The Queen met every one of Britain’s prime ministers during her lifetime – beginning with wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill. She met her final British prime minister, Liz Truss, at her Balmoral residence in Scotland in a landmark break from tradition, after it was recommended the monarch avoid travel. Princess Elizabeth - daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York - waves from the carriage in 1928. Credit: PA R.F. Kuang, Sue Lynn Tan, Rebecca Ross, Kate Heartfield, N.E. Davenport, Saara El-Arifi, Juno Dawson and Sunyi Dean Neither Victoria nor William IV would have come to the throne if another heiress, Princess Charlotte of Wales, had not died in childbirth at age 21 in 1817. Charlotte’s beautiful and emotive tomb at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor – where Elizabeth II will be buried – visibly expresses the tragedy of her early, unexpected death. From unexpected heirs to senior sovereigns By the early fifteenth century, the Medici served as the titular heads of the Florentine republic. By midcentury, they were underwriting kings and princes across Europe. Lorenzo I de’ Medici, Il Magnifico, oversaw Florence’s golden age. “Peace reigned in Florence,” waxed the historian Guicciardini, a fervent Medici supporter. “The people revelled daily in spectacles, festivals, and new marvels.” No one went hungry; art and learning flourished. “The city breathed health … elite and cultivated minds lived in prosperity.”3

Together, Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary lived through the sea changes that transformed sixteenth-century Europe, a time of expanding empires, religious discord, and populist revolt, as concepts of nationhood began to emerge and ideas of sovereignty inched closer to absolutism. They would learn that to rule as a queen was to wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched misogyny of their time. Lord of The Rings: Rings of Power – a guide to the expanded world of Middle-earth in J.R.R Tolkein’s other books Was it in Clarice’s home, too, that she first learned something of her mother’s family? The Medici were too starved for blue blood not to have relished Madeleine’s vaunted ancestry, their link to the French royal family. Through her own mother, Madeleine sprang from a branch of the Bourbons. The second family in the kingdom of France, the Bourbons descended from the sainted crusading king, Louis IX. Known as the “princes of the blood,” the Bourbons were poised to inherit the French throne if ever the current Valois dynasty died out. King Francis I and his fertile wife Claude had already produced enough sons to ensure a Valois king in the next generation, but the Bourbons were nonetheless powerful and beloved by French subjects, revered for their ancient bloodlines. King Francis had kept his promise to the Medici indeed when he delivered Madeleine, a Bourbon, to the altar at Amboise in 1518.10If love for his deceased wife bolstered Albany’s attention to Caterina, his primary mission in Rome was to promote King Francis’s political interests. Though Caterina was still young, Francis already saw her as the key to future Italian conquests. Dutifully, Albany would keep watch over his niece from afar during the coming years. Orphaned from infancy, Catherine de’ Medici endured a tumultuous childhood. Married to the French king, she was widowed by forty, only to become the power behind the French throne during a period of intense civil strife. In 1546, Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, who would become Queen of Spain. Two years later, Catherine welcomed to her nursery the beguiling young Mary Queen of Scots, who would later become her daughter-in-law. Alluring, gripping, real: an astonishing insight into the lives of three queens, stepping out from the shadows of the patriarchy—we meet them on their own terms." — Alice Roberts, author of Ancestors and Buried In a way, Catherine de’ Medici’s story begins not at her birth but rather on those waters, under those Mediterranean skies, the sails of her ship whipping against a late summer breeze. This was the moment of her crossing from Italy to France, from maiden to bride, from the Medici family to a royal French one, from girlhood to young womanhood. Already, she had assumed a new importance as those who observed the pendulum of Renaissance politics now took note of her, measuring her looks, her bearing, her potential to give birth; from this moment forward, the traces of Catherine will appear more prominently in the archives. At fourteen, she was barely in her teens, ignorant of what the coming years would bring. And yet, to the sixteenth-century world, this part of her story was nothing new. A wealthy girl leaves her homeland to marry a prince, neither for love nor looks but for the dowry and value she brings? This had been the path charted for Catherine’s mother, for countless girls of Catherine’s time and place. A path that, to a girl like Catherine, must have seemed as ancient and predictable as the rising sun.

