Margaret of Valois (French: Marguerite de Valois; 14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615), popularly known as Queen Margot (La Reine Margot, [la ʁɛn maʁɡo]), was Queen of Navarre from 1572 to 1599 and Queen of France from 1589 to 1599 as the consort of Henry IV of France and III of Navarre.
Margaret was the daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici and the sister of Kings Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Her union with Henry of Navarre, intended to contribute to the reconciliation of Catholics and Huguenots in France, was tarnished six days after the marriage ceremony by the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and the resumption of the French Wars of Religion. In the conflict between Henry III of France and the Malcontents, she took the side of Francis, Duke of Anjou, her younger brother, which caused Henry to have a deep aversion to her.
As Queen of Navarre, Margaret also played a pacifying role in the stormy relations between her husband and the French monarchy. Shuttling back and forth between both courts, she endeavoured to lead a happy conjugal life, but her infertility and the political tensions inherent in the civil conflict led to the end of her marriage. Mistreated by her brother Henry, who was quick to take offence, and rejected by her husband, she chose the path of opposition in 1585. She took the side of the Catholic League and was thus exiled to Auvergne, which lasted for 20 years. In 1599, she consented to a "royal divorce", the annulment of the marriage, but only after the payment of a generous compensation.
A well-known woman of letters, considered both enlightened and a generous patron, Margaret played a considerable part in the cultural life of the court, especially after her return from exile in 1605. She preached the supremacy of platonic love over physical love. During her imprisonment, she took advantage of the time to write her Memoirs, the first woman to have done so. One of the most fashionable women of her time, her dress influenced many of Europe's royal courts.
After Margaret's death, the anecdotes and slanders circulated about her created a legend which consolidated around the nickname La Reine Margot, invented by Alexandre Dumas père. These fictional elements of nymphomania and incest created a mythical image of a woman which persisted through the centuries to the modern day. In the late 20th and the early 21st centuries, revisionist historians have reviewed the extensive chronicles of her life and concluded that some elements of her scandalous reputation stemmed from anti-Valois propaganda and a factionalism that denigrated the participation of women in politics and was created by Bourbon dynasty court historians in the 17th century.
Margaret of Valois was born on 14 May 1553 at the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the seventh child and third daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. Three of her brothers would become kings of France: Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Her sister, Elisabeth of Valois, would become the third wife of King Philip II of Spain, and her brother Francis II married Mary, Queen of Scots.
Her childhood was spent in the French royal nursery of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye with her sisters Elisabeth and Claude, under the care of Charlotte de Vienne, baronne de Courton, "a wise and virtuous lady greatly attached to the Catholic religion". After her sisters' weddings, Margaret grew up in the Château d'Amboise with her brothers Henry and Francis, Duke of Alençon. During her childhood, her brother Charles IX gave her the nickname of "Margot".
At the French court, she studied grammar, classics, history, and Holy Scripture. Margaret learned to speak Italian, Spanish, Latin and Greek in addition to her native French. She was competent also in prose, poetry, horsemanship, and dance. She traveled with her family and the court in the grand tour of France (1564–1566). During this period Margaret had direct experience of the dangerous and complex political situation in France, and learned from her mother the art of political mediation. She was the only one of the children to have inherited their mother's robust health and vitality.
In 1565, Catherine met with Philip II's chief minister the duke of Alba for an Interview at Bayonne in hopes of arranging a marriage between Margaret and Carlos, Prince of Asturias. However, Alba refused any consideration of a dynastic marriage. Other marriage negotiations with Sebastian of Portugal and Archduke Rudolf also did not succeed.
During her teenage years, she and her brother Henry were very close friends. In 1568, leaving court to command the royal armies, he entrusted his 15-year-old sister with the defense of his interests with their mother.
His words inspired me with resolution and powers I did not think myself possessed of before. I had naturally a degree of courage, and, as soon as I recovered from my astonishment, I found I was quite an altered person. His address pleased me, and wrought in me a confidence in myself; and I found I was become of more consequence than I had ever conceived I had been.
Delighted with this mission, she fulfilled it conscientiously, but Henry showed no gratitude upon his return, according to her Memoirs. He had suspicions of a secret romance between Margot and Henry of Guise and their presumptive plan of marriage. When the royal family found this out, Catherine and Charles beat her and sent Henry of Guise away from court. This episode is perhaps at the root of a "lasting brotherly hatred" between Margaret and her brother Henry, as well as the equally lasting cooling of relations with her mother.
Some historians have hinted that the duke was Margaret's lover, but nothing confirms this. In the sixteenth century, a king's daughter had to remain a virgin until her marriage for political reasons. Surely after their marriage she was not faithful to her husband, however, it is difficult to discern what is true or invented about her extramarital affairs. Many have no basis, others were simply platonic. Most of Margaret's alleged adventures are the result of pamphlets printed with the intent to politically discredit her and her family.
The most successful defamation was Le Divorce Satyrique (1607), which described Margaret as a nymphomaniac.
By 1570, Catherine de' Medici was seeking a marriage between Margaret and Henry de Bourbon of Navarre, the leading Huguenot (French Calvinist Protestant). It was hoped this union would strengthen family ties, as the Bourbons were part of the French royal family and the closest relatives to the reigning Valois branch, and end the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots.
On 11 April 1572, Margaret was betrothed to Henry. Henry was a few months younger than Margaret, and their initial impressions of each other were favorable. In one of her letters to Henry, his mother Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, wrote about Margaret: "She has frankly owned to me the favourable impression which she has formed of you. With her beauty and wit, she exercises a great influence over the Queen-Mother and the King, and Messieurs her younger brothers." Jeanne d'Albret died in June 1572, two months after the engagement, and was succeeded on the throne by Henry, so that Margaret became queen of Navarre upon the day of her wedding.
Margaret and Henry, both 19 years of age, were married on 18 August 1572 at Notre-Dame de Paris. The marriage between a Catholic and a Huguenot was controversial. Pope Gregory XIII refused to grant a dispensation for the wedding, and the different faiths of the bridal couple made for an unusual wedding service. The King of Navarre had to remain outside the cathedral during the mass, where his place was taken by Margaret's brother, the Duke of Anjou.
François Eudes de Mézeray, a 17th-century historian, invented the anecdote that Margaret was forced to marry the King of Navarre by her brother Charles IX, who pushed down her head as though she were nodding her assent. This was Bourbon propaganda to justify the subsequent annulment of the marriage, 27 years later, part of the myth of the "Reine Margot". Margaret did not mention this in her Memoirs, nor did any of her contemporaries.