Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Read Online Free PDF Page A

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Wounds in one, he then dies a cruel death.
    Like Julius Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, who warned the emperor to stay away from the forum that mid-March morning, Catherine urged Henri not to enter the jousting tournament on June 30, 1559.
    But he laid no store by the predictions of astrologers. The contest was just one of many brilliant festivities organized around a double wedding: the marriage of Henri and Catherine’s daughter Elisabeth to King Philip II of Spain on June 22 and that of Henri’s sister Marguerite to the duc de Savoie, which would take place on July 2.
    Henri handily triumphed over his first two opponents. But when he took the field against the third combatant—the captain of his Scots Guard, Gabriel de Montgomery—the king’s Master of the Horse warned him that his helmet was not properly fastened. Andhis opponent had not realized that the metal tip of his lance was missing.
    After his second pass, Henri had lifted his visor to mop his brow, but had failed to close the door to his “golden cage” before commencing the third pass. The riders faced off, spurred their mounts, and charged toward each other. De Montgomery’s lance struck Henri’s gorget, the armorial element that protects the throat, splintering the lance. Because the king’s visor had not been secured, a shard of wood pierced him above the right eye, penetrating his skull and exiting through his temple. Another splinter struck him through the throat. The king reeled in pain and shock; swaying from the force of the blow, he dropped his steed’s bridle.
    Henri was taken from his horse and, according to the bishop of Troyes, “a splinter of a good bigness was removed” from his eye and temple. The renowned doctor from Brussels, Andreas Vesalius, was immediately sent for and was able to remove several splinters of wood and shattered bits of bone from the king’s skull. But part of the lance remained embedded in the wound, and the physicians dared not touch it. Henri took ten days to die, finally expiring on July 10, 1559, at the age of forty. He had reigned for twelve years, three months, and eleven days. He was buried in the Valois crypt at Saint-Denis and was succeeded by his frail fifteen-year-old son, François, who was married to the teenage Mary, Queen of Scots.
    Henri’s queen, Catherine de Medici, became a regent to be reckoned with after Henri’s death. She succumbed to pleurisy on January 5, 1589.

H ENRI II AND
D IANE DE P OITIERS (1499–1566)
    Henri became a bridegroom at the age of fourteen, which was not considered particularly young for the era. He was tall for his age, with a muscular, athletic physique, almond-shaped brown eyes, brown hair, a straight nose, and a somewhat olive but clear complexion, perhaps the greatest asset of all for an adolescent boy. Small wonderthat his little Medici dumpling of a spouse was immediately smitten. However, the physical attraction was not at all mutual. Catherine had not been warmly welcomed into the French court; her marriage to Henri was purely a matter of political back-scratching. She was short, dark, stout, plain, and a commoner, in a world where willowy, fair-skinned, blue-blooded blondes were the fashion. And Henri had eyes only for the lady who had been assigned to ease Catherine’s assimilation into the world of the Valois court. That woman was Catherine’s second cousin, who perfectly embodied the era’s belle idéale —the serenely beautiful Diane de Poitiers.
    Educated according to the principles of humanism, Diane was a true Renaissance woman, cultured and literate, well versed in music, Greek, and Latin; her dancing was graceful and her conversation was elegant and witty. An avid huntress, like the Roman goddess who was her namesake, Diane also kept fit and glowing by swimming in cold water every day. To avoid wrinkles, she slept upright against a bolster and concocted her own facial masks from melon juice, young barley, and an egg yolk mixed with