Catherine de Medici is the most vilified Queen in French history - ranking only with Marie Antoinette (another foreign bride) for controversy. Yet, as Mahoney painstakingly shows, Catherine refuses to seek our sympathy. Time after time, she fought her own