Review: The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner

While I am a self-professed avid fan of English or British historical fiction, this book, number 70 for the year, is my first foray into French historical fiction, though it takes place around the same period of time as many of my Alison Weir and Philippa Gregory novels:  The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, by C.W. Gortner.

Last in line of the once-prestigious, now-reviled Italian Medici family, Catherine is only a girl when she is betrothed to the dauphin of France.  Forced to make her home in a strange country, given in marriage to a prince who openly keeps a mistress, it is years before Catherine is able to carve out a life for herself and her children, desperate to ensure her destiny and their legacies.  But she is beset by enemies from all sides -- the Protestant Huguenots, who struggle for equality and acceptance; the Guise family, who want to see the existing monarchy topple; and even the ones she loves.  And Catherine must use everything in her power to keep her crown, and her life.  

This is the story of France's most notorious queen before Marie Antoinette.  Catherine de Medici is almost constantly reviled for the dark decadence that surrounded her reign, and is well known for ruling the country through her sons with an iron fist.  Her lifetime is noted as one of the darkest times in French history (obviously before the French Revolution), involving wars of succession and religion.  Catherine has been accused of witchcraft -- she was a patroness of astrologers and particularly of the mystic Nostradamus -- and there are few tragedies during her lifetime that were not attributed to her, directly or indirectly.

Yet it is difficult to hate Catherine in this telling of her story.  In the afterward, author Gortner says that she struggled to look beyond the evil reputation that surrounded de Medici to find a sympathetic character underneath.  The incredible tragedies of Catherine's lifetime include the deaths of eight of her children -- only two survived her -- and an often brutal war for religious tolerance.  During a time in history where religious persecution was rampant and the Inquisition was wreaking terrible cruelty in Spain, Catherine de Medici struggled for the first part of her life to keep religious intolerance at bay.  Yet she is blamed as the ringleader of the terrible St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of French Protestants, although there is no direct tie between her and the orders.  Gortner struggles to make Catherine a character that the reader does not despise, trying to show her obvious motivations of keeping her sons alive and her title intact.

The book is very good, and the further I got into it, the more difficult it was to put it down.  While the names became difficult to keep straight at times (there are so many Francois and Henris!), it was a compelling story.  I didn't manage to feel quite 100% sympathetic towards Catherine -- I felt at times like Gortner was modeling her after The Lion In Winter's Eleanor of Aquitaine: scheming and manipulating her children onto the throne, whatever the cost may be.  But whatever her motives or disposition, she makes a compelling and fascinating heroine.

Rating: ****