Madame Serpent: A Catherine de' Medici Novel (Catherine De' Medici Trilogy)

Overview: Eleanor Alice Burford, Mrs. George Percival Hibbert was a British author of about 200 historical novels, most of them under the pen name Jean Plaidy which had sold 14 million copies by the time of her death. She chose to use various names because of the differences in subject matter between her books; the best-known, apart from Plaidy, are Victoria Holt (56 million) and Philippa Carr (3 million). F ourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici arrives in Marseilles to marry Henry, Duke of Orleans, second son of the King of France. The brokenhearted Catherine has left her true love in Italy, forced into trading her future happiness for marriage into the French royal family. Amid the glittering fêtes and banquets of the most immoral court in sixteenth-century Europe, the reluctant bride becomes a passionate but unwanted wife. Humiliated and unloved, Catherine spies on Henry and his lover, the infamous Diane de Poitiers. Tortured by what she sees, Catherine becomes consumed by a ruthless ambition destined to make her the most despised woman in France: the dream that one day the French crown will be worn by a Medici heir. . . . Fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici arrives in Marseilles to marry Henry, Duke of Orleans, second son of the King of France. The brokenhearted Catherine has left her true love in Italy, forced into trading her future happiness for marriage into the French royal family. Amid the glittering "fetes "and banquets of the most immoral court in sixteenth-century Europe, the reluctant bride becomes a passionate but unwanted wife. Humiliated and unloved, Catherine spies on Henry and his lover, the infamous Diane de Poitiers. Tortured by what she sees, Catherine becomes consumed by a ruthless ambition destined to make her the most despised woman in France: the dream that one day the French crown will be worn by a Medici heir .. Ésta es la primera parte de la historia de Catalina de Médici. una mujer sagaz e implacable que alcanzó la fama por su largo historial de crímenes. Con catorce años, Catalina abandona a su adorado Hipólito para casarse con Enrique de Orleáns. Su vida junto a un hombre que no la ama y que la engaña con una amante veinte años mayor que él acentuarán el carácter maquiavélico de Catalina, inclinado a toda clase de crueles intrigas. A fictional account of Catherine de' Medici, the fourteen-year-old reluctant Italian bride to the second son of the King of France, Henry, during the sixteenth-century.