular gatherings in the city. In order to succeed socially, Josephine needed not just beauty and charm, but witty opinions on art and literature. It was a tall order for a girl whose entire education was four years at a school meant to churn out plantation wives.

Alexandre was deeply embarrassed by his new wife, and often left her at home when he went out for social engagements. Not long after their wedding, he rejoined his regiment and resumed his relationship with Laure, who was by this point pregnant with his child. Josephine, who was bored, lonely, and in love, wrote to him often. His replies were far less frequent, though, he found plenty of time to write letters to friends and family complaining about his bride, who he described as an “object who has nothing to say to me” and “a creature with whom I can find nothing in common.” His letters to Josephine alternated between scolding and outlining lesson plans to improve her vulgar mind and habits.

Alexandre did manage to manfully set his feelings aside and do his husbandly duty, and on September 3, 1781, Josephine gave birth to a son, Eugène Rose de Beauharnais. Unfortunately, this didn’t do much to improve their conjugal situation (having a shitty dude’s baby rarely does). Alexandre was happy enough to have a legitimate heir but still thought his wife was unspeakably beneath him; Josephine was still lonely and miserable. Aunt Edmée decided that the solution was to send her nephew-in-law to Italy, where she hoped he would miss his family and forget about Laure.

As with Aunt Edmée’s last great scheme, this one didn’t shake out quite the way she’d hoped. Alexandre returned to Paris long enough to impregnate Josephine again, then bolted in the middle of the night to join his mistress. Laure’s father had recently died on Martinique, and Alexandre decided to join her in traveling there. Perhaps sensing that this act would finally cross a line with his pliable young wife, Alexandre wrote an uncharacteristically tender letter to Josephine saying that he loved her and hoped she would forgive him for leaving without saying goodbye. When she didn’t reply, he accused her of neglecting him and said that she would only have herself to blame if their marriage failed.

JOSEPHINE: can you believe the absolute nerve of this man?

JOSEPHINE: abandoning his family to go on his little fuck-vacation with his little fuck-friend

JOSEPHINE: and then calling me neglectful!

JOSEPHINE: don’t worry, it gets worse

JOSEPHINE: when I gave birth a few weeks early, he decided the baby wasn’t his

JOSEPHINE: he started interrogating people on Martinique to find “evidence” against me

JOSEPHINE: and then he sent Laure back to Paris with a letter telling me to get out of his house

JOSEPHINE: saying that I was the vilest of creatures and beneath all the sluts in the world

JOSEPHINE: I might not have a lot of education, but I know irony when I see it

ALEXANDRE: well, actually, the definition of irony is …

JOSEPHINE: oh my god fuck off

Shortly after Alexandre’s return to Paris — and after receiving a few more abusive letters from him — Josephine and Eugène moved into a convent (the new baby, Hortense, remained at Alexandre’s house because she could not be separated from her wet nurse). Josephine applied for spousal support and the court adjudicator, after reading the Martinique letters and presumably muttering “yikes!” under his breath, ordered Alexandre to pay up. Naturally, he refused. Still, things weren’t entirely bleak for Josephine. The convent she’d chosen (with Aunt Edmée’s help) was very popular among aristocratic women, and she made her first Parisian friends and began to learn the secrets of being a Society Lady. Thanks to Alexandre’s abandonment, she finally acquired the patina he’d so desperately wanted her to have.

By the time Josephine left the convent to join the marquis and Aunt Edmée at their new house in the village of Fontainebleu, she was a changed woman. She swished gracefully across rooms, peppered conversations with droll remarks, and rouged her cheeks. Women’s fashions were changing; panniers and huge coiffures were out, simpler dresses and natural hairstyles were in. These looks both suited Josephine immensely — they were, after all, much closer to the comfortable style that she’d grown up with — and she began to regain her confidence.

Meanwhile, Alexandre was still being a shit. La plus ça change! In 1785, when Josephine was in the convent, he had seized custody of Eugène. Refusing to be cowed, she went to the provost of Paris to lodge a complaint and wound up being awarded not only full custody of her son until he was 5, but also custody of Hortense, a generous yearly sum for living expenses, and the right to live wherever she wanted. Alexandre also had to formally withdraw his accusations of infidelity. They had to remain married because divorce was forbidden in the Catholic Church, but Josephine could start to build a separate life for herself and her children.

* * *

Alexandre was determined to achieve Great Deadbeat Dad From History status and continued to refuse to give Josephine any money. Which might not have been a problem — she was living with her aunt, so she didn’t have room and board expenses — except that Josephine had spent years trying to fill the void Alexandre had left in her soul by buying pretty things. On credit. That she absolutely couldn’t pay. Now, single, unable to remarry, and with no ability to generate an income, she found herself hounded by debt collectors.

It wasn’t long before Josephine encountered one of the wild reversals of fortune that would come to characterize her life. Fontainebleu was where the king hunted, and she managed to befriend François Hué, the chief clerk of the hunt. This was how she managed to secure a spot in the small group permitted to follow the hunt, in spite of the fact that her knave of a husband wasn’t welcome at court. It didn’t take Josephine long to figure out that certain men — older, wealthy, married men — were only too happy to shower a beautiful young woman with money and gifts. These men were far kinder to her than her husband had ever been, and she found it easy to gain their affection. Before long, her debts were paid off and then some.

Josephine probably could have continued milking rich courtiers for their money for the rest of her life if France and its colonies hadn’t been thrown into social upheaval. In 1788, she left for Martinique to visit her parents; in the summer of 1790, she watched as a slave rebellion shook the island. By the time she returned to France in October, 1790, the Bastille had been stormed, the royal family had been removed from Versailles by an angry mob, and everyone was wearing funny red hats.

FRANCE: yeah, so, we’re doing the whole revolution thing too

AMERICA: oh, cool! It worked out pretty OK for us

FRANCE: we were hoping you could give us a little inspo actually

FRANCE: like, for example, what’s the best way to kill a king?

AMERICA: we didn’t kill any kings

FRANCE: oh

FRANCE: but you murdered so many aristocrats that the streets teemed with masterless dogs, right?

FRANCE: outlawed Christianity, invented your own calendar, all that jazz?

AMERICA: uhhh … no, not exactly

AMERICA: but we did make a constitution!

FRANCE: honestly that sounds more like an amateur-hour rebellion than a revolution

FRANCE: but you know what? That’s so nice for you and if you’re happy, we’re happy

At first, the French Revolution treated the Beauharnais family pretty well. While Josephine was in Martinique, noted king-hater Alexandre found his calling as an anti-monarchist. Spite mixed with idealism: an unbeatable combination! On her return to Paris, Josephine realized that her husband’s new position opened all kinds of doors for her, even though they’d been separated for nearly a decade. Josephine began to adopt the working class clothing, manners, and speech of a true revolutionary citoyenne. Madame de Beauharnais found herself inundated with invitations to salons and balls. Her social clout grew even stronger when, during Alexandre’s first term as President of the National Assembly, his decisive actions stopped the royal family’s attempt to flee the country. The Vicomte de Beauharnais was a hero, and his estranged wife was eager to exploit his new status.

If you think it’s weird that many aristocrats were low-key treating the revolution as a fun new trend they could conspicuously consume rather than, I don’t know, a way to help the masses achieve socioeconomic equality, you’re not wrong. The lower-class sans-culottes (literally, “without fancy pants”) were less than impressed that the same members of the upper classes who had promised them freedom seemed pretty happy to propagate the system they paid lip service to dismantling, and while Josephine and her friends played dress-up and fêted the Revolution, the country was locked in turmoil. The sans-culottes were demanding more radical change, several international powers were threatening invasion, and there was a violent counter-revolutionary movement within France itself; on top of all this, there were questions of loyalty and morality within the ranks of the supporters of the Revolution. This critical mass of unrest helped usher in the Reign of Terror, a time of political purges that would lead to the executions of 17,000 men and women and the deaths of 10,000 more in prison. (Not-so-fun fact: the beginning of the Reign of Terror was announced in the National Convention by Bertrand Barère, who said, literally, “Let us make terror the order of the day.” You would think they might want to, I don’t know, use some kind of euphemism, but no, they straight up announced they were going to terrorize people like that was a good thing, which is a hell of a PR spin.)

Louis XVI was already dead by then, and Marie Antoinette soon followed. After that it was just people denouncing each other left, right, and center, and the prisons began to fill. Josephine scrambled to shore up the lie that she was just another working class gal; she had her children apprenticed as a carpenter and a dressmaker, and declared herself a sans-culotte. She even began referring to herself as an American, probably hoping to hide her origins as a plantation owner’s daughter as slavery had been outlawed by France’s new government. It was a pretty brazen lie, and nobody was buying what she was selling: the Beauharnais’ social status was widely known and no aristocrats were safe, not even those who supported the Revolution. In March, Alexandre was accused of treason, arrested, and sent to Les Carmes, a prison housed in a former convent. In April, Josephine followed him.

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Les Carmes was a fetid cesspool and it was widely known that no one ever left alive, so obviously there was one thing all of its inmates were desperate to do: fuck each other. If there is one true aphrodisiac in this life, it is the feeling that the apocalypse is nigh and there are no earthly consequences for anything. Religion had been abolished, social mores had been obliterated, and the only good thing left was desperate, hot Armageddon sex. There were literally no downsides; every last stricture had been removed, including the fear of pregnancy, since anyone who managed to conceive a child in these dire circumstances received a stay of execution. The fucking situation was completely win/win.

In Les Carmes, Alexandre had fallen in love with a woman named Delphine de Custine; shortly after her arrival, Josephine began a relationship with General Lazare Hoche.

ALEXANDRE: you know, this might sound weird, given all those times I called you a slut

ALEXANDRE: but I’m actually happy for you and Lazare?

JOSEPHINE: no, I totally get it, I feel the same way about you and Delphine

ALEXANDRE: all that time we spent making each other miserable feels, like, I don’t know

ALEXANDRE: a luxury we can’t afford anymore

JOSEPHINE: is this your version of an apology?

ALEXANDRE: let’s just say that I have … regrets

JOSEPHINE: this is, like, the healthiest our marriage has ever been

Josephine slowly adapted to life in Les Carmes. Like many of the women there, she cropped her hair, a style that would come to be known as “coiffure à la guillotine.” She befriended the other inmates and became particularly close with Grace Elliott, a Scottish courtesan and spy, and Térésa Cabarrus, the young mistress of revolutionary leader Jean-Lambert Tallien (who was still free). The de Beauharnais children, meanwhile, had figured out a brilliant way to communicate with their parents: Josephine’s pug, Fortuné. They would tuck letters under the dog’s collar and send him off into the streets of Paris; he was small enough to wriggle under the prison gates and smart enough to always find his mistress in the crowded maze of cells. The letters brought a small measure of comfort to her miserable life.

Every morning, the Revolutionary Tribunal came to collect those who were about to be executed. Every evening, the remaining prisoners went to bed wondering if their number would be up next.

On July 21, 1793, Alexandre was brought to trial. The conclusion was foregone: by this point, legislation had been passed to waive the rights of the accused to defense or cross-examination. On July 23, the Revolutionary Tribunal declared that Alexandre de Beauharnais was a traitor. On July 24, he was taken to the guillotine.

Shortly before his death, Alexandre sent Josephine a lock of his hair and a tender letter. “I have no hope of seeing you again, my friend, nor of embracing my dear children.” Although Alexandre didn’t come out and say it, he and Josephine both knew that his execution spelled her doom. Less than a week later, a guard came into Josephine’s cell and removed her bed. When one of her cell mates asked if she was going to be given a better bed, the guard replied that Josephine would no longer need a bed; the Revolutionary Tribunal was coming for her that day.

Josephine just smiled serenely and comforted her friends. They didn’t have to worry, she said, because she wasn’t going to die. She was going to be the Queen of France. Thinking that grief had made her delusional, her friends pretended to go along with it, asking if she’d appointed her household yet.

Against all odds, Josephine was right, at least about surviving; the Tribunal never came for her, and it turned out that she had her friend Thérésa Cabarrus to thank for her life. Thérésa, tired of Tallien being a fuckboy who was letting her languish in prison while he was living it up with the people who put her there, had written him a scathing letter with such choice lines as, “I die in despair at having belonged to a coward like you.” Tallien apparently took her words to heart, because the next day he led an attack on Robespierre in the National Convention. Robespierre was guillotined on July 28.

