Review: Medicis Daughter by Sophie Perinot

Title: Médicis Daughter
Author: Sophie Perinot
Genre: historical fiction
Series: n/a
Pages: 384
Published: expected December 1 2015
Source: received for review
Rating: 4.5/5

Winter, 1564. Beautiful young Princess Margot is summoned to the court of France, where nothing is what it seems and a wrong word can lead to ruin. Known across Europe as Madame la Serpente, Margot’s intimidating mother, Queen Catherine de Médicis, is a powerful force in a country devastated by religious war. Among the crafty nobility of the royal court, Margot learns the intriguing and unspoken rules she must live by to please her poisonous family.

Eager to be an obedient daughter, Margot accepts her role as a marriage pawn, even as she is charmed by the powerful, charismatic Duc de Guise. Though Margot's heart belongs to Guise, her hand will be offered to Henri of Navarre, a Huguenot leader and a notorious heretic looking to seal a tenuous truce. But the promised peace is a mirage: her mother's schemes are endless, and her brothers plot vengeance in the streets of Paris. When Margot's wedding devolves into the bloodshed of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, she will be forced to choose between her family and her soul.

Médicis Daughter is historical fiction at its finest, weaving a unique coming-of-age story and a forbidden love with one of the most dramatic and violent events in French history.

There's a reason French historical fiction is hard to resist. It's full of such fascinating people, along with pivotal tumultuous times, notorious religious turmoil, and decadently sumptuous courts and courtiers. Sophie Perinot has successfully visited historical France before with her 2012 debut novel The Sister Queens, but this second visit is set during the ancien régime - middle 1500s -  with the infamous Catherine de Médicis and her headstrong and should-be-as-infamous daughter Margot. The House of Valois is known for many things (and its many kings) but this nuanced and creative story exploring the relationship between these two determined women gives new insight into the famous but fractious royal family. 

Catherine de Médicis makes for an easy historical villain, but Perinot takes care to craft her Italian-born French Queen into a three dimensional character for her readers. Catherine is not a particularly nice woman, and her struggles with Margot easily side the reader with the latter, but she is ably characterized under Perinot's pen. The novel centers around  and concerns itself with Marguerite far more than her mother; from her coming out until a week after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, it is the story of France told through her princesse and later queen. 

Margot's life is one that more than warrants exploration and retelling -- without France's Salic Law barring her from politics, she might have been remembered in the same way as Elizabeth I of England. Even with France's skewed gender roles limiting her choices, she was a woman who demanded more from her time, despite the toll it took on her personal happiness while her mother was alive. Her struggle with society, with her mother, with her kingly brothers, are both accurate when known and plausible when the author has to invent to guess at events unknown. Dumas's La Reine Margot may have been the first novel to immortalize this indomitable French Queen, but the version of the queen in Médicis Daughter is the most realistic and believable I've yet come across.

Sophie Perinot has a gift for recreating even well-known eras of history with fresh eyes. Though I've known Margot's life trajectory for years and have even read other fictional books about her mother recently, reading Médicis Daughter was full of new views of events and people I was familiar with. It made me again curious about the French Wars of Religion and then the Guise family - ambitious, powerful, smart. I love when books capture the feel of their inspiration so clearly, as Perinot does here. Her knowledge of the time and place are evident and it helps to make this novel such a well-rendered version of sixteenth century France.

 

Author Interview: The Sister Queens' Sophie Perinot

 

I'm very pleased to present my very first author interview for Ageless Pages Reviews and am very happy with how it turned out. I read  (and loved) The Sister Queens so it was a rare pleasure to get to virtually speak with such a talented new author.

1. Both women experience a wide variety of events throughout their lives - wars, regencies, children, affairs - but which do you think of the two were happier with her Queenly lot in life? Eleanor with her doting husband but bad King, or Marguerite with her pious husband and marital problems?

Of course when it comes to something like happy we can never know for sure, especially with people who have been dead more than 700 years, but I personally would say Eleanor was happier. She had considerable political influence in her court, she had personal wealth, she had members of her Savoyard family to support and advise her, and she built an incredibly close nuclear family. If the measure of happiness is being loved and loving in return (and that’s my personal measure) then Eleanor had every reason to be content. Yes, I am doing a little projecting—I know I would rather be Eleanor than Marguerite so I assume she was happy, but I also think we have some historical indicators of the sisters’ relative happiness. I’d like to present two—one for each sister—taken from the ends of their husband’s lives.

