The king broadcast later in the day, telling the people that this “grave hour” was “perhaps the most fateful in our history”. King Francis had kept his promise to the Medici indeed when he delivered Madeleine, a Bourbon, to the altar at Amboise in 1518. But a little girl like Caterina could begin to learn to stitch and to speak well, to chant her ABCs and to sing. She felt the bumps and scrapes of childhood, the bruised ego of bickering, the lightness of laughter.

It is the nature of hereditary monarchy that the suitability of royal children as rulers or consorts is a lottery. The French king kept up his wooing of the pope, hosting the wedding the following spring, on April 28, 1518, at his favorite château of Amboise.This November, Taschen will publish Her Majesty, a photographic journey through Elizabeth’s existence in both the public and private spheres. So it is hardly surprising that, more than a century later, the world should be in such admiration of the skills that Queen has deployed through her uniquely long and distinguished reign.

Chang is honest about the places where the sources simply fail us, acknowledging, for example, that ‘we know hardly anything about Mary’s state of mind during the weeks following Darnley’s death’. The Medici were too starved for blue blood not to have relished Madeleine’s vaunted ancestry, their link to the French royal family. Even when the women do get involved in affairs of state, the propensity of the period for conveying the most important messages orally means that we never learn exactly how Catherine and Elisabeth managed their diplomatic talks, nor whether their tactics were substantially different from those a father and son might have deployed in a similar situation. A slim girl, straight and stylish in her dark velvet bodice and opulent red sleeves, looks out from under a French hood. I would have no greater desire,” replied a coy Lorenzo, “than to take this lady from Your Majesty’s hand.Despite these challenges, the two Elizabeths were not the only women to become queen at a young age and in unexpected circumstances.

If they were still a child or even in their teens, a regency or minority council could be set up to govern for them. The contests among these young kings would define the age, each seeking to best the others both on the battlefield and at court. Princess Elizabeth and groom, the newly created Duke of Edinburgh on the balcony of Buckingham Palace after their wedding. He then moved into politics, becoming an advisor to the Conservative Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Michael Portillo, and then to the party’s Leader of the Opposition, William Hague.It was George V who shrewdly jettisoned the royal family's Germanic surname of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1917. Early pages cover her as a young child: on her christening, swaddled in the Honiton gown; as a teenager happily with a corgi. Marten’s teachings were important to Elizabeth’s perception of her role: he told her that monarchy was strengthened by adaptability and talked of the importance of broadcasting directly to her subjects. Her son Charles is now experiencing that same combination of mourning for the loss of a beloved parent while simultaneously being catapulted into the role of monarch and head of state.

Chang delivers a murderously climactic final act, telling the story of Mary, Darnley and Bothwell with aplomb. Chang tells a vivid, visual, and compelling story, furnished with stirring details from the countless letters penned by and about these women. Even her conception had been political, her flesh and blood plotted by ambitious relatives who anticipated her birth with both delight and greed. Interestingly, the age of seven was when Prince William is said to have revealed the same challenging reality to his son George - at the latest moment before the boy was likely to be confronted with the truth in his London school playground. This caused problems when Elisabeth’s favourite, Madame de Vineux, threatened to supplant Madame de Clermont, who Elisabeth’s mother Catherine trusted to guide her.It explores a 40-year period stretching from the young Catherine’s years as a hostage of Florence’s last republican government, to Elisabeth’s untimely death and Mary’s imprisonment. That would change if Lorenzo de’ Medici married the French noblewoman Francis offered, and if she bore a child. At this tender age the little girl who already grasped the weightiness of her grandfather's national role as "Grandpa England", was clearly developing some inkling of her own as well.