That afternoon, Josephine looked out a window and saw a peasant woman who, when she caught sight of Josephine, began gesturing wildly. She placed a stone (pierre, in French) in her skirt of her dress (robe), and then drew a finger across her throat. Robespierre was dead. The Reign of Terror was over. Josephine was free.

* * *

In death, Alexandre boosted Josephine’s social status even higher. As a survivor of the Reign of Terror and widow of a Revolutionary martyr, she was at the top of the Parisian hierarchy. There were elite salons and luncheons for survivors. There was even a “victim’s ball,” where attendance was limited to people who had been imprisoned and family members of those who had died in the Reign of Terror. Women wore thin white cotton chemises that resembled prison uniforms, cropped hair à la guillotine, and red ribbons around their necks to make it look like their heads had been severed. French people truly cannot pass up one single opportunity to be extra as hell.

In spite of her popularity, Josephine was in dire straits. As her star had risen, she’d fallen back into old spending habits; being in-demand meant that she constantly needed more dresses, more rouge, more everything. Now at 31 years old, she was broke, had two kids to raise on her own, and was physically and emotionally scarred by her time in Les Carmes. She had suffered a series of illnesses in prison — probably due to malnourishment and the kinds of communicable diseases that flourish in filthy, overcrowded environments — and afterwards was subject to fits of nervous collapse for the rest of her life. On top of all that, her teeth, always cavity-prone thanks to her childhood habit of sucking on sugarcane, were now in an advanced state of decay; she learned to hide them with a handkerchief when speaking and got into the habit of smiling with her lips pressed tightly together. But still, she was determined to take advantage of the strange new hand fortune had dealt her and make a fresh start. What other choice did she have?

Josephine’s relationship with Thérésa de Carrabus flourished, and she served as a witness when the younger woman married Jean-Lambert Tallien. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Thérésa was now the most famous woman in all of France. The story of how she’d brought about Robespierre’s downfall had spread like wildfire, and she was fêted as “Our Lady of Thermidor” (Robespierre had been overthrown on July 27, which was the 9th of Thermidor in the French Republican calendar). Thérésa’s style of dress pushed the boundaries of propriety, and helped set the trend for an aristocratic subculture called the Merveilleuses that reacted to the horrors and privations of the Reign of Terror with an ironically decadent absurdity. She favored gowns cut in the Neoclassical style, made with low necklines and fabric so sheer that it left little to the imagination. Josephine soon adopted this look for her own, wrapping herself in diaphanous robes so tight that they couldn’t even hold pockets.

The morals of the Ancien Régime were passé, the Revolution was over, and there was an almost delirious sense of relief — so, obviously, everyone was still fucking everyone. The social order had been upended, and it seemed like both everything and nothing was possible. Thérésa’s liquor-soaked parties were the ultimate example of this, and they were attended by the crème de la crème of Paris society. It was at these parties that Josephine met the man who would set off the course of events that led to her becoming Empress of France. His name was Paul Barras.

JOSEPHINE: you thought it was going to be Napoleon, didn’t you?

JOSEPHINE: PSYCH

JOSEPHINE: I mean, don’t worry, we’re getting there

JOSEPHINE: but the list of men I was with before him is, uhh, how do I put this?

JOSEPHINE: extensive

Paul Barras was another hero of the Revolution, a powerful military commander who also happened to be filthy rich. Once she became his mistress, Josephine’s money worries were finally over. She sent her children to private schools, moved to a big house in a fancy neighborhood, and hired a huge serving staff. Having already experienced several dramatic changes in fortune, she knew that she should take advantage of being flush with cash while she could. Who knew when the flow of money would stop?

Women wore thin white cotton chemises that resembled prison uniforms, cropped hair à la guillotine, and red ribbons around their necks to make it look like their heads had been severed. French people truly cannot pass up one single opportunity to be extra as hell.

Meanwhile, Barras had met Napoleon and, impressed by the younger man’s military prowess, had taken him under his wing; the young Corsican’s star was quietly on the rise, and Barras wanted to get in on the ground floor. Napoleon had been born in 1769 to shabby-genteel parents, and his life so far had been a series of improbable advances. First, he won a scholarship to the Military School of Brienne, where he was bullied by the other boys for being poor, Corsican, and short. Then, thanks to a natural talent for mathematics, he gained a spot at the prestigious École Militaire in Paris. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army and by the time he was 24, he was a brigadier general. But in spite of his successful career, his personal life was a mess.

By the time Napoleon entered Josephine’s life, he was a lonely, disaffected outcast. He had returned to Paris after his military victories expecting high society to fall over itself to welcome him; it did not. Infuriated by this rejection, the 26-year-old began writing a romance novel. This was an especially staggering undertaking since he had absolutely no experience with love, although that wasn’t for lack of trying. Napoleon had been desperately pursuing relationships with various society women, but they found him to be unkempt, crude, and boorish. The more women rejected him, the more he wanted (and hated) them — and not just any women, either. Like a modern 4chan incel, Napoleon felt entitled to a high-status wife who matched his high-status ambitions. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. At least, not until he met Josephine.

It was at a dinner that Barras was hosting that Napoleon met Josephine; the future Emperor later said that she was the first woman he’d met in Paris who hadn’t ignored him or treated him rudely. Instead, perhaps primed by Barras (who had purposely seated his protegé next to his mistress), she gave him the full force of her famous charm: she listened to him, sympathized with him, praised him. Napoleon was immediately obsessed. Josephine was polite and allowed her new devotee to spend time with her, but she wasn’t interested in having a sexual relationship with Napoleon.

Barras saw a fierce talent and ambition in Napoleon that he wanted to control and hoped that he might secure his protégé’s loyalty by passing along his mistress, which is a totally normal and respectful way to treat women. Not long after Barras introduced Napoleon and Josephine, he put the young brigadier general in charge of quashing a royalist uprising; Napoleon gleefully complied, using cannons to fire grapeshot into the crowd. By the time he was done, 300 royalists had been killed. Barras and his pals used this uprising as an excuse to abolish the current government and install the Directory, five men who would be in charge of everything. The Directory was led by — you guessed it —Paul Barras, who quickly appointed Napoleon as commander-in-chief of the Army of the Interior.

PAUL BARRAS: well, you know what they say

PAUL BARRAS: keep your friends close

PAUL BARRAS: and keep the men you want to manipulate closer

PAUL BARRAS: close enough to see you girlfriend’s …

PAUL BARRAS: never mind, that was going to be crass

As Napoleon began to gain power and social clout, Josephine began to find him more attractive. Maybe he wore her down with his low-key stalker behavior, maybe he began to seem more like a feasible partner/benefactor once he started making more money, or maybe she was thinking about Euphémie’s prediction from all those years ago. Whatever her reasons, Josephine wrote to him saying that she was “tenderly attracted” to him and that she wished to talk to him about “matters that will interest” him. By the end of the year, they were sleeping together; the morning after their first liaison, Napoleon wrote her a smitten letter saying that, “one night together has taught me how your portrait falls short of the reality!”

It was around this time that Napoleon began calling her by the name that would soon be notorious throughout his empire and beyond. The days of Yeyette, Rose, and Marie-Josèphe were over. The age of Josephine had begun.

---

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: Zenobia
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Josephine:
Kate Williams, Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte
Andrea Stuart, The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon’s Josephine

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based feminist killjoy. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. If she has a looming deadline, you can find her procrastinating on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Michelle Weber
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 122401 https://longreads.com/2018/12/11/queens-of-infamy-zenobia/ Tue, 11 Dec 2018 13:00:03 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=117501 In third-century Syria, a widowed monarch dared to be wildly ambitious -- and almost brought the Roman Empire to its knees.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | December 2018 | 18 minutes (4,570 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

When one thinks about Roman triumvirates, insofar as one ever thinks about Roman triumvirates, there are two that spring immediately to mind: the First Triumvirate and the Second Triumvirate. The former involved a would-be emperor (Julius Caesar), a man with a beautiful head of hair (Pompey), and a guy whose name no one can ever remember (Crassus); the latter included an actual emperor (Augustus), a noted piss artist who also happened to have great hair (Mark Antony), and another guy whose name no one can ever remember (Lepidus). But I propose we add another Ancient Roman triumvirate and turn this list into a triumvirate of triumvirates. This last (and, frankly, greatest) of the triumvirates consists of the three queens who led revolts against the Roman occupation of their lands: Cleopatra, Boudicca, and Zenobia.

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Do I understand that the term “triumvirate” means “three people who operate together as a governing coalition”? Yes. Since vir is Latin for “man,” wouldn’t the term refer specifically to men? Sure, whatever. Given that Cleopatra, Boudicca, and Zenobia were women whose lives were separated by the vagaries of time and geography, doesn’t that suggest that I’m applying “triumvirate” incorrectly here? Probably. Do I care about your petty and pedantic opinions on this matter? Not especially.

Cleopatra and Boudicca’s stories are both fairly well-known in the West, if somewhat distorted in their retellings (the Egyptian queen wanted her legacy to be tax reform and a stable, drought-resistant economy, but instead we mostly remember her as being sexily embroiled in Roman politics). Zenobia is a popular historical figure in the Arab world, especially in her native Syria, where her image appears on banknotes and where her story featured heavily in the 1997 historical soap opera Al-Ababeed (The Anarchy). Outside of the Middle East, though, she seems to be half-forgotten aside from a few works produced during the Enlightenment and the Romantic period, all of which employ extreme artistic license. Part of the problem is that when it comes to Zenobia, hard facts are few and far between. This is almost certainly related to gender; while historians were studiously chronicling the frequency and texture of royal men’s bowel movements, the most basic details of women’s lives are lost to time. The Romans were particularly reluctant to include women in their accounts, so it’s unsurprising that they didn’t leave much information behind about the queen who conquered a solid chunk of their empire.

* * *

Septimia Zenobia was born around 240 CE, give or take a year, and has been known by several names: in Palmyrene, an Aramaic dialect, she was Septimia Bat-Zabbai, while in Greek she was Zenobia, “one who derives life from Zeus.” Later Arab sources called her Na’ilah, and in Manichean documents she is referred as Tadi. In some versions of her story, Zenobia was the daughter of the chief of the ‘Amlaqi tribe, although this is unconfirmed. It’s not even known what religious beliefs the queen held — most likely she practiced ancient Semitic polytheism, but less than a century after her reign, the Archbishop of Constantinople wrote that she was Jewish. It’s a good example of how many wildly conflicting accounts there are of Zenobia’s origins. She herself claimed to be a direct descendant of Cleopatra, which is likely a slight massaging of her alleged relation to Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty. What is certain is that Zenobia was not a commoner by birth, since she was highly educated and, like Cleopatra, spoke several languages. The queen was fluent in Palmyrene, of course, but also spoke Greek and Egyptian and had a passing knowledge of Latin.

While historians were studiously chronicling the frequency and texture of royal men’s bowel movements, the most basic details of women’s lives are lost to time.

Zenobia’s Palmyra was a city on the brink of greatness. Nicknamed the Pearl of the Desert, Palmyra grew out of an oasis known for its date palms. Because of its location — deep in the Syrian desert, on the western edge of the Silk Road and the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire — the Palmyrenes were able to build up a brisk business in the caravan trade. Many of them were merchants, trading in goods like jade, spices, muslin, and silk, while others hired themselves out as guards for caravans about to cross the bandit-infested desert. The city’s real wealth, though, came from fleecing all the importers and exporters passing through. Taxes and tariffs might generate less immediate gratification than straight-up plundering, but in the long run they’re much more sustainable as a revenue stream. By the 3rd century, Palmyra was a bustling multicultural metropolis, with a theatre, public baths, and temples dedicated to Semitic, Mesopotamian, and Arab gods. The Roman Empire, meanwhile, was a shitshow.

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Here’s the thing about the Roman Empire: they talked a good game about peace — Pax Romana and all that — but their entire business model depended on military action. If the Romans weren’t invading new territories , they were fighting to hold onto the ones they had already conquered. The Romans had a pretty good knack for maintaining control of what they’d taken by brute force, but the larger the Empire grew, the more unwieldy and difficult to defend it became. On top of that, by Zenobia’s time Rome itself was mired in economic and political crisis due to war being really fucking expensive and their Emperors’ centuries-long tendency to get killed on the job.

