The Italian Woman — Jean Plaidy

The King is dead. Long live the...Regent.

Scorned by Henry II, ignored by his court in favor of the Royal mistress Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici exulted at the Monarch's death.

Her sickly sons might reign, but the Queen Regent would rule. One after another the ineffectual heirs ascended to the throne--the weakling Francis, who loved his country too little and Mary, Queen of Scots, too much; Charles, whose strength was sapped by the shadow of his own madness; and Henry, who cared less for power than his own perversions. And behind each of them stood the iron-willed woman who would scheme, manipulate, and murder to realize her sons' destinies and her own insatiable ambition.