Catherine de’ Medici was born a piece on a political chessboard in 1519. Orphaned before she was a month old in her native Italy, this Catholic daughter of a French princess and a Florentine ...

Her father was Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence and her mother was Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, cousin of Francis I, King of France. Catherine's mother died when she was ...

And Catherine de'Medici, Queen of France, made sure she was informed of the intrigues at court by expressly employing a group of pretty young women to engage in pillow talk with gullible male ...

Fisher pinpoints a year when the dinners of the European nobility started to become rather more refined affairs—1533, the year of the wedding between the 14-year-old Catherine de’ Medici (the ...