It would be her first public speech to the world, in which she remarked “and when peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place.”

Queen Elizabeth II meeting children during a walkabout on Antigua, during of her Silver Jubilee tour of the Caribbean. Credit: PAIt was a lifetime of loyalty to her realm that defined her reign, with the Queen touring the UK, the Commonwealth and overseas hundreds of times. 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. The boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots – three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men.

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 Mary, Queen of Scots' story begins in Scotland and ends in England. A queen turned traitor, from the confines of her English prison she longs for the idyll of her childhood in France. 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. Women could face opposition as monarchs due to their gender. In 1558, the same year as Elizabeth I’s accession, the Scottish religious reformer John Knox published The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which derided female rule as “unnatural” and ineffective. When she set sail on that galley in September 1533, Catherine de’ Medici was traveling to a land both unknown and strangely familiar, her mother’s kingdom.

The Strozzi household was a bustling place. Caterina lived surrounded by women and children, bound by the rules of the nursery, governed by the daily rhythms of eating, playing, sleeping, and, in a Catholic Europe still barely touched by Protestantism, praying in a Catholic way, a Latin way—the only way, as far as the Medici and the Strozzi were concerned. She learned to walk and run along sunbaked terraces and among the sculptures and chestnut trees inspired by fashionable Medici gardens, lush designs that Clarice had brought to Rome. Sweets and smells and color from a Renaissance garden formed her senses, teaching her the flavor of melon, the scent of rosemary, the perfume of roses, the touch of billowy hydrangea. Medici and Strozzi tastes began to train her child’s eye. She learned about beauty yet didn’t even realize it was happening.8 An intriguing approach to 16th-century queenship … Chang delivers a murderously climactic final act, telling the story of Mary, Darnley and Bothwell with aplomb. She equally delivers quieter, moving moments … For all that this is a history book, however, it has present-day resonance too As it turned out, death came for the pope first. Leo X expired suddenly on December 1, 1521, just weeks after endorsing Charles V’s claim to Milan. The new pope, Hadrian VI, was a Dutchman with no interest in Medici affairs or their infant children. Slipping the Ring of the Fisherman on his finger, Hadrian left Catherine nestled in the bosom of the Strozzi household. For a brief but blissful few years, she was mostly forgotten.

In September 1517, he wrote to the young Lorenzo II de’ Medici, scion of the Florentine banking clan and the pope’s nephew. “I hope … to marry you to some beautiful and great lady,” he ventured, “one who would be a relative of mine and of great lineage so that the love I bear you would grow and strengthen even more.” “I would have no greater desire,” replied a coy Lorenzo, “than to take this lady from Your Majesty’s hand.”*2 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. Princess Elizabeth - daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York - waves from the carriage in 1928. Credit: PA This exceptionally brilliant book, deft of phrase and vividly realized, conveys the vitality of the past as few books do. It’s an enviable tour de force and marks the arrival of a wonderful new voice in narrative history." — Suzannah Lipscomb, author of A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England and host of the hit podcast Not Just the Tudors Despite these challenges, the two Elizabeths were not the only women to become queen at a young age and in unexpected circumstances. In 1689, the often overlooked Mary II unseated her father James II in the so-called Glorious Revolution, just shy of her 27th birthday.

Expertly chronicles the lives and reigns of these three lives. Vivid and immersive . . . Chang’s tour-de-force account of the lives of these three queens is well written and grounded in archival research. It shows with gripping detail that these queens truly marked history in their own right.” —Estelle Paranque, The Times (UK) 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. Victoria was another teenage queen, just 18 at her accession in 1837. Her uncle, William IV, supposedly was determined to hang on long enough to avoid a royal minority council governing for Victoria until she came of age. The Medici had faltered somewhat in the sixteenth century, their starry ascendance hampered by political rivals in Florence, weak leadership among the descendants of Il Magnifico, and the bald fact that the senior branch of the Medici was dying out. The family pinned its hopes on young Lorenzo, the only legitimate male heir of Il Magnifico. Pope Leo tried to fashion Lorenzo, a notorious profligate, into an aristocrat. In 1517, shortly before Francis I sent his marriage proposal, Leo named his nephew the Duke of Urbino. But as Francis well knew, the Medici were parvenus in a world that put more stake in bloodlines than wealth. The Medici were still commoners, not a single drop of blue blood coursing through their veins. That would change if Lorenzo de’ Medici married the French noblewoman Francis offered, and if she bore a child. The Valois dynasty of France and the Medici of Florence would be united. The alliance would secure Medici control over Florence and put the force of the French crown behind Medici enterprises in Europe. The children of the marriage would be French aristocrats, the Medici now a hair’s breadth from royalty.