JULIUS CAESAR: oh my god

JULIUS CAESAR: I thought you chuckleheads would have learned from my mistakes

JULIUS CAESAR: but no, you’re just plop, plop, plop, getting assassinated all over the damn place

JULIUS CAESAR: there is an entire Wikipedia category for Roman emperors murdered by the Praetorian Guard

JULIUS CAESAR: this was not what I intended when I crossed the Rubicon!!!

BALBINUS: lol sorry

AURELIAN: yeah, bro, supes sorry

CALIGULA: if it makes you feel any better, most of us deserved it

JULIUS CAESAR: that does not make me feel better

CALIGULA: lol I tried to make my horse a consul

Palmyra had long been controlled by outside forces: first the Seleucids between 312 and 64 BCE, and then, after a brief period of independence, by the Romans. In theory, being part of the Roman Empire conferred some benefits on its members (as long as they submitted totally and unquestioningly to Rome’s every whim): improved infrastructure, participation in a large trading network, and protection from external enemies. But by the time Zenobia was born, Rome was failing Palmyra on all three fronts. The Empire’s ongoing wars with the Parthians and the Persians were messing up the whole neighborhood, so it was safer and more convenient for traders to find routes that circumvented Palmyra. This led to a steep decline in the city’s economic situation. The Palmyrenes, as you can imagine, were less than enthused. Fortunately for them, there was a savior in their midst — two, actually: Septimius Odenathus and his wife, Zenobia.

* * *

Zenobia married Odenathus at some point in her teens — we know for sure that she was married by the age of 18, but some sources say she was as young as 14 when they wed. We also know that Zenobia was Odenathus’ second wife, but it’s unclear what happened to his first wife. Did she die? Did they divorce? Did she take the alimony and move somewhere exotic with their pool boy? I have so many unanswered questions about Mrs. Odenathus Prima. Odenathus had at least one child, Hairan, with his first wife; Hairan was almost certainly older than Zenobia.

Odenathus was already one of the highest-ranking Palmyrenes when Zenobia married him. Like her, he came from a prominent family, and by the early 250s he had been granted Roman senatorial rank. Around that same time he was given the title Ras Tadmor, or Chief of Palmyrenes, although it’s not really clear how that role fit in with the city’s existing elected government. What is clear is that he was a strong civil and military leader and that Zenobia seemed to relish sharing in these roles, often accompanying him on martial campaigns. It’s important to note that Palmyra was allowed to maintain its own army, making it an outlier among the Roman territories; when Odenathus and Zenobia led a military expedition (as they often did), it was a Palmyrene army and not a Roman one. As busy as they were, Odenathus and Zenobia managed to have several children together (the exact number is unknown), including sons named Vaballathus and… Hairan II. Yes, the first Hairan was still alive. No, I don’t understand why royals everywhere are so committed to being deeply uncreative in their naming choices.

ODENATHUS: things are going poorly in Rome

ZENOBIA: weren’t they already?

ODENATHUS: lol but like worse than usual

ZENOBIA: worse than the Caligula horse situation?

ODENATHUS: well the last emperor was assassinated after three months

ODENATHUS: and now we have two emperors

ODENATHUS: but one of them has been captured by the Persians

ODENATHUS: and the other one is trying to quash a bunch of revolts

ZENOBIA: hmmmmm interesting

ODENATHUS: my thoughts exactly!

ODENATHUS: I’m so glad you’re on my wavelength

ODENATHUS: unlike what’s-her-face in Ithaca with the pool boy

In 260, after Emperor Valerian was captured during a Persian invasion of Roman-held Mesopotamia, Odenathus got to work. In quick succession he declared himself king, attacked the Persians before they could cross the Euphrates, and helped quash a campaign to usurp the remaining emperor, Gallienus. Odenathus had basically established Palmyra as an independent kingdom, but he was very careful to keep up all the formalities due to the Roman Emperor. Given that his empire was crumbling around him, there wasn’t much Gallienus could do. Then, in 262, Odenathus launched a series of military campaigns that recaptured all previously Roman-held lands that the Persians had claimed since their incursions began in 252. After this stunning victory, Odenathus controlled all of the Roman east and began to use the title “King of Kings.”

ODENATHUS: but not Emperor!

ODENATHUS: technicalities are important

GALLIENUS: this feels like a spirit of the law versus letter of the law situation

ODENATHUS: I like to think of it more as “creative interpretation”

ODENATHUS: finally put that MFA to work

For several years, Odenathus and Zenobia threw themselves into creating the Palmyra they’d always dreamed of: strong, well-defended, and deeply cultured. In between military campaigns, they spent their time growing a circle of scholars and philosophers at court; the most famous of these was Cassius Longinus, who became Zenobia’s tutor (and probably her children’s as well). Zenobia and her husband wanted a capital as great as — if not greater than — Rome, which, to be fair, shouldn’t have been that hard because Rome at that point was a masturbatory cesspool. I mean that mostly figuratively (if there was one thing Roman orators loved doing, it was verbally wanking off about their city), but it applies literally too, presumably. Anyway! The King of Kings and his Queen of Queens both knew that a strong military coupled with the genteel hand of liberal arts were the ticket to geopolitical upward mobility.

Zenobia and Odenathus had Roman approval to do basically whatever the fuck they wanted, in part because Gallienus was extremely distracted by various goings-on in Gaul, where a revolt and secession were underway. Besides, there wasn’t much that the emperor could have criticized about the Palmyrene regime — the entire region was more stable and prosperous than it had been for nearly a century. Then, in 267, the King of Kings and his oldest son Hairan were assassinated. Suddenly, the world Odenathus and Zenobia had been painstakingly building together was threatened by the chaos of an empty throne.

ZENOBIA: no one knows who did it, by the way

ZENOBIA: in fact, historians can’t even agree on where it happened

ZENOBIA: some of them think it was during a military campaign, some say it was while he was at a friend’s birthday party

ZENOBIA: some people even think I was behind it!

ZENOBIA: listen, I love a good power move as much as the next monarch

ZENOBIA: but the odds on that gamble would have been way too risky for my liking

ZENOBIA: the fact that things ended up working out for me in the end isn’t proof that I orchestrated my husband’s death

ZENOBIA: if anything, it showcases my ability to persevere in the face of adversity!

ZENOBIA: but seriously, it’s wild how many of you will tie yourself into knots trying to blame everything on women

ZENOBIA: why can’t you just let us be great?

At the time of Odenathus’ death, Vaballathus, who was now heir to the Palmyrene throne, was 10; Zenobia herself was still not yet 30. But as young as she was, the queen was well-versed in governing, intriguing, and staging coups. She knew that she would have to act fast if she wanted to act at all, so she pulled a move that 1,200 years hence would be known as the Medici Maneuver, installing Vaballathus as king and naming herself queen regent. In some versions of the story, it was the Palmyrene army who insisted that Zenobia take over the government. If this was true, it might have happened for one of several reasons — it’s possible that the military thought it was their best hope for a peaceful transition, or else they hoped that a young woman and a child would be easy to control. Perhaps they even believed the queen to be a skilled leader. But even if the army wasn’t responsible for installing Zenobia, they certainly supported her; generals Zabdas and Zabbai, both of whom had served under Odenathus, were her most important courtiers and advisors from her accession until her death.

Zenobia and her husband wanted a capital as great as — if not greater than — Rome, which, to be fair, shouldn’t have been that hard because Rome at that point was a masturbatory cesspool.

Once she assumed control, Zenobia continued to build on the foundations that she and Odenathus had so assiduously laid . She fostered a culture of religious tolerance, maintained good relationships with the Jewish populations of Antioch and Alexandria, received emissaries from the new cult of Manichaeism, and offered support to the deposed Christian bishop Paul of Samosata. When she wasn’t busy cultivating interfaith peace in Palmyra, Zenobia spent her time traveling to the borders of her territory, securing the eastern frontier, and fortifying her settlements along the Euphrates. Her subjects seemed pretty happy with her reign, probably at least in part because women rulers weren’t a complete anathema in the Arab world the way they were in Rome. Her strong grasp of visual branding helped too: she was said to wear a diadem and her late husband’s imperial cloak. Some historians take that last part as a metaphor, claiming that she only assumed Odenathus’ military command; I personally prefer to take it literally, because I love the image of a boss lady striding around in a crown and giant red cape.

* * *

As Zenobia’s star rose, the situation in Rome continued to devolve. The Gauls were still galling, the Goths were still gothing. Gallienus did his part to qualify for the Murdered Roman Emperors Wikipedia category and got himself assassinated in 268; no one was sure who did it because most of his officials had wanted him dead. After Gallienus came Claudius II, who died less than 18 months later of a “pestilence.” Claudius spent most of his time as emperor fighting the Goths, for which he earned himself the name Claudius Gothicus, and according to some sources he also found time to torture and behead Saint Valentine. Busy, busy!

For the first three years after her husband’s death, Zenobia seemed happy enough maintaining the status quo. Then, in 270, she set out on an enterprise so incredibly audacious that few of her peers would have even dreamed of trying it: she began to conquer huge swaths of land hundreds of miles beyond the borders of her territory. By the end of the year, she had wrested control of Arabia and Egypt from Rome. Palmyra was no longer just a kingdom; it was now an empire and Zenobia was clearly its empress, even if she still shied away away from using that term.

As Zenobia’s star rose, the situation in Rome continued to devolve. The Gauls were still galling, the Goths were still gothing.

Historians have an easy time explaining the how of Zenobia’s annexations — the Palmyrene army was fierce; Rome was preoccupied with uprisings, revolts, and Emperor Drama; the arrival of Zenobia’s forces in Egypt was timed to coincide with the absence of the Prefect of Egypt, who was off fighting Mediterranean pirates. They seem to struggle with explaining why she did it. Had Claudius committed some vicious act of aggression that went unrecorded by the Romans but triggered an invasion nonetheless? Was Zenobia trying to protect her people from the deadly upheaval in Rome by ensuring access to resources like Egyptian grain? Did she hope to revitalize Palmyrene trade by securing shipping routes and ports like Alexandria? Had she spent those first three years shoring up fortifications because she’d planned to expand her territory all along, or was it pure opportunism born out of the chaos in Rome?

ZENOBIA: why, why, why

ZENOBIA: everyone always wants to know why

ZENOBIA: look, why does anyone do anything?

ZENOBIA: maybe there were secret extenuating circumstances

ZENOBIA: but then again maybe there weren’t

ZENOBIA: I’m just saying

ZENOBIA: when a man builds an empire, people don’t ask him why

By 271, the Palmyrene Empire stretched all the way from Ancyra (Ankara in present-day Turkey) in the north to the Egyptian port of Berenike in the south. Zenobia set to work ruling the new territories under her control, appointing governors, securing borders, and restoring monuments. But even as they took on the administrative side of managing an empire, the Palmyrenes must have been holding their breath as they looked towards the Eternal City. Surely the Romans would retaliate by throwing their full strength against the queen? But for two years it almost seemed like they might not — 270 had been a particularly bad year, with the death of two emperors and the unsteady rise of a third, plus Gaul was still seceded and gunning for a divorce. Was it possible that the Roman Empire would just let Zenobia get away with it?

ROME: lol

ROME: I think you already know the answer to that question

ROME: bring it on, Zenobia

ROME: in the immortal words of Torrance Shipman, this isn’t a democracy, it’s a cheerocracy

ROME: S! P! Q! R! THAT’S! WHO! WE! ARE! THE SENATE! THE PEOPLE! WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED! GOOOOOOO ROME!

The new Roman Emperor, Aurelian, spent most of 271 fighting the Goths, quashing local usurpers, and dealing with a mint-workers’ revolt in Rome. By the end of that year, though, things had settled down enough that he was able to prepare for a military campaign against Zenobia. The queen could have chosen to retreat, but it’s likely that she knew that Aurelian would not let her retain her rule in Palmyra even if she withdrew. Instead, she dug in her heels and threw off the last vestiges of her loyalty to Rome by finally claiming the titles of Emperor and Empress for Vaballathus and herself. Zenobia was not going to go down without a fight.

* * *

Aurelian swiftly recovered Egypt, then shifted his attention to Ankara and the rest of Asia Minor. As the Emperor advanced, Zenobia retreated, and most of the cities she left in her wake offered little resistance to the Roman army. The only exception is Tyana (Kemerhisar in modern-day Turkey), which locked its gates and prepared for battle. Aurelian was royally pissed, and swore to have his vengeance on the city.

AURELIAN: fuck Tyana!

SOLDIERS: yeah!

AURELIAN: by the time we’re done with Tyana, not even a single dog will be left alive!

