In 16th century France, Marguerite de Valois is growing up in one of Europe's most dysfunctional families - the Medici clan, whose extreme inbreeding has led to an alarming number of genetic defects in France's kings.
Her mother, Queen Catherine de Medici has taken note of Marguerite's uncharacteristic beauty and intelligence. In a scheme to unite the country during the raging religious wars, she opts to marry off her Catholic daughter to the Huguenot Henri, King of Navarre, a charming but faithless philanderer. The populace recoils at the union. Immediately following Marguerite's wedding day a key Huguenot figure is murdered, which leads the the deaths of thousands of Huguenots in Paris, slaughtered by their neighbors in what has become known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Marguerite's new husband, Henri of Navarre, barely escapes Paris with his life and Marguerite, sequestered at court by order of de Medici, finds that she is a newlywed without a husband.
Marguerite is now persona non grata with not only Catholics but Huguenots as well. To make matters worse, the man she spurned for Henri, the proud Duke of Guise, is determined to make her pay for wounding his vanity. To escape him and the manipulations of her mother, Marguerite goes on a voyage to Flanders, ostensibly to visit a spa but in reality to engage in some political diplomacy at the behest of her youngest brother. Unfortunately, her presence there stirs up a political hornet's nest that leads to the death of an innocent member of her party. Fearful for her life and the lives of the rest of her entourage, Marguerite rides back to Paris alone, accompanied only by the First Equerry, with whom she starts to fall in love. Happiness is hard to come by, however, when one is living life as a political pawn. Marguerite comes to understand that to set herself free of de Medici's endless machinations, she'll have to outplay her mother at her own vicious game.
A mostly true story inspired by the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois.