Historically we know that Henry’s care for his wife endured to the very end of his days. When he knew he was dying in the autumn of 1272, he once again thought of Eleanor’s future (this time without him), granting her custody of Windsor castle. And it was there – the sight of so many happy memories from their thirty-six years of marriage—that Eleanor went immediately after Henry’s death, to grieve for him and to find a respite from sadness by being with her grandchildren.

In contrast, we have powerful evidence that Marguerite remained angry with Louis even after his death. Almost immediately after Louis perished (on an ill-fated second trip to the Holy Land which Marguerite had opposed) proceedings were begun to canonize him. A committee of clergymen gathered at St. Denis to collect testimony on Louis’s saintliness. All of the royal family and the most important French nobles came forward to testify, but Marguerite steadfastly refused, even when her testimony was solicited by her son the King. If you want evidence of an unhappy married life I would say that qualifies.

2. Was there a particular character you enjoyed the most while writing their perspective? Or one who harder to articulate?

I love both sisters. That is one of the things that made writing this book such a joy. Who I loved the best at any given moment depended on who I was writing.

I think that to write a character in the first-person convincingly (and I hope I’ve done that) you really have to become that person just as an actor becomes a character. So when I was writing Marguerite I was fully immersed in her struggles and found many things I could identify with. Ditto the more outspoken and mercurial Eleanor.

Outside of the sisters themselves, I have a real soft spot for Jean de Joinville. Even though he is never the narrator in the novel I could hear his voice very clearly in my head, and I always looked forward to those portions of the book where he popped up. When he appeared in the garden while Marguerite and Louis were recruiting knights for crusade surprising the Queen I don’t know who was happier to see him Marguerite or me.

3. Who would you say is the better Queen for their time? Unassuming Marguerite who takes a backseat and accedes to the will of her lord and husband easily or the more involved, headstrong Eleanor?

Certainly Marguerite was more beloved by her subjects (who seemed to appreciate her considerably more than her husband did). And, besides being poised, she was capable of strong and determined action—as we see when she moves decisively to ransom Louis in the Holy Land. I wonder what she could have been and could have done had she been accorded more influence at her husband’s court (or subsequently at her son’s).

While Marguerite was revered in France, Eleanor (and her Savoyard uncles) made easy scapegoats for the English Baron’s. These noblemen doubtless resented the Savoyard influence over Henry—influence they would have preferred to wield themselves. I personally think that Henry’s rule would have been even less effective without Eleanor and the other Savoyards, but I don’t think that was recognized at the time. Rather, as you suggest, Eleanor was viewed as “virago” – which meant overbearing or domineering—in her own period. It’s not clear that we would think of her that way now. Probably the words we would use would be “ambitious” and “self-assured.” Or maybe not, the world sometimes still uses some downright unpleasant words to label powerful women who aren’t afraid to speak their minds.

4. I know the Count of Provence had four daughters, why did you choose to focus only on the oldest
two sisters?

The relationship between Marguerite and Eleanor moved me. I am a “big-sister,” and my relationship with own sister defines me and has since the day she came home from the hospital. Marguerite and Eleanor were the closest of the four sisters, despite being separated by the English Channel for long stretches of time, and their relationship of mutual support, tinged with rivalry, really spoke to me.

I wanted my book to examine the early reigns of these important queens (both France and England were major powers at the time), while they were finding their feet in strange lands and establishing roles for themselves as queens, wives and mothers. Therefore, my novel (which, as you know, covers a twenty year period between 1234 and 1254) actually ends before either Sanchia or Beatrice had achieved crowns of their own. So that effectively limited the roles of the younger sisters to supporting players.