SOLDIERS: yeah!!

AURELIAN: I hope you’re ready for some looting and pillaging!

SOLDIERS: FUCK YEAH!!!

*the next day*

AURELIAN: so, I’ve re-thought this

AURELIAN: and actually clemency is probably a better way to win over the locals?

AURELIAN: so we’re going to skip the looting

SOLDIERS: but you promised us that not even a dog would be left alive!!

AURELIAN: lol, true

AURELIAN: you got me

AURELIAN: ok, you can kill the dogs, you scallywags

If you weren’t already questioning the morals of the Roman war machine, I hope you will be convinced by the story of these literal monsters who killed dogs for no reason. Fucking Rome! They’re why we can’t have nice things.

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Zenobia and her general Zabdas chose to take their first big stand against the Romans at Immae, near the present-day border between Turkey and Syria. The Palmyrenes might have stood a chance had they not fallen for what seems like an incredibly transparent Roman ruse: the troops pretended to retreat and then, once the Palmyrenes were both overheated and overconfident, turned and attacked. Zenobia knew a defeat when she saw one and swiftly retreated to Antioch, where she and Zabdas spread the story that they had actually won; as part of this fiction, the queen dressed up one of her soldiers to look like the Emperor and paraded him through the streets. Then, once the victory celebration was fully underway, the queen and her general slipped out of the city. It was a genius move worthy of the most brilliant tactician — Palmyra had been badly beaten, and yet Zenobia had enough presence of mind to fake a victory in front of an entire city. Not only that, but she conveniently had a Roman Emperor costume somewhere in her luggage? It was a plan so absolutely wild that it couldn’t fail. It’s also proof that a trunk full of costumes is an important part of the empire-building arsenal.

After Immae, Aurelian took the nearby Palmyrene fort at Daphne, then spent some time securing Antioch. Zenobia seized this chance to regroup at Emesa, where she collected what was left of her army and brought in all the auxiliary forces she could find. Although the queen had lost most of her empire, there was still a chance that she could successfully defend her home soil, and as the Battle of Emesa began it almost seemed like she would do exactly that. The Romans tried to use the same ruse as at Immae, but this time the Palmyrenes were expecting it and the Romans experienced heavy casualties. Then, after the first flush of victory, the Palmyrene line began to fail. By the end of the battle, the Palmyrene army was utterly destroyed, and Zenobia was forced to retreat to Palmyra.

It was a genius move worthy of the most brilliant tactician — Palmyra had been badly beaten, and yet Zenobia had enough presence of mind to fake a victory in front of an entire city.

As the queen tried to figure out what to do next, Aurelian prepared to stage what some historians refer to as a “siege.” This was probably more of a supply blockade, since unlike most cities of the time, Palmyra didn’t have defensive walls. According to some sources, at this point Aurelian tried to open negotiations with Zenobia, who allegedly told him to fuck off and also that the Persians were on their way to fight on her side. If she did convey this message, it was probably pure bravado, meant to buy time while the queen considered her impossible situation. It’s more likely that the story was Roman propaganda, meant to paint Zenobia as a collaborator with the Empire’s biggest enemy. After all, the Palmyrenes and the Persians weren’t exactly pals — don’t forget that Zenobia had spent the first years of her reign securing her borders against them.

With the blockade continuing and her people growing hungry and restless, a desperate Zenobia fled towards Persia, where she presumably planned to beg for the help of her former enemies. She rode across the desert on a female camel — a factoid highlighted by historians because it is said to be the fastest of its breed, but also probably for weird misogynist reasons — heading for the Euphrates. She was caught by Aurelian’s forces before she could reach the river’s banks, apparently betrayed by someone from her inner circle. I hope the Romans paid you well, scab!

Zenobia and Vaballathus were brought back to Emesa to stand trial. According to later accounts, the queen blamed everything on her advisors and cautioned the Palmyrenes against making a hero out of her, but again, this was probably Roman propaganda. It’s unclear what happened to Zenobia after the trial, since historical accounts are wildly contradictory. Some say that she killed herself while en route to Rome — that without access to any weapons and under constant guard, she refused all food and eventually starved to death and was thrown into the Bosphorus. Others say that Aurelian dressed the queen up in golden chains and then paraded her through the Eternal City before beheading her. There are historians who believe that after publicly humiliating her, the Emperor gave her a villa in the Italian countryside, where she lived out the rest of her days in quiet retirement. Some say she remarried to a nobleman or a senator. Some say that her children married well and her lineage continued on for hundreds of years. Personally, as much as I’d like to believe that Zenobia spent the last years of her life in peace, it’s impossible to imagine her idling her days away at some country estate; every time I try to picture it, I see her pacing around like a caged tiger. Then again, maybe she subscribed to the idea that the best revenge is living well. That doesn’t seem like her style, though.

How did Zenobia die? It’s impossible to say. For a woman who lived during a well-documented period in Roman history, it’s amazing how few facts we know about the queen herself. Accounts can’t even agree on her appearance; in one history she is beautiful, vain, and cowardly, and in others she dressed, fought, and swaggered like an Emperor. Part of this is due to Aurelian’s wish to make her seem masculine in order to defend the need to fight her in the first place. In a culture that believed women to be weak, foolish, and incompetent, bragging about your victory over one of them was like bragging that you beat up a child. In order to make the account of Zenobia’s uprising and subsequent defeat palatable to a Roman audience, Aurelian and his supporters had to run it through a series of fun-house mirrors: she had to seem feminine enough to be cowardly and hateable, but not so feminine that anyone felt sympathy towards her. It was a tricky balance, but they managed to pull it off in the West for hundreds of years.

Maybe part of the reason Zenobia’s story isn’t often told on this side of the Bosphorus is that it’s still hard for us to filter through a gendered lens. Cleopatra and Boudicca’s stands against Rome are easier to understand as narratives that rely on feminine tropes; Cleopatra did it for the love of a man, and Boudicca was acting out a mother’s rage. Zenobia is more complex and trickier to parse in the West. Was she trying to benefit her son, building an empire to be her legacy? Was she trying to protect her homeland, hoping that a spirited offense was the best defense? Was she a woman who dared to be as wildly ambitious as a man?

What we do know is that she must have been fierce, competent, and brave. No other person could have accomplished what she did without pure skill and drive. At the height of her reign, Zenobia was one of the most powerful women the world has ever seen. She took on the Roman Empire and very nearly won. How many other people can say that? Long live the fucking queen! Long live the fucking empress!

---

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Zenobia:
Pat Southers, Empress Zenobia: Palmyra’s Rebel Queen
Yasmine Zahran, Zenobia: Between Reality and Legend

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based feminist killjoy. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. If she has a looming deadline, you can find her procrastinating on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 117501 https://longreads.com/2018/10/11/catherine-de-medici-reign/ Thu, 11 Oct 2018 12:00:18 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=114912 When your husband and male heirs are too useless or too dead to rule, you have to take matters into your own poison-gloved hands.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | October 2018 | 26 minutes (6,557 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

When we last left the Serpent Queen, things were looking dire. She had been married to Henri, the heir to the French throne, for nearly five years. Although the Dauphin and Dauphine were both young and healthy, Catherine was failing in her most fundamental duty: providing the country with an heir. Rumors had spread throughout the court that she was incapable of conceiving. Since her husband’s only living brother was unmarried and childless, the entire fate of the Valois dynasty rested on Catherine’s ability to produce a child.

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Faced with a rival noble faction, the Guises, who wanted to replace the apparently barren queen-to-be with one of their own, Catherine had thrown aside her pride and made a risky preemptive strike. Swooning pathetically at Francis I’s feet, the young woman tearfully begged the king to go ahead and replace her, saying that she loved Henri beyond measure and just wanted him to have a wife who could give him heirs. Catherine asked only that she be allowed to stay in France and humbly serve her beloved’s new bride.

It was a risky move, but Catherine had banked on the fact that the aging king couldn’t bear to see a young woman crying. Francis, nearly in tears himself, declared that it was God’s will that Catherine be the Dauphin’s wife. The question of replacing the Dauphine was resolved, for now.

But Catherine knew that this amnesty was only temporary; just across the English channel, Henry VIII was ditching his wives all over the place for not giving him a son. How long would it be before the Valois family decided to follow suit?

Catherine attacked the problem from every angle she could think of: prayers, doctors, alchemists, and questionable folk remedies like drinking mule’s urine. It’s possible that her obsession with magic and the occult stemmed at least in part from this time, since historical records make it clear that she was willing to try anything. Catherine even had a hole drilled into the floor above the chambers of Diane de Poitiers, her husband’s mistress; she wanted to spy on her rival to make sure she, Catherine, was doing sex right.

It’s possible that for her entire life, Catherine was an unwitting carrier of whatever killed her parents, a ticking bomb that would eventually help tear apart the Valois dynasty.

In a last-ditch effort to conceive, Catherine had a doctor named Jean Fernel perform an exhaustive physical exam on both her and Henri. The doctor said that based on the anatomy of their respective reproduction systems, they should try boning in a specific position in order to optimize their chances of making a baby. Sadly, the details of his recommendations have not been preserved, but whatever he suggested worked. The Dauphine became pregnant in 1543.

Let us pause for a second and marvel over this. It’s rumored that Henri had a mild penile deformity that had caused their childlessness, but even if that’s true, it seems astonishing that a simple change of position could produce such immediate results. I have questions, most of which boil down to: what position were they formerly doing it in that was apparently so detrimental to their fertility? Because after following Dr. Fernel’s advice, Catherine and Henri went on to have not just one or two children but ten. Ten! Ten whole children! After a decade of trying and failing to conceive!

HENRI: *squints at diagram*

HENRI: ok, so, milk, milk … lemonade?

HENRI: and then around the corner…

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: no!! remember what the doctor said?

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: around the corner is too far

HENRI: I don’t get it

HENRI: this is too complicated

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: just do whatever you did to make that baby in Italy!

HENRI: babe, that was so long ago

HENRI: I was in a war

HENRI: living in a foreign country

HENRI: drinking a lot

HENRI: you can’t expect me to remember every single detail of what happened

Catherine delivered her first child, Francis, in 1544, then spent the next twelve years popping out babies all over the place. By 1555, she had given birth to Elisabeth, Claude, Louis, Charles-Maximilien, Alexandre Édouard, Margaret, and Hercules; in 1555 she capped off this baby extravaganza with a two-for-one special: Princesses Joan and Victoria.

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Sadly, Louis and the twins did not survive infancy, and the rest of the royal children, with the exception of Margaret, would have serious lifelong health problems. Remember the speculation that Catherine’s parents died of syphilis and/or tuberculosis? The symptoms her children experienced were consistent with both congenital syphilis and tuberculosis. It’s possible that for her entire life, Catherine was an unwitting carrier of whatever killed her parents, a ticking bomb that would eventually help tear apart the Valois dynasty.

* * *

In early 1547, King Francis took to his bed after several months of poor health. Henri, who had grown close to Francis during his protracted illness, held his father in a tight embrace as he lay dying and refused to let go. Francis, for his part, spent his last hours giving his son advice like “don’t sleep around too much” and “don’t trust the Guises.” Then, on the afternoon of March 31, Francis I died at the age of 52. Henri and Catherine, both 28 years old, were the new King and Queen of France.

In spite of the constant wars against the Holy Roman Empire and mounting tensions between Catholics and Protestants, the couple had inherited a fairly stable country. Catherine was no stranger to violent political upheavals, but she could not have foreseen the powers that would tear the country apart during her rule, let alone that she would have to navigate most of it on her own. She also could not have known just how prophetic her father-in-law’s warning about the Guises would turn out to be.

Henri dressed for his coronation in a tunic emblazoned with the “HD” monogram that honored his love for Diane. Catherine, five months pregnant, swallowed down whatever her real feelings were and gave the outward appearance of pride and joy. This was exactly how the relationship between the three would play out over the next few years, with Henri openly declaring his love for his mistress and Catherine playing the role of uncomplaining wife and mother.

Catherine was polite and pleasant to Diane at all times, an act that she considered part of her duty to her husband. In a letter dated many years after this period, Catherine wrote, “If I made good cheer for [Diane] it was the King that I was really entertaining, and besides I always let him know that I was acting sorely against the grain; for never did a woman who loved her husband succeed in loving his whore. For one cannot call her otherwise, although the word is a horrid one to us.” That might be one of history’s most stunning examples of sorry but, like, lol not really sorry.