Alluring, gripping, real: an astonishing insight into the lives of three queens, stepping out from the shadows of the patriarchy - we meet them on their own terms Imagine being 25 years old and 5,000 miles from home when you get a call delivering the worst possible news – your parent has died. For Elizabeth Windsor, this call had a far greater impact. She was now taking on the greatest of responsibilities, shouldering the burden of the sovereign’s role. While her mother, Anne Boleyn, fought to ensure that Elizabeth’s claim would be superior to her elder half-sister Mary’s, Anne’s fall made Elizabeth Tudor a bastard. Later restored to the line of succession, Elizabeth was relegated to the rear of the direct Tudor line, after Mary and her half-brother Edward VI. She spent years as a shadowy heir who was considered a threat to her half-sister and was briefly held prisoner at the Tower, before finally coming to the throne in 1558 on the death of Mary I. Catherine de’ Medici’s story begins in a convent stormed by soldiers intent on seizing the key to power in Florence – Catherine herself, a girl barely 11 years old. It ends with her as the controversial queen mother of France, a woman both revered and reviled. years later, Queen Elizabeth II has become the longest reigning British monarch in history, surpassing her great-grandmother Queen Victoria. (There’s a chance she might set a world record: come May 2024, she’ll be on the throne longer than any other Queen or King in history.) She’s fully lived up to the promise she broadcasted to the British Commonwealth on her 21st birthday: “I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”Queen Elizabeth II meeting children during a walkabout on Antigua, during of her Silver Jubilee tour of the Caribbean. Credit: PA Already a young wife and mother of two, she would become a mother to the nation, and to the Commonwealth of nations around the globe. It would have been a lot to process for the young queen on that day in 1952. While they were sometimes unexpected heirs, Britain’s young queens have transcended challenging accessions to become historically significant sovereigns. Mary II’s short reign saw an important shift in the balance of power between monarchy and parliament, marking the beginning of the constitutional monarchy we still retain today.

Redmond Chang expertly chronicles the lives and reigns of these three lives. Vivid and immersive, this book reveals the ways in which these women had to navigate the tumultuous European politics that entangled the French, Scottish and Spanish courts … [ Young Queens] is well written and grounded in archival research. It shows with gripping detail that these queens truly marked history in their own rightThe Queen’s namesake, Elizabeth I, was also 25 when she transitioned from princess to queen. Like Elizabeth II, she was a somewhat unexpected heir. Elizabeth Tudor was in and out of the line of succession to her famous father Henry VIII during her childhood. Leo X wept upon hearing of Lorenzo’s death, then raced to shore up the Medici inheritance. He claimed the duchy of Urbino for the infant Caterina, and sent his cousin, Giulio de’ Medici, to guarantee Medici stewardship of Florence. There remained the problem of what to do with the baby girl herself. King Francis had offered to raise Caterina at the French court, but Leo politely refused, unwilling to give the French control over his bargaining chip. Instead, the pope sent the baby to live with her Medici aunt Clarice, who lived with her Strozzi husband and growing clutch of Strozzi children in Rome. When did the child Caterina learn of this exalted inheritance? What did she ask about her mother? An Italian diplomat once gushed that Madeleine was “beautiful and wise … gracious and very worthy,” words that extol and yet say very little.11 No doubt the young Caterina learned of Madeleine’s wealth, of her vast, rolling estates in Auvergne. Perhaps she saw a portrait. As with so much of Madeleine’s life, we can’t be sure of what she looked like. One painting now hanging in the Uffizi is sometimes said to be of Madeleine. A slim girl, straight and stylish in her dark velvet bodice and opulent red sleeves, looks out from under a French hood. Her hair is auburn and her cheeks round. Her eyes are blue. Young Queens takes us into the hearts and minds of three extraordinary women. Leah Redmond Chang’s meticulous research and engaging prose give each of them their due, providing a rich and nuanced perspective on the challenges they faced and the remarkable legacies they left behind.” — Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire Young Queens takes us into the hearts and minds of three extraordinary women. Leah Redmond Chang's meticulous research and engaging prose gives each of them their due, providing a rich and nuanced perspective on the challenges they faced and the remarkable legacies they left behind

