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Margueríte de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (review)

married the collateral heir, who would become Francis I. New, however, was the fact that Navarre, Marguerite’s intended, was Protestant. Birth families expected daughters to mediate between families, and royal women were successful diplomats in both official and unacknowledged ways. They were often left in untenable positions, however, and their loyalty questioned. Princesses’ lives revolved around a succession of male kin: fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons. Marguerite bore no children and, divorced from her husband, who needed an heir, had no son to shore up her position. While under house arrest in the Auvergne, she started asserting her authorial voice, Viennot argues, to reposition herself, using the same weapon — writing — as those acting against her. As editor of Marguerite’s Mémoires, and the scholar most conversant with her subject’s authorial voice, Viennot questions the legitimacy of various texts, carefully revealing subtleties within. When evidence for certain assertions is lacking, she resists drawing conclusions and says so, making it difficult to continue the reductionism characteristic of the Margot legend. She listens to Marguerite and situates her writings within their literary and social contexts. Viennot notes her gendered use of language: like other contemporary queens, Marguerite calls herself prince and emphasizes her connections to kings. But, significantly, after her annulment in 1602, she situates herself for the first time within a female lineage, comparing herself to Louis XI’s daughter Jeanne — separated from Louis XII, thus facilitating his marriage to Anne of Brittany — and stops using masculine referents. Marguerite co-opts the Neoplatonic language that male poets used to figure relationships with beautiful (hence virtuous) women, to claim a similar function for male beauty in the alliance she devised for herself with Jacques de Harlay. Another way that Marguerite deviates from the norm is that despite repudiation, she resurfaced, aged fifty-two, and reestablished herself in Paris. The last living link between Valois and Bourbon, Marguerite befriended her successor, Maria de’ Medici, and left her property to the dauphin. Here, too, language is revealing. Working out what the future Louis XIII would call her, in a society where kinship terms defined status and relationship, after trying out tante and soeur, Maman ma fille was decided upon. Marguerite attended Maria de’ Medici’s coronation and went to see her after Henry IV’s ensuing assassination. Who better to relate to a calamity following a royal ceremony than the bride whose wedding devolved into a massacre? SHEILA FFOLLIOTT George Mason University