Catherine was no stranger to violent political upheavals, but she could not have foreseen the powers that would tear the country apart during her rule, let alone that she would have to navigate most of it on her own.

As their children grew older, Catherine and Henri began to plan out their futures. They decided to renew the Auld Alliance — a treaty between France and Scotland that could also be described as The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend: Fuck You, England! Edition — by promising their eldest son, Francis, to Mary Queen of Scots. Mary, whose mother was a Guise, came to live at the French court when she was just 5 years old and was raised with the Valois children.

Catherine’s plans to see her children well-married moved at a quick pace. In April of 1558, 16-year-old Mary wed Francis, the 14-year-old Dauphin, at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. On January 19, 1559, Princess Claude, 11 at the time, married the Duke of Lorraine. Later that year Princess Elisabeth wed Philip II of Spain. This marriage came a result of the treaty that ended the Last Italian War, so called because it marked the conclusion of the series of wars that France and the Holy Roman Empire had been fighting in Italy for 38 goddamn years. It was amid the celebrations of this new, contentious alliance that disaster struck.

Disaster, Catherine was sure, that had been amply foretold.

* * *

Like many of her Renaissance peers, the Queen of France often consulted astrologers and fortune-tellers and believed that her own dreams were often prophetic. Shortly after Elisabeth’s wedding ceremony, Catherine had a dream that Henri was lying on the ground, gravely injured and covered in blood. She was sure that this vision had something to do with the joust Henri was scheduled to participate in as part of the festivities; compounding her certainty was a warning she’d received from the Medici family astrologer, Luca Gaurico, who had said that Henri must “avoid all single combat in an enclosed space” in his 40th year.

On the morning of June 30, 1559, Catherine wept and begged her husband not to fight, but he brushed off her concerns. Under the gaze of his wife, his children, and his mistress, Henri took to the field; he was wearing Diane’s colors, which must have felt like an especial affront to Catherine after he’d ignored her warnings. Henri’s first few jousts against the Dukes of Guise and Nemours went well, and he seemed tired but confident as he prepared to ride against the Count of Montgomery. During their first clash, Montgomery nearly unseated the king. Their second clash ended in catastrophe: when the two riders met, a splinter of wood from one of the lances broke off and lodged itself in Henri’s eye. The wound proved to be fatal. After suffering through almost two weeks of unimaginable agony, Henri died of septicemia on July 10.

The Merchant’s Daughter stepped forward into the vacuum left by her husband’s death and grabbed the reins. For the sake of Henri, her children, and the entire Valois dynasty, she swore to hold on for as long as she could.

Catherine de’ Medici, just forty years old, was now a widow. Her youngest child was 4; her eldest, the new King of France, was 16. It was clear that the succession would be rocky; not only was Francis III young, but his health was deteriorating. On top of that, Henri left behind a country far less stable than the one he had inherited: the religious unrest reshaping much of Northern Europe threatened to tear France apart; the people were furious at Henri’s recent alliance with the Empire and could not believe that Princess Elisabeth had married the son of their former nemesis, Charles V; the Guises, sensing that their time had come, ramped up their scheming.

The Merchant’s Daughter stepped forward into the vacuum left by her husband’s death and grabbed the reins. For the sake of Henri, her children, and the entire Valois dynasty, she swore to hold on for as long as she could.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: honestly, it would have been easier for me to retire at this point

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: but listen, do you know what it’s like to be pregnant nine times in a row?

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I had about five minutes total of not being pregnant during those twelve years

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: and that’s not even getting into the decade of misery preceding that period

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I was not about to have all that hard work be for nothing

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: so, I took charge

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: it wasn’t supposed to be a forever thing

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I truly thought that one of my many sons would eventually be competent to rule

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I’m mature enough to admit that I was wrong

* * *

The day after Henri’s death, the Cardinal of Lorraine and the Duke of Guise, both uncles to Mary Queen of Scots, moved into the Louvre with the royal family. Their intent was clear: to hold sway over the naive young monarch and, through him, rule the kingdom according to their own interests. Catherine, ever the pragmatic, decided to give the appearance of working with the Guises while privately doing her best to make sure her advice was the first and loudest Francis heard. It was the same tactic she’d used with Diane: keeping up a publicly solicitous veneer while secretly plotting the downfall of her enemy.

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Speaking of Diane, one of Catherine’s first acts as a widow was to ban her from court. She demanded that Diane return the crown jewels that Henri had given her, and also asked Diane to “trade” her beautiful castle at Chenonceau for Catherine’s own castle at Chaumont. Since both Chenonceau and the jewelry had formerly been royal property, Diane could hardly say no. In any event, she’d always known that her position at court was temporary and could last only as long as the king himself. After acquiescing to all of Catherine’s demands, the former favorite retired to a quiet life at Anet; the two of them never met face-to-face again.

Catherine’s interest in the occult seemed to intensify around this time, or, at the very least, it became more widely known. During her last stay in Chaumont, Catherine allegedly performed a scrying ritual with Cosimo de Ruggiere, her personal astrologer. Ruggiere, said to be a master of the dark arts and also possibly a necromancer, held up an enchanted mirror for Catherine; in it, she saw a vision predicting that three of her sons would be kings but that the throne would eventually go to her children’s cousin Henri, Prince of Navarre. This was far from the only spooky shit Catherine was involved in. She also commissioned an amulet from Nostradamus made from metal mixed with human and goat’s blood, her “workroom” at Blois had walls filled with hundreds of secret cabinets where she was said to keep an array of poisons, and one of her contemporaries, philosopher Jean Bodin, claimed that she invented the Black Mass.

Was Catherine petty and vindictive? Definitely. Was she a witch? Maybe! But her fascination with the occult was, in retrospect, completely understandable.

While many of the rumors about Catherine’s more questionable hobbies are almost certainly exaggerations or just straight-up lies — men, after all, have long used accusations of witchcraft to delegitimize powerful women — at least some them were true. One of the reasons we know this is because Catherine didn’t do a great job of cleaning up after herself at Chaumont. When Diane took possession of castle, she was horrified to discover pentacles drawn on the floor along with other evidence of occult practices.

DIANE DE POITIERS: I think you, uh, forgot to pack a few things when you left

DIANE DE POITIERS: like this vial full of blood

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: oh, that’s fine! I don’t need that stuff anymore

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: you can keep it

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: you can especially keep the vortex to the underworld that I made in the second-floor drawing room

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: hahaha just kidding, I would never do that!

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: but seriously, be careful around those pentacles

DIANE DE POITIERS: you know, I think I’m good? I’m just going to go back to Anet

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: suit yourself!

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: Chenonceau is really nice by the way, you did a great job with it

Was Catherine petty and vindictive? Definitely. Was she a witch? Maybe! But her fascination with the occult was, in retrospect, completely understandable. Francis’ health was declining rapidly, and the French economy, depressed from years of war with the Empire, was in a tailspin. The Huguenot movement was gaining ground, and the Guises pushed for a bloody solution to the Protestant problem. Looking into magic mirrors and casting spells must have made Catherine feel like she had some kind of control over her life, however illusory.

* * *

As Francis deteriorated throughout the spring and summer of 1560, the Huguenots plotted to overthrow the Guises’ regency and give power to King Antoine of Navarre and his brother Louis of Condé, both of whom were Protestant. Antoine and Louis should have held a high position on the royal council as members of the House of Bourbon, but the Guises’ quiet coup after Henri II’s death had pushed them out of the government. The Bourbons and their supporters were understandably pissed off about this, and in the months that followed, there were numerous Huguenot riots and revolts across France. Catherine tried her best to make peace between the two religious factions, promoting clemency and freedom of conscience. Unfortunately, her attempt to find some kind of amicable middle ground between Catholicism and Protestantism only made each side distrust her more.

The Guises insisted on arresting Louis of Condé for treason because of his involvement in Huguenot plots. A brief trial with a stacked jury ensued, resulting in a “guilty” verdict; Condé was sentenced to death. During the same week that the trial began, Francis fell gravely ill with a fistula in his left ear. For Catherine, it must have felt like her life was disintegrating on every side. She knew that if the Guises had Condé executed, there would be no hope for a peaceful reconciliation between the Protestants and Catholics; Francis’ death, which would bring about the end of Mary’s reign in France, would do much to lessen the Guises’ power. But, of course, Catherine could hardly pray for the death of her beloved son. She also knew that having a 10-year-old king — the age of Charles-Maximilien, her second-eldest son — would only create more political instability.

Catherine’s solution to this problem was nothing short of brilliant: she and Antoine of Navarre reached an agreement that made her regent and ensured the release of his brother. The Guises began to grow anxious about retaliation for their treatment of Louis of Condé once their niece, Mary, was no longer queen; to placate them, Catherine had the dying Francis announce that was the one who had ordered the arrest and death of Louis of Condé. Then, because she was That Mom Friend, Catherine made the Guises and the Condés hug it out in front of everybody.

King Francis II died on December 5, 1560. In just over a year and a half, Catherine de’ Medici had lost both her husband and her eldest son, yet she knew that she couldn’t give in to her anguish; if she didn’t act quickly, the Valois dynasty would lose its grip on the crown. On December 6, Catherine asked the grieving Mary to return the crown jewels. She then called a Privy Council meeting and declared Charles-Maximilien King of France.

“Since it has pleased God to deprive me of my elder son, I do not mean to abandon myself to despair, but to submit to the Divine Will and to assist and serve the King, my second son, in the feeble measure of my experience,” she said by way of opening the session. “I have decided, therefore, to keep him beside me and to govern the state, as a devoted mother must do. Since I have assumed this duty, I wish all correspondence to be addressed in the first place to me; I shall open it in your presence and in particular in that of the King of Navarre who will occupy the first place in the council as the nearest relative of the King … such is my will.” At another council meeting on December 21, Catherine was officially proclaimed Gouvernante de France; a few months later, Charles-Maximilien was crowned at Rheims Cathedral as Charles IX.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: as my old pal Billy Shakes would say

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: some are born great

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: some achieve greatness

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: and some of us have to wrest greatness from the hands of conniving dukes

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: you know, I’ve spent my whole life having other people make decisions for me

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: where I live, who I marry, whether or not I survive

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: but now I’m in charge

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: so you can either do what I want or get the fuck out of my way

* * *

Charles IX’s reign did not begin very auspiciously; he wept at his coronation from exhaustion and stress. In spite of this poor start, Catherine pressed on. The first thing on her agenda was religious reconciliation, which she hoped to bring about at a conference with Protestant and Catholic leaders in Poissy. Unfortunately, Catherine didn’t seem to grasp what was at stake when it came to her country’s divided faith. She saw it as a political issue, and couldn’t understand why everyone was being so unreasonable about it. Her own relationship with Christianity was loose and practical; the Catholic Church generally aligned with her life ambitions and she did seem to find some genuine comfort in its rituals, but she was also drawing pentacles on floors. Maybe it’s not surprising that she couldn’t grasp why other people were so ride-or-die for their particular brand of Jesus. In the end, the conference disbanded after a little more than a month when it became clear that no agreement could be reached. Once again both sides felt that Catherine had let them down.

Things devolved from there. The Duke of Guise massacred a group of Huguenots while they were at worship; shortly after that the Condés raised an army of 1,800 men, made an alliance with England, and began seizing towns across France. This was the beginning of three decades of civil unrest in France, a series of ongoing conflicts known as the Wars of Religion, which would permanently blemish the reputation of the Valois dynasty.

Catherine packed just the essentials — stuff like gold plates and silk sheets and portable triumphal arches to set up whenever they entered a new city.

During a particularly violent period between 1562 and 1563, Antoine of Navarre died of battlefield wounds, and the Duke of Guise was killed by a Huguenot double agent. After brokering a short-lived treaty, Catherine set her iron will to maintaining peace in her country. She knew that despite the vast power of the regency, she could not wield it the way a man could, and so she set about figuring out how to achieve her political objectives through the means that were available to her.

She began to throw lavish parties, which had two main goals: to keep the nobility, Catholic and Protestant alike, too drunk and happy to fight, and to show the world that the House of Valois was just as vital and magnificent as it had been during the years of Francis I and Henri II. It was also during this time that Catherine created one of her most notorious legacies: her Flying Squadron.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: what’s the Flying Squadron?

