Series name: The Serpent Queen
In 1533, the fourteen-year-old Henry II of France married Catherine de’ Medici in a lavish ceremony in Marseille, a union intended to strengthen French ties to the Italian papacy. While the couple eventually produced ten children, the marriage was famously defined by Henry’s lifelong devotion to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who was nearly twenty years his senior. Diane wielded immense influence at court, often acting as an unofficial queen and even raising Henry and Catherine’s children, which deeply humiliated Catherine.
Henry’s death was as dramatic as his personal life was complicated. On June 30, 1559, while participating in a jousting tournament to celebrate the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, a splinter from the lance of Gabriel de Montgomery pierced the king’s visor and entered his eye and brain. Despite the efforts of the era’s most renowned surgeons, including Ambroise Paré, Henry suffered for ten days before dying of sepsis on July 10, 1559. His death triggered a period of political instability that led to the French Wars of Religion.
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