
Sullen-eyed & broken-hearted fourteen-year-old Catherine de Medici arrives in Marseilles to marry Henry of Orleans second son of the King of France. On the promise of a dowry fit for a king Catherine has left her true love in Italy forced into trading her future for a stake in the French crown. Amid the glittering fetes & banquets of the most immoral court in sixteenth-century Europe the reluctant bride becomes a passionate but unwanted wife. Humiliated & unloved Catherine spies on Henry & his lover the infamous Diane de Poitiers. & tortured by what she sees Catherine becomes dangerously occupied by a ruthless ambition destined to make her the most despised woman in France: the dream that one day the French crown will be worn be a Medici heir.. .