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: honey, I’m so glad you asked

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: it’s a group of political agents who just happen to be beautiful women

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: turns out men will spill all their secrets if you show a little skin

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: like, slip a nip while asking who they’re plotting to bring down

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: and they’ll just tell you

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: men are so weak and predictable

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: it almost makes me feel bad, like I’m taking candy from a baby

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: but, you know, a baby that would destroy my life if it had the chance

The Flying Squadron, who dressed in robes of silk and cloth of gold, were Catherine’s spies, bringing her back information about political maneuverings. They also used their wiles to distract men who might otherwise have been reigniting religious tensions. One member of the Flying Squadron, Isabelle de Limeuil, began an affair with Louis of Condé and was apparently so successful in her objectives that he quit attending Protestant services for a while.

The second prong of Catherine’s plan to bring about peace focussed on the common people. She figured that they might be more likely to love and obey their new king if they had the chance to see him, so she organized a grand tour of France. For this venture, Catherine packed just the essentials — stuff like gold plates and silk sheets and portable triumphal arches to set up whenever they entered a new city. The trip, which lasted over two years, was by and large a success when it came to Catherine’s political objectives: the French got to know their young king, and he got to know his people. She also managed to achieve two personal goals: a meeting with Nostradamus and a reunion with her daughter Elisabeth, Queen of Spain.

Through Catherine’s efforts, France saw four years of “armed peace” after the first war of religion. But even the most opulent feasts and masques couldn’t stave off the inevitable, and in 1567 the Second War of Religion broke out. The Huguenots tried to kidnap Charles IX at Meaux and then massacred a group of Catholics at Nîmes; the Catholics did their best to retaliate. The war concluded with a decisive battle in 1568, but by then it became clear that Catherine’s greatest fears were true: the religious problem remained unsolved, and would likely remain that way for many years to come. In fact, the Third War of Religion commenced just months after the end of the second.

* * *

After the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye ended the third round of fighting, Charles IX began spending more and more time with Admiral Coligny, a gifted military leader and head of the Huguenot faction. Coligny established himself as an important presence in Charles’ life and became a close advisor of the king’s. As Coligny’s influence waxed, Catherine’s waned. Charles was, after all, an adult; his mother’s regency had formally ended in 1563, and by the end of 1570 he was 20 and married to Elisabeth of Austria. It’s natural that he was tired of being under Catherine’s control. Equally natural was Catherine’s seething resentment as Coligny’s power over the king eclipsed her own.

Speaking of marriages, a big one was in the works for Catherine’s seventh child, Margaret: a union with King Henri of Navarre, son of Antoine de Navarre and a leader of the Protestant forces. One small catch was that Margaret was in love with a different Henri, the new Duke of Guise, and the two of them were Doing It on the regular. Catherine was, to put it mildly, furious; she saw the match between Margaret and the King of Navarre as the perfect solution to the ongoing conflicts between the Huguenots and the Catholics, and she couldn’t believe that her daughter would let a little thing like love stand in the way of her duty to her country. Catherine and Charles managed to catch Margaret and Henri of Guise in bed together; the king and his mother dragged the girl from her chambers and beat her while she screamed.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: was it my proudest parenting moment?

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: definitely not

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: but these fucking Guises

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: they’re like cockroaches, you think you’ve killed them all but they just keep coming back.

Henri of Navarre’s mother, Jeanne d’Albret, who had left court several years earlier after being disgusted by the loose morals of the Flying Squadron, was initially against the match. Jeanne didn’t see it as a chance to broker peace; to her, it was more like throwing her son to the wolves — slutty, morally devoid, Catholic wolves. But Catherine pulled out all the stops and was as charming and persuasive as she could be. She even promised to get a special dispensation from the Pope so that Henri of Navarre could remain Protestant. Eventually, Jeanne d’Albret agreed, and they announced the engagement. Less than two months later, Margaret’s future mother-in-law fell ill and died in Paris, where she’d gone to buy clothes for the wedding. It was widely rumored that Catherine had killed her with a pair of poisoned gloves.

* * *

The wedding of Margaret and Henri was set for August 18, 1572. As the date approached, Paris began to fill with Huguenots, who were excited by the chance to celebrate the marriage of one of their own. The Parisians, a staunchly Catholic population, were decidedly not thrilled about the match or the crowds of Protestants. The ceremony itself went off without a hitch, but just four days later a chain reaction set into motion and culminated in a burst of violence that has stained the Medici name ever since.

On August 22, a man named Maurevert leaned out the window of a house owned by the Guise family and shot Admiral Coligny. It’s impossible to know who, exactly, organized this attempt on Coligny’s life; regardless of who was behind it, the assassination attempt failed and the admiral escaped with an injured finger.

Charles IX was initially appalled by the attack and sent his personal physician to attend to his mentor. The king wasn’t allowed to have a private audience with Coligny, however, and was told by his mother, his brother the Duke of Anjou, and various Catholic advisors that Coligny had actually been working against his interests all this time. Further, he was told that the Huguenots were going to seek revenge for the attack on Coligny. It was this last point that convinced the young king that his beloved mentor was up to no good, at which point he was said to have yelled, “Then kill them! Kill them all!”

St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre began early in the morning of August 24 with the murder of Admiral Coligny, which Henri of Guise carried out himself. Huguenot nobles, who had lodged in the Louvre for the wedding, were slaughtered in their rooms. Mayhem quickly broke out, and the violence spread to the streets, with furious Catholics killing any Huguenots they could find. If Catherine had hoped that orchestrating the removal of Coligny and the Protestant nobility would end the smoldering religious tensions in France, she had made a grave miscalculation. The royal family cowered in the palace, terrified that the horde would turn on them next. Catherine, no doubt, spent the time reliving the Siege of Florence, when, as a young child, she had endured stomach-churning threats from all sides.

By the time the massacre was over, Catholic mobs had murdered tens of thousands of their Huguenot countrymen. Henri de Navarre and his cousin Henri of Condé were spared, but only because they had promised to embrace Catholicism. The remaining Huguenots were convinced that the whole thing had been an elaborate plot wrought by the Serpent Queen; they thought that, in a deeply Machiavellian move, she had arranged her daughter’s wedding to Henri with the intention of luring Protestants to Paris and then slaughtering them. Henri’s conversion was the icing on her scheming, poison-filled cake.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: if it wasn’t such a horrible accusation, it would be kind of flattering

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: imagine how much foresight and planning a massacre like that would require!

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: it would take a genius to pull it off

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: and I am just a humble queen mother

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: a queen who, by the way, has spent years advocating for reconciliation between the Catholics and the Protestants

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: the St Bartholomew’s Day thing was a complete accident

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I will admit that it was gauche for Charles to throw a parade celebrating it

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: especially while the killings were still going on

Not long after the massacre, it became clear that Charles was dying, probably from the same illness that had killed his older brother; he spent his last years tormented by the violence that he had unleashed on his country, and often blamed it all on his mother. Catherine, in denial that she was about to lose another son, finagled a deal that unwisely involved sending the Dauphin, formerly known as Alexandre Édouard but now going by Henri, off to be King of Poland. (For those of you keeping score at home, the tally is now four Henris: Henri of Navarre, Henri of Guise, Henri of Condé, and Henri of Valois. The Four Henris of the Apocalypse, if you will. Or else just plain Too Many Fucking Henris.) Getting a foot in the Eastern European door seemed like a great idea to Catherine, who had dynastic ambitions and was broke as hell; not only would the Valois dynasty rule two countries, but Poland would also generate the cash she needed. Unfortunately, the deal turned out to be much less lucrative than she had hoped.

* * *

On May 30, 1574, 23-year-old Charles IX died with Catherine at his bedside. His last words were “Adieu, ma mère, eh! Ma mère.” Catherine, deeply gratified, repeated the story of his death to anyone who would listen. Not that she wasn’t devastated, but, you know, silver linings and all that.

The Dauphin, now Henri III of France, was notified of his promotion at home in Poland. Knowing that his departure would not go over well in his adoptive country, Henri III promised the Poles that he would not abandon them and that their interests would come first while he figured out what to do next. Then he peaced out of his castle in the middle of the night with a bunch of the Polish crown jewels. It was a classic Medici move.

Much like his brothers before him, Henri III was not very interested in the practicalities of ruling and left most of it up to his mother. He preferred to carouse with his close-knit circle of friends, who all happened to be exceedingly attractive young men; the king referred to this group as his mignons, which roughly translates to “adorables.” Henri III seems to have been fluid in both his sexuality and gender presentation. His fashion preferences tended towards what his contemporaries considered feminine, with corsets, sumptuous fabrics, and flashy jewelry. He would often throw dress-up parties to which he would wear elaborate skirts and stunning bodices. He had several very close (read: probably sexual) relationships with men, but he also obsessed over beautiful women, particularly Marie of Clèves, the wife of his sometime-nemesis, Henri of Condé.

Much like his brothers before him, Henri III was not very interested in the practicalities of ruling and left most of it up to his mother.

After Marie’s death (of a lung infection, although the king swore that her husband had poisoned her), Henri III married Louise de Vaudémont, who bore a haunting resemblance to his former beloved. Henri threw himself into planning their wedding, even going so far as to design all of the bride’s wedding outfits himself. He also styled Louise’s hair for the occasion, and took so long primping and curling her locks that the ceremony had to be delayed by several hours. Louise, whose childhood had been marked by neglect, loved the attention her husband lavished on her; he, by turn, loved to dress her up and show her off. By all accounts, it was a happy marriage and Louise was smitten with her husband. (After his death she inherited Chenonceau, which she filled with black tapestries embroidered with skulls. It’s called mourning, sweetie, look it up.)

Henri had long been his mother’s favorite child; she called him chers yeux (“darling eyes”) and fawned over him at every chance. He had been involved in his mother’s intriguing before the massacre, and their political and personal ambitions often seemed to align (although she would have preferred a more prestigious match when it came to his marriage); according to some historians, they even practiced the dark arts together.

* * *

On June 10, 1584, Catherine’s youngest child, who had formerly been called Hercules but now went by Francis, died of the same illness that had claimed her two eldest sons. The queen mother had outlived all of her children except Henri III and Margaret, now Queen of Navarre.

The death of his younger brother and heir meant that Henri, who was childless, had to name Henri of Navarre as Dauphin. This would have been fine — Henri of Navarre was, after all, related through both blood and marriage to the king — except that the new Dauphin had re-converted to Protestantism after the fallout from the massacre had died down. The Duke of Guise could not tolerate the idea of a Huguenot on the throne, took control of the League of Catholics, and moved in open revolt against the throne.

By 1588, the French monarchy completely lost control of the country. The Parisians, who had aligned themselves with the Duke of Guise and the League of Catholics, set up barricades in the streets, although they allowed Catherine safe passage on her way to and from mass. This was the third time that the queen mother’s daily life was circumscribed by mob rule; distraught beyond words, she soon took to her bed with a lung infection. Henri, always one to seize an opportunity, dismissed all of his ministers, many of whom had obtained their positions through his mother’s orchestrations. This was the end of any institutional power Catherine still held.

Had Catherine de’ Medici been a man, she would probably be remembered as one of the greatest European rulers, but because she’s a woman she’s referred to as a maggot and a serpent.

On December 23, 1588, Henri had the Duke of Guise over at the Chateau de Blois, allegedly to discuss the evolving crisis. In reality, Henri had planned to murder him in cold blood. Immediately afterwards, Henri captured Guise’s brother, Louis, and killed him too. Both bodies were dismembered and then burned in a fireplace; Henri worried that giving them a proper burial plot would create a shrine where Catholics would worship them as martyrs.

When Henri bragged to Catherine about his sweet murder plot (sample sentence: “mom, don’t get upset, but I murdered all the Guises today”), he stressed that he had only preemptively done what the Guises were planning to do to him. Catherine recognized, though, that the already-unpopular king had committed an offense that his people could never forgive. The queen mother, her seemingly indomitable spirit finally crushed by her son’s crimes, grew sicker over the following days. On January 5, 1589, Catherine died at the age of 69. Henri III was assassinated eight months later; he was succeeded by Henri de Navarre, who had re-converted to Catholicism and ruled as Henri IV of France.

HENRI IV: Paris is well worth a mass

HENRI IV: lol, I actually said that!

HENRI IV: can you believe it?

HENRI IV: the ends totally justify the means

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I tried to tell everyone that all those Wars of Religion were about politics

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: but no, no, no, you all insisted they were about Jesus

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: well, millions of people are dead

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: and it turns out that your sweet little Protestant Prince is as fickle as anyone

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: are you all happy now?

The reign of the House of Valois was over.

Had Catherine de’ Medici been a man, she would have probably been remembered as one of the greatest European rulers, but because she was a woman, she’s referred to as a maggot and a serpent. And that’s not even getting into the fact that she’s often cited as the sole author of the St Bartholomew Day massacre, in spite of the multiple men around her who had a vested interest in getting rid of Protestants. Philip II of Spain is said to have laughed — laughed — for “almost the first time on record” when he learned of the killings, and yet his name isn’t the one that comes up during discussions about those events. No one would argue that Catherine was blameless, but it also seems fair to say that it’s time to reassess her legacy. Was she truly a Machiavellian monster? Or did she serve as a scapegoat for the men around her?

Catherine spent her entire adult life trying to protect her family from the growing chaos around them. Although she sometimes failed and failed badly, her sense of duty never wavered. She was the force that held the Valois dynasty — and, to a certain extent, France — together until the bitter end. Long live the fucking queen.

---

Previously:
Queens of Infamy: The Rise of Catherine de’ Medici
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Catherine de’ Medici:
Leonie Frieda, Catherine de’ Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici: Its Rise And Fall
Mary Hollingsworth, The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based feminist killjoy. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. If she has a looming deadline, you can find her procrastinating on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

]]> 114912 https://longreads.com/2018/09/27/queens-of-infamy-the-early-trials-of-catherine-de-medici/ Thu, 27 Sep 2018 10:00:56 +0000 http://longreads.com/?p=114133 Kings and popes thought she was their pawn. The Merchant's Daughter begged to differ.]]>

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Anne Thériault | Longreads | September 2018 | 18 minutes (4,588 words)

From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past.

* * *

The year was 1519. Henry VIII was king of England and still (mostly) happily married to Catherine of Aragon. The throne of France was held by Francis I, also known as “Francis of the Large Nose,” which may or may not have been a dick joke. Charles I of Spain had just become Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Martin Luther was stirring up shit in Germany. And in Florence, a couple whose union represented a last-ditch coalition between France and the Pope against the ever-expanding Holy Roman Empire welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Catarina Maria Romula de’ Medici (hereafter referred to as Catherine).

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I like to think of the Medicis as the Kardashians of Renaissance Europe; at the very least, they had the same intuitive understanding of how to create and exploit a personal brand. Just the mention of the Medici name conjures up images of vulgar opulence, moral decay, and murderous treachery. Machiavelli’s The Prince — the so-called “textbook for tyrants” — was dedicated to Catherine de’ Medici’s father, and it was rumored that each of her children carried a copy with them at all times. Catherine herself inspired such nicknames as the Serpent Queen, the Black Queen, the Maggot from Italy’s Tomb, and (more flatteringly) the Mother of the Modern High-Heeled Shoe. She was also called the Merchant’s Daughter, a dig at her family’s nonaristocratic origins.

Whether or not Catherine was a basilisk who covered her shimmering scales with silk and velvet is up for debate, but it’s true that the Medici dynasty had decidedly common roots. In fact, a little over a century before Catherine’s birth, the Medicis were little more than casually wealthy textile traders. I mean, they had money, but not in mind-boggling amounts. That all changed in 1397, when they started a bank and discovered a latent talent for money management. By the mid-1400s, the Banco dei Medici was the biggest bank on the continent, and the Medicis themselves were the richest family in Europe.

Money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure can get you just about anything else, including various titles, marriages into noble families, a couple of popedoms, and the de facto lordship of the entire city-state of Florence. Also: a tomb designed by Michelangelo! The only problem with the Medici family’s scheme to dominate Europe was that supply couldn’t keep up with demand; even as they acquired all these positions of power, their ability to produce heirs veered into a steep decline. By the time Catherine was born, she was the only legitimate heir of the main branch of the family, and it soon became clear that she was quite possibly the last.

I like to think of the Medicis as the Kardashians of Renaissance Europe; at the very least, they had the same intuitive understanding of how to create and exploit a personal brand.

Catherine’s parents were Lorenzo II de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence, and Madeleine de la Tour D’Auvergne, a member of France’s noble (later on, royal) Bourbon dynasty. Their union represented an alliance between Francis I of France and Pope Leo X (Lorenzo’s uncle, born Giovanni de’ Medici) against the Holy Roman Empire (which was happily trucking along in its mission to Fuck Shit Up in Europe). Lorenzo and Madeleine’s marriage had a fairytale-like quality; both were young, beautiful, and, by all accounts, deeply in love. The wedding, hosted by Francis, involved ten days of banquets, masques, balls, jousts, and tournaments. When, just a few months later, Madeleine announced that she was pregnant, the pope and the king of France were beyond delighted that all their schemes were panning out.

FRANCIS I: fuck their fucking empire

LEO X: yes, fuck it

FRANCIS I: fuck England and Spain, also

LEO X: lol

LEO X: isn’t Spain … a part of the holy roman empire?

FRANCIS I: yes, but fuck it especially

Sadly, their gloating would be short-lived.

Lorenzo fell ill in the autumn of 1518, and was bedridden by the time Catherine was born on April 13, 1519. Madeleine’s health also plummeted shortly after her daughter’s birth. She died on April 28, and Lorenzo soon followed on May 4. Their causes of death are unclear — in Lorenzo’s case, it’s speculated that he died from tuberculosis, syphilis, or a combination of both, and Madeleine is thought to have suffered from puerperal fever, the plague, or possibly also syphilis. Whatever the cause, Catherine was left orphaned at just three weeks old.

* * *

The people of Florence quickly warmed to their tiny orphan overlord and gave her the nickname Duchessina, although the fact that Catherine was a girl all but guaranteed that she would never inherit her father’s title. But even if hot gender nonsense meant that Catherine couldn’t fulfill Francis and Leo’s plans, she was still a valuable pawn. (The rule of Florence would eventually go to Alessandro de’ Medici, who contemporaries considered to be Lorenzo’s illegitimate son, although modern historians think he was the son of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII; Alessandro’s mother was Simonetta da Collevecchio, a woman of African descent who is variously described as a servant or slave in the Medici household, and Alessandro was the first Black head of state in modern Europe).

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Francis wanted to raise Catherine in the French court but Leo strongly disagreed, mostly because he was about to burn that bridge by allying himself with the Holy Roman Empire. Quel scamp! Leo brought Catherine to Rome and put her in the care of her grandmother, Alfonsina Orsini; after Alfonsina’s death, Catherine went to live with her aunt Clarice de’ Medici. Things were stable for approximately one year before Leo died and was succeeded as pope by Adrian VI, a pious hardliner with strong ties to the Empire. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, who had expected to win the papal election, hurriedly left Rome for Florence, bringing Catherine and her cousins Alessandro and Ippolito with him. It was the fourth time her life had been completely uprooted in as many years.

You can only coast on charm for so long before real life catches up with you and you have to pay all the angry peasants you’d hired to fight out all your petty grudges.

Adrian VI died in 1523 (“live hard, die fast” apparently being the motto of most 16th-century popes), and Giulio finally acceded to the papal throne as Clement VII. The Medicis, whose position in Italy had been somewhat precarious under a non-Medici pope, breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was going to be cool again, right? Well, no, not exactly — Clement had shifted the papal alliances once more and formed a league with France, England, Florence, and Venice against the Holy Roman Empire. Some shit was about to go down.

In 1527, the Empire defeated France in Northern Italy, and shortly thereafter realized they didn’t have enough money to feed or pay their troops. This is why charismatic leaders need meticulous employees to crunch their numbers for them! You can only coast on charm for so long before real life catches up with you and you have to pay all the angry peasants you’d hired to fight out all your petty grudges. The upshot of all this was a bunch of hungry, furious soldiers on the road to Rome, many of whom were Lutherans who had a personal beef with the pope.

People who want you to commit to long-term projects will tell you that Rome wasn’t built in a day, but you know what? It wasn’t sacked in a day, either. The Imperial forces really took their time to get the murdering and desecrating exactly right. I mean, if you’re going to destroy a metropolis nicknamed The Eternal City, you’d better give it the ruin it deserves. For seven months Rome was systematically flattened into the world’s largest outdoor toilet. Eventually hunger and a plague epidemic drove the occupying forces from the city; from there, they headed north to Florence, where a revolt against the Medici rule of the city was already underway. Sackings for everyone!

As the violence mounted, Ippolito and Alessandro de’ Medici were spirited out of the city, leaving Catherine behind with her aunt. Nothing says “boys are assets and girls are liabilities” quite like saving the young male heirs in your family and leaving the girls and women behind to face a murderous mob.

Catherine was taken hostage and placed in the Santa Lucia convent, an institution famous for its hatred of the Medicis. She was deeply unhappy there, although apparently not quite unhappy enough to suit her captors, who soon moved her to the convent of Santa Caterina of Siena, a place contemporaries described as a “disease-ridden hovel.” After a bit of a fuss by the French ambassador (France, after all, still had a vested interest in the Duchessina), Catherine was relocated to the Murate Monastery, where she would live in relative comfort and happiness from the time she was 8 until a few months after her 11th birthday.

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At some point after joining the Florentine insurrection the Imperial army had gone home, but in 1528 they were back in Italy, trouncing the French once again. By this point, Clement VII realized that he had badly miscalculated which horse to bet on, and quickly switched his allegiance back to the Holy Roman Empire. In 1529, Clement VII and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V signed a treaty in which the pope promised to crown Charles emperor in return for his help restoring his family to power (Charles was already the Holy Roman Emperor, of course, but being crowned by a pope gave him that extra sheen of divine respectability). Which is how the Imperial army wound up besieging Florence in 1529 in order to restore the Medici family to power just two years after participating in the revolt against them. Truly, time is a flat circle or something.

From some perspectives — namely those of the Imperial Army, Charles V, and the pope — the siege went pretty well! Others — the citizens of Florence, and also probably Catherine — didn’t think quite so highly of it. The hunger and disease that the siege brought with it only heightened the existing hatred of the Medici family, and the Florentines increasingly found a vector for their outrage in their young Duchessina. Some people called for her death. Some said that Catherine should be placed naked outside of the city walls, where she would either halt the Imperial barrage or else accidentally be killed by her own allies. One extremely charming suggestion involved her being left in a military brothel, where she would be raped by soldiers and thus no longer of marriageable value to the pope.

Nothing says ‘boys are assets and girls are liabilities’ quite like saving the young male heirs in your family and leaving the girls and women behind to face a murderous mob.

Eventually the rebel council decided to send Catherine back to the Santa Lucia convent, at least for the time being, since the Murate convent was a pro-Medici establishment that would likely allow the Imperial forces to rescue the girl. Certain that this latest move was an elaborate cover for her execution, Catherine cut off all her hair and put on a nun’s habit in a last-ditch effort to save herself. She thrashed and kicked at the man who had been sent to transport her before screaming out, “Let us now see what excommunicated wretch will dare to drag a spouse of Christ from her monastery!” As she was taken through the streets of Florence, a furious crowd gathered to scream abuse and death threats at her. It was a terrifying experience, one that Catherine would relive several times during her long and eventful life.

* * *

After the Imperial Army defeated the rebels in Florence and lifted the siege, Clement VII brought Catherine back to a (newly refurbished and Imperial Army-free) Rome in hopes that a few years in the Papal court would give her the polish she needed to hook a noble husband. Although she was frequently described as bright, witty, and well-mannered, many contemporary observers made a point of remarking that Catherine wasn’t conventionally attractive, proving that the brand of dude who loudly declares that he would never stoop to marry Rihanna has always existed. Much to the dismay of all the men who pooh-poohed Catherine’s “protuberant eyes,” the pope managed to make an extremely advantageous match between her and Francis I’s second son, Henri.

FRANCIS I: I’m confused

FRANCIS I: are we still in a fight?

CLEMENT VII: idk

CLEMENT VII: but listen, I put together a pretty exclusive dowry package

CLEMENT VII: it includes several cities that have cheeses named after them

The wedding took place in Marseilles on October 28, 1533, and it was a Whole Thing. Francis and Clement were intent on out-lavishing each other — at one point, the pope presented the king with a unicorn’s horn mounted in gold, and Francis gifted Catherine’s cousin Ippolito with a live lion. Catherine’s hair and velvet robes were encrusted with gems. Francis wore a white satin robe and a cloak of cloth of gold, embroidered all over with fleurs de lys and pearls. On a scale of one to ten, Catherine’s wedding was a Level Eleven Medici Event. It was some Deep Medici Shit. In astrological terms, it was a Medici sun with a Medici moon and also Medici rising.

On their wedding night, Catherine and Henri — both 14 years old — retired to a sumptuously decorated bed for their coucher, which is french for “first boning.” Francis decided he should stick around and watch because he was a weirdo pervert he wanted to make sure they consummated their marriage. He stayed until he was satisfied that “each had shown valor in the joust,” which is a weird metaphor because as far as I know, sex is not a contest where partners ride around on horses and try to violently knock each other down with pointy sticks. On the other hand, who knows what Francis does in his personal life?

CATHERINE: things are finally looking up!

CATHERINE: I’ve more than fulfilled my obligations by marrying an actual prince

CATHERINE: no one wants to dangle me naked in front of a besieging army

CATHERINE: God has at last granted me peace and stability

GOD: lol

GOD: sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but

GOD: lol

On September 25, 1534, Clement VII died after several months of illness. This posed several problems for Catherine. No longer the niece of a pope, her status at the French court plummeted. To make matters worse, her dowry was only partly paid and the new pope, Paul III, refused to make good on the rest of it. Francis, who had been excitedly making plans for all the Italian territory he was about to acquire, now had to come to terms with the fact that he would own none of it. Catherine, once the sole heir to the wealthiest family on the continent, was now worthless, at least from a political standpoint. The French were furious.

Catherine knew that the best way to secure her future in France was to have a child with Henri. Francis I’s eldest son, also named Francis, was as yet unmarried; this meant that if Henri had any sons, they would be directly in the line of succession. A child would also have made it much more difficult for Henri to have his marriage to Catherine annulled, as some people suggested he should do. Yet try as she might, Catherine couldn’t seem to get pregnant. Part of the problem was that Henri wasn’t all that interested in his new bride — in fact, he was in love with another woman, Diane de Poitiers, widow of the Grand-Sénéschal of Normandy and 19 years Henri’s senior.

On a scale of one to ten, Catherine’s wedding was a Level Eleven Medici Event. It was some Deep Medici Shit. In astrological terms, it was a Medici sun with a Medici moon and also Medici rising.

Let us pause here and have a brief word about Henri, who, like his wife, had experienced a deeply traumatic childhood. Things had started out well enough, but in 1525, when Henri was 6, shit went sideways. During the same war with the Holy Roman Empire that had led to the sacking of Rome, Francis I was captured during the Battle of Pavia. The French king didn’t feel that he could serve his people well as a prisoner, so he offered up two of his sons as hostages until the ransom could be paid. Henri was 7 and his brother Francis, the Dauphin (heir to the French throne), was 8 when they were sent to Spain in exchange for their father. There, they would spend the next four and a half years in a series of increasingly bleak prison cells. Unsurprisingly, the experience affected the young boys profoundly.

When Henri and the Dauphin returned to the French court, everyone remarked on how changed they both appeared. Whereas before they’d been spirited and outgoing, now they were sombre and aloof. After his initial joy over his sons’ return had passed, Francis I quickly grew impatient with them, saying he had no time for “dreamy, sullen, sleepy children.”

FRANCIS I: would it kill you to smile once in a while?

FRANCIS I: what’s your problem?

HENRI: what’s my problem? are you fucking kidding me?

FRANCIS I: look at your younger brother Charles! So happy! So carefree!

FRANCIS I: why can’t you be more like him?

HENRI: CHARLES IS HAPPY BECAUSE HE DIDN’T SPEND FOUR YEARS LIVING IN A LITERAL PRISON CELL

FRANCIS I: looks like someone caught a bad attitude while he was out of the country!

Since it was still several centuries before the invention of psychotherapy, Henri tried to work through his issues by throwing himself into activities like hunting, jousting, and other sports that involved physical violence. Also tennis, which the French called jeu de paume. (The nobility were all really into tennis at the time; it was an obsession that would end badly for them when the Third Estate, some two and a half centuries later, discovered the tennis court at Versailles.)

In spite of Henri’s efforts to channel his feelings into traditionally masculine pursuits, he couldn’t seem to win his father’s approval. Among other perceived slights from his son, Francis lamented that Henri just wasn’t French enough. The years in prison had marked Henri in more ways than one, and his accent, manners, and taste in clothing were all notably Spanish. In an effort to combat this, Francis put Henri under the care of Diane de Poitiers, a member of the queen’s household who was renowned for her style and beauty — you know, French things. It wasn’t long before Henri was deeply smitten with her.

Henri was not particularly good at any form of deception, and he was as artless about his love for Diane as he was about any other feeling — including his complete indifference toward his wife. It wasn’t long before everyone at court knew what was going on. Catherine, meanwhile, publicly kept up the appearance of wedded bliss while privately cherishing a grudge against Diane. She knew that her situation was too shaky to make any kind of move against her rival, but she also knew that there would be a day when she could have her revenge.

* * *

Life continued in this holding pattern for a few years — Catherine pursuing Henri, Henri pursuing Diane, and Diane pursuing the lifestyle of a chaste court widow — until 1536, when the Dauphin collapsed after a game of tennis and died shortly thereafter. The Valois family immediately suspected that poison was responsible, since the Dauphin had drunk a glass of water brought to him by his secretary, Sebastian de Montecuculli, just before falling ill. There were a few other facts that made Montecuculli seem especially guilty: he had formerly been employed by Charles V, a book about poisons was found in his room, and also he was Italian. Everyone knew Italians were famous poisoners.

And how did Montecuculli wind up working for the Dauphin in the first place?

He had been in Catherine’s retinue when she had come to France.

It’s like they always say: hug your loved ones today, because tomorrow they might be poisoned by agents of the Holy Roman Empire.

The French already disliked Catherine, and the news about the Dauphin’s death brought their hatred to a fever pitch. After all, they reasoned, who stood to benefit the most from the Dauphin’s death? None other than Henri and Catherine, the new Dauphin and Dauphine of France.

Francis was utterly destroyed by his eldest son’s death, his grief compounded by remorse for his poor treatment of the princes since their return from captivity in Spain. It’s like they always say: hug your loved ones today, because tomorrow they might be poisoned by agents of the Holy Roman Empire.

The king, hell-bent on vengeance, decided to bring Montecuculli in for questioning (read: torture). Montecuculli was savvy enough to know that denying the charges meant that he would be subjected to hours of pain; he confessed almost immediately, saying that he had been hired by the Emperor to kill both the king and the Dauphin.

FRANCIS I: case closed!

FRANCIS I: not only am I a great king and a great father

FRANCIS I: I am also a great detective

FRANCIS I: is there anything I can’t do?

FRANCIS I: the other day I drew a pretty decent-looking horse, so

FRANCIS I: I think it’s pretty clear that I’m great at everything I try

Even though Montecuculli later recanted, Francis went ahead and had him executed. Fortunately for Catherine, her name hadn’t come up during the confession, and Francis chose to ignore the rumors that she was behind the murder — probably in part because that would have meant implicating Henri, who was the one who stood to secure the most from his brother’s death. Catherine had not gained much out of the whole affair other than a new reputation for treachery and increased pressure to bear Henri a child. Since Henri’s brother Charles was still unmarried, the entire future of the House of Valois rested on Catherine’s ability to produce an heir.

Catherine wanted nothing more than to conceive a child, but this proved difficult, as Henri left the country almost immediately after his brother’s death. Francis had decided to assuage his grief by launching yet another military campaign against the Empire, and Henri begged to be allowed to fight. Francis at first refused, saying that it would be too great of a risk to his son’s life, but eventually relented once Henri pointed out that it was the right of the Dauphin to serve in the field. Catherine must have been especially affronted by the fact that, while he was in Italy, Henri conceived a child with a woman named Filippa Duci. Being the kind of person who wants to make sure the salt is rubbed nice and deep into the wound, Henri pointed out that this meant that the lack of royal heir was all Catherine’s fault. He also christened his new daughter Diane, after Diane de Poitiers, and gave the child to his favorite to raise.

DIANE DE POITIERS: thank you for this … baby?

HENRI: you’re welcome!

HENRI: I know how much women love babies

HENRI: so it’s, like, a symbol of my love for you

DIANE DE POITIERS: truly, every young girl dreams of someday growing up to raise the natural child of a man who claims to be in love with her

HENRI: that’s what I heard, yeah

Henri and Diane’s relationship had been outwardly chaste (if extremely passionate, at least on Henri’s side) before his departure for the war. It was when he returned, 18 years old and a seasoned fighter, that things started to heat up. Diane discarded any pretense of being a celibate widow and lived openly as the Dauphin’s mistress. Henri, who was constitutionally incapable of doing anything by half measures, began to dress in Diane’s colors and covered everything he owned with a special monogram that interlaced H and D. He also chose a crescent moon (a reference to the goddess Diana) as his device and “Until it fills the whole world” as his motto.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: that’s fine

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: you two can have your cute in-jokes

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: I have my own motto and I don’t need yours

HENRI: you mean that line about being a happy little ray of sunshine?

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: it actually says “I bring light and serenity” under a picture of a rainbow

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: because I am an incredibly happy person

HENRI: babe, your nails are digging into your palms so hard that you’re bleeding

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI: so. fucking. happy.

In spite of her misery, Catherine managed to settle into an outwardly comfortable relationship with Diane. This arrangement was mutually beneficial: Diane knew that another woman in Catherine’s place would put up much more of a stink about her husband’s mistress; Catherine was terrified of displeasing Henri and losing what little affection he showed her.

* * *

The uneasy balance between the Dauphine and the favorite solidified when a lesser royal faction, the House of Guise, began a not-so-secret campaign to have the young Dauphine replaced by the beautiful and young Louise of Guise. The Guises claimed descendancy from Charlemagne and were infamous intriguers and social climbers; they’d already managed to marry their way into the house of Bourbon and the crown of Scotland. With Catherine at the nadir of her powers — seemingly barren, ignored by her husband, eclipsed by the Dauphin’s favorite — it must have seemed like the perfect opportunity to place their relative on the throne. This plan was supported by Francis’ mistress, the Duchess of Étampes, who felt that Diane was gaining too much power at court. Like Diane, the Duchess knew that to unseat Catherine would threaten her rival’s position.

As for the Dauphin, at first he didn’t much care whether Catherine stayed or went; he was in love with Diane, and assumed he would figure out a way to be with her no matter who he was married to. So it was up to Catherine and her nemesis to figure out how to save the former.

It was a do-or-die situation, and Catherine decided to gamble everything.

Diane came out swinging in Catherine’s defense, enumerating the Dauphine’s many sterling qualities to anyone who would listen. She emphasized Catherine’s youth and the many years of fertility she might have in front of her. She convinced Henri to finally take his wife’s side by implying that to do otherwise was to play right into the hands of his father’s mistress, whom he loathed.

But having Henri on Catherine’s side was not enough. The final decision rested with the king himself. With his mistress set against the Dauphine, it would be hard to talk Francis into siding with his son’s wife.

It was a do-or-die situation, and Catherine decided to gamble everything. She collapsed at Francis’ feet, tears streaming down her face. She wailed that her husband deserved a queen who could bear his children, and asked only that she be allowed to serve as the new Dauphine’s lady-in-waiting. Please, wouldn’t the king just replace her but let her stay in France in the lowly position that was her due?

Catherine knew that there was nothing left for her in Italy — no uncle-pope, no place as Duchess of Florence, and certainly no advantageous marriage to make. She also knew that if Louise de Guise became Dauphine, she would almost certainly dispense with Henri’s former wife as soon as she could. If the king took her at her word, she would be ruined. Her entire future rested on Francis’ reputed soft spot for young women’s tears. Would he come through? Or had she gravely miscalculated?

Read Part Two: The Reign of Catherine de’ Medici

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Previously:
Queens of Infamy: Joanna of Naples
Queens of Infamy: Anne Boleyn
Queens of Infamy: Eleanor of Aquitaine

* * *

For further reading on Catherine de’ Medici:
Leonie Frieda, Catherine de’ Medici: Renaissance Queen of France
Christopher Hibbert, The House of Medici: Its Rise And Fall
Mary Hollingsworth, The Family Medici: The Hidden History of the Medici Dynasty

* * *

Anne Thériault is a Toronto-based feminist killjoy. She is currently raising one child and three unruly cats. If she has a looming deadline, you can find her procrastinating on Twitter @anne_theriault.

Editor: Ben Huberman
Illustrator: Louise Pomeroy

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