The Serpent and the Moon

by Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent

Simon & Schuster £20

Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, herself a descendant of both Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers, has written a moving account of an intriguing time in Renaissance France when a love triangle dominated both Court and politics. It is an extraordinary story.

The first half of the 16 th century was a time of giants: the dazzlingly attractive Francois I on the throne of France, and a young and still attractive Henry VIII on the throne of England, a young (and less attractive) Charles V as the Holy Roman Emperor and two Medici Popes holding sway one almost after the other in the Vatican. At the same time these powerful rulers had to contend with Sulieman the Magnificent – the leader of the Ottoman Empire. Francois I (the most Christian king of France) and later his son Henri II would form an alliance with Sulieman, the infidel, against the most Holy Roman Emperor. Overhanging the lure and enlightenment of the Renaissance in France at this time was the shadow of the Reformation, with brutal persecution. But the thread that runs through this great era of change is the extraordinary and discreet love between the beautiful and wise Diane de Poitiers and the future King of France, Henri II, who was eighteen years her junior. He loved her until the moment of his cruel death, and despite all the efforts of his wife Catherine de Medici, Henri had eyes only for this much older lady.

The splendid pageantry of Francois I’s early reign could not last as the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, invaded France. At the great battle of Pavia in 1525 the King was defeated and taken prisoner to Spain. To complete a treaty his two eldest sons, the Dauphin and six year old Henri d’Orleans were taken as hostages in their father’s place. As their mother had died it was Diane who comforted the young boy when the exchange of prisoners was about to take place. Diane de Poitiers ran out from among the courtiers and took the tearful young Prince Henri into her arms to comfort him. During his four long years in a Spanish prison he would never forget her kindness. On his return he became her young knight and she gently mothered him, helping him with his interrupted education.

The ensuing treaty with Charles V was ruinous for France and the King invited himself to Anet, a chateau in Normandy, to ask advice of its owner and old friend Louis de Brézé (Diane de Poitier’s husband). It was de Brézé who recommended the marriage of the fourteen year old Henri to the ambitious Pope Clement II’s young cousin, the orphaned heiress Catherine de Medici, who was also fourteen. Henri did his duty by Catherine but was not prepared to do more and continued his respectful adoration of Diane, Madam de Brézé, who became a widow in the same year. Four years later the Dauphin died and Henri took his brother’s place. At eighteen Henri was handsome and athletic, and Diane a still beautiful thirty-six. It is not surprising that they fell in love and continued their discreet affaire all Henri’s life, possibly the greatest romance in French royal history.

Unattractive and despised at the French Court, Catherine’s marriage to Henri was considered by all a scandalous misalliance. While the legendary beauty Diane cultivated her image as Diana, The Huntress and Goddess of the Moon, the envy and duplicity of Catherine led her to be called “La Serpente”. Frightened of Henri all her life Catherine’s motto became “Hate and Wait”. Henri’s devotion to the beautiful Diane continued and grew. Catherine, on the other hand, lived in terror and repudiation. In ten years she had failed to produce an heir. Curiously, with Diane’s guidance, children were born to the royal couple. Diane had recommended “some alternate positions for intercourse that would compensate for her retroverted uterus and Henri’s hypospadias. Diane suggested to the Dauphine that she make love ‘ à levrette’”. (A levrette is a small greyhound bitch; and hypospadias, a birth defect of the urethra in the male that involves an abnormally placed urethral opening) However, when Henri inherited the throne in 1547 he ruled as one with Diane, not Catherine, their intertwined monograms and signature black and white colours emblazoned on everything – their clothes, his household’s livery, official proclamations, furniture and palace decorations. But sadly this paradise could not last. When Henri died following a jousting accident in 1559 Diane de Poitiers retired to her late husband’s Normandy chateaux Anet to live out her life reflecting on the “ doceur de vivre” she had known with the King. She died in 1566 and is buried in a magnificent tomb at Anet.

The author’s epic and absorbing love story is set between two great revolutions, one cultural and the other spiritual, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Princess Michael is no stranger to the machinations of palace intrigue herself. In this her third book, and definitely her best, she has woven a masterful story of wars, betrayal and persecution during a time when Europe emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of Humanism. With her intricate knowledge of the European Courts and her ability for painstaking research, we can only hope that she follows this captivating book with a biography of the long-suffering Catherine de Medici who, after her husband’s death, eventually became one of the most important figures in European history. She ruled France from behind the throne during one of the nastiest periods in French history. Three of her sons became Kings of France, including one who married Mary, Queen of Scots. Catherine’s story of “passion, hatred and vengeance” deserves sympathetic attention from this masterful popular historian.