Caterina would remain in Clarice Strozzi’s household for the next several years. This was a waiting game. Pope Leo had hoped Madeleine would give birth to a boy—a son who could inherit his father’s titles and properties, and push Medici good fortune into France and beyond. Instead, the Medici got a girl. Certainly, she could prove useful one day as a bride to seal other worthy political alliances. If, that is, she lived—and it was a big if, given that sixteenth-century parents half-expected their children to die before the age of seven, no matter how wealthy the family or how tenderly their babies were loved. In fact, at the age of three months, the infant Caterina fell so deathly ill that Pope Leo feared another imminent Medici tragedy.7 The baby pulled through, yet everyone knew the next childhood illness was just around the corner. From the time the infant Caterina disappeared into the Strozzi villa in Rome until her appearance at the gates of the Le Murate convent in 1527 when she was eight, there is hardly a trace of her in the archives. Clarice Strozzi was a kind and attentive foster mother, but she left no letter describing her young niece, no portrait of the girl, or at least none survives. We are left to imagine and wonder. These were formative years for Caterina, who, growing up among her cousins, developed lifelong attachments to her Strozzi kin. It was in Clarice’s home that the tiny orphan enjoyed something of a family, and there that she learned what it meant to be a Medici. It is the nature of hereditary monarchy that the suitability of royal children as rulers or consorts is a lottery. Elizabeth I went her own determined way as the Virgin Queen, with remarkable success. In the 17th century, Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated and exiled herself to Rome where she became a patron of the arts and enjoyed multiple affairs. In the 18th, going one better, Queen Caroline didn’t abdicate, swanned off to the Med, hooked up with the low-born Milanese Bartolomeo Pergami, and still retained such popularity in England that George IV could not remove her title. These three young queens, however, are not the sort to tear up the rule book. Catherine, consort and regent of France, her daughter Elisabeth and daughter-in-law Mary dutifully marry and try their best (in trying circumstances) to bear the necessary children. As Chang admits, neither Elisabeth nor Mary had Elizabeth Tudor’s brilliance. Nor did they match Marguerite of Navarre’s literary accomplishments or Renée de France’s important patronage of Calvin. That does, however, give us a chance to find out what it was like to be a rather average woman thrust into a role for which you had to develop the aptitude swiftly or face trouble. A] thorough historical excavation . . . By using intimate, personal accounts gleaned from her extensive research, Chang transports readers directly into their world. . . A delightful historical study of women coming to the forefront in a world dominated by men.” — Kirkus (starred review)Catherine de' Medici's story begins in a convent stormed by soldiers intent on seizing the key to power in Florence – Catherine herself, a girl barely 11 years old. It ends with her as the controversial queen mother of France, a woman both revered and reviled. Catherine, Mary and Elisabeth lived at the French court together for many years before scattering to different kingdoms. These years bound them to one another through blood and marriage, alliance and friendship, love and filial piety; bonds that were tested when the women were forced to part and take on new roles. To rule, they would learn, was to wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched misogyny of their time. A crown could exalt a young woman. Equally, it could destroy her. Tall and square-shouldered, John Stewart, Duke of Albany, was a Scotsman who was also a Frenchman. Born in France to a French duchess and a royal Scottish prince, Albany was a grandson of King James II of Scotland. He was also a cousin to Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne and her older sister Anne. Albany had been raised with them, spending a happy childhood hunting and hawking in the wooded hills of Auvergne. Although his birth placed him in line to the Scottish throne, Albany spent much of his adulthood in the service of King Francis, to whom he demonstrated an irreproachable fidelity. If Albany’s title belonged to Scotland, his heart belonged to France. French was his first language, and for his entire life, he always preferred to sign his name the French way: Jehan Stuart instead of John Stewart. Elisabeth de Valois’ story begins in France, where she is born the beloved daughter of a king. It ends tragically in Spain as a cherished queen consort and mother – one who must make the ultimate sacrifice for her kingdom.