5. What decided you on the endpoint of the novel, with the women only halfway through their long
lives?

I am not going to lie, book-length entered into my decision. Getting a five-hundred page novel published as a debut author is pretty extraordinary. Getting a thousand page novel published –well, it never would have happened. Given that I couldn’t put the sister’s entire lives into one book, I thought that their reunion after nearly twenty-years of supporting, counseling and consoling each other from opposite sides of the English Channel made an excellent place to end my novel. The Christmas visit of 1254 brought closure to many strands of my story and saw each of my sisters coming to terms with some big issues in her life. The meeting also gave them a chance, in person, to reaffirm their sisterly loyalties. At the same time this gathering of the royal families laid the foundation—with the sister queens’ help—of a lasting understanding between the crowns of France and England, so it was a political milestone as well.

6. Any considerations for returning to these two sister-queens for a follow-up novel down the line?

I would love to do a sequel if there was demand for one. There are plenty of adventures left in life for both Marguerite and Eleanor.

*******

My thanks to Ms. Perinot for taking the time to write such lengthy, considered answers. This is a lovely book and one I heartily recommend to anyone fond of strong women in historical fiction. There are still more stops yet on the book tour for the Sister Queens, so don't miss those as well!

Review: The Sister Queens by Sophie Perinot

Title: The Sister Queens

Author: Sophie Perinot

Genre: historical fiction

Series: N/A

Pages: 528 (paperback ARC version)

Published: March 2012

Source: from publishers for review/book tour

Rating: 5/5

Patient, perfect, and used to being first, Marguerite becomes Queen of France. But Louis IX is a religious zealot who denies himself the love and companionship his wife craves. Can she borrow enough of her sister's boldness to grasp her chance for happiness in a forbidden love?

Passionate, strong-willed, and stubborn, Eleanor becomes Queen of England. Henry III is a good man, but not a good king. Can Eleanor stop competing with her sister and value what she has, or will she let it slip away? 

This is the type of book I am constantly looking for in the historical fiction genre, and rarely seem to stumble across; it's very engaging from the outset, it's lively to read with actualized characters in stead of cardboard historical cutouts, and it's mostly, somewhat accurate. Sophie Perinot may indeed be a first-time author, but you certainly wouldn't know that from reading her debut novel. The Sister Queens tells the captivating and contrasting stories of two proud sisters from Savoy and I was never bored reading about these two fascinating and strong women. This novel is an impressive and lengthy addition to the Tudor-heavy historical fiction genre, and miraculously, one that despite its nearly 530 page length, never bores. I personally read a lot of Tudor-era historical fiction, but this was just the right palate cleanser for all the Howards, Boleyns and Stuarts I usually see re-imagined. Thus, I may not have known as much about or been as familiar with the facts and history of the times the novel takes place during (1234-1255) going into this, but the characters were so vivid and alive that I felt compelled to research the actual personages upon finishing. Ms. Perinot's creation is indelibly her own, but I appreciate the factually-influenced way she presented both her story and her characters.

Marguerite and Eleanor are both sisters and, eventually, Queens, but it is the first bond more than anything that defines them the most. They are each others touchstone, especially once they are separated with Marguerite in France and Eleanor in England. Especially since each country viewed their foreign "Savoyard" Queens as less than appealing, their dependent relationship with the other is realistic and sympathetic. The Sister Queens interjects epistolary (fabricated) letters between the two before every chapter and each missive between the two reinforces just how close these women remained, though separated by years, wars, religion, distance.  The POV shifts back and forth between the two, usually at the chapter breaks. While this could've been easily confusing, the "voices" of each respective Queen is very distinctive and identifiable. I didn't even really notice the use of present-tense for the first few chapters: I just felt that everything in the novel very immediate, in a good way. I could tell when I was reading Eleanor and when I was reading Marguerite before names/places popped up in their thoughts. The relationship between Marguerite and Eleanor, proud daughters of Savoy is the most compelling and emotional of the entire novel: unlike the relationships with their respective husbands, the relationship between the pair is as close to equals as the two can find in their lives. Their is an obvious amount of love between the two, but Perinot early on creatively slides in subtle hints of discord and strife that mar every sisterhood and that will eventually come to affect their bond. 

Eleanor is the younger, covetous and more strident of the two, and my personal favorite of the novel.  She is a woman very concerned with "fairness" and what's right, at least what's right according to her - character traits that will cause her unforeseen problems with both her husband and sister later in life. While I liked the personal evolution that both women undertake during the events of the book, I felt that Eleanor was more personally identifiable for me as a reader. Marguerite, especially as her marriage and happiness in that marriage, waned was more trouble for me to invest within. Perinot's deft foreshadowing on the troublesome piety of Louis IX sets the scene for Marguerite's woes early, but I only cared when she finally took some happiness for herself, rather than sit and pine and wait for her husband to extend some to her. Eleanor grows from an imperious, headstrong girl mostly concerned with what she possesses and controls into a gracious, intelligent queen that is both capable of reigning solely (unheard of at that time in history) and tampering her less-able King and husband's governing impulses.  While neither husband-King of either sister could be rightly termed a "good" king (Henry is very ignorant of the feelings of the populace/Barons that control his country, LouisIX abandons his France for the Holy Land for SEVEN YEARS), both women show their ability to step up and make hard decisions when the menfolk can't seem to get the job done right.

While Eleanor was my self-professed favorite character, I do love a good villain. Blanche of Castile comprises that role for the bulk of the novel for Marguerite, and the "Dragon of Castile" made a malicious and well-mannered antagonist. The tête-à-têtes between Blanche and her daughter-in-law show a different side to the usually meek and accepting Marguerite; the first hints of future independence are shown clearly in her lack of deference to the dowager Queen. While later duties of antagonism were ably handled by her bumbling and ascetic son, Blanche commands attention even when not on the page. Her tussles with her daughter in love over her son/Marguerite's husband illustrate perfectly how alone and powerless Marguerite was in France. Not for her was her sister Eleanor's life of mutual love and respect, which itself was far from typical of the Royal couples of the day. Because of Blanche, Marguerite is a nonentity at the court of which she is Queen. This disparate use of power and control contrasts tidily with the life of Eleanor who schemes and manipulates her own court outright. The difference between the sisters is that Eleanor makes things happen, whereas <spoiler>until Jean</spoiler>and Marguerite is content to sit and wait for things to fall her way

One of the most enjoyable aspects of The Sister Queens is that no matter how convoluted the relationship, how twisted the tale, how unfamiliar the person at Court, Sophie Perinot never talks down to her readers. The tone of condescion from other historical fiction writers is absent entirely from these pages. Events are explained precisely and meticulously, nobles are referred to by their various names without reference to their every title or land (no "Lord Edward Sudbury, 2nd Earl of Westchester-on-the-Green, a Stuart and son of Lord......" type business before a character speaks/etc,) with a clear belief and respect that her readers can ably follow along.

I do wish that more had been shown of Eleanor's "toute seule" reign over England while her husband King Henry III was away. As Eleanor was my favorite and a very capable governor, a view of her directly in charge would've made a good contrast to the usual role she was forced to take. Elanor repeatedly maneuvers her husband into the Royal decisions and decrees which she deems correct before the regency, so a view into her own government would've been interesting to read. I'm also disappointed by the time that the novels ends at - 1255 - when both women have decades of still-tumultuous life ahead of them (Marguerite dies in 1295, Eleanor in 1291). I can't complain about the cut-off point too much or loudly because there is a lot of novel in what is provided (all 500 pages of Court intrigue, betrayals, war, love, uprisings) but I just want more. I want more about these two and their complicated, engrossing relationship from this author.

With her debut novel, Sophie Perinot brings to life, once again, two fascinating woman about whom not much is concretely known. Perinot's Eleanor and Marguerite are not just historical figures reimagined and operating upon the page: they are vibrant, strong, flawed and above all: interesting to read for the entire 528 page length of the book. This is a book that makes me want to read more in the same vein: I've pre-ordered another novel just because it focuses on the four daughters of Savoy who would all marry Kings. This is a book that makes me want another from the author immediately. This is a book that I would love to see spun into a sequel completing the years of the lives of the two main characters. This was a wonderful read and one of my favorites so far this year. This was a wonderful read and one of my favorites so far this year. Move over Tudors, I think I have a new historical royal family obsession.

This  review is part of the Passages to the Past Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tour for The Sister Queens. Stop by again on the 23rd of March for an interview with the author, Sophie Perinot. Or, click the link the check out other stops for giveaways, interviews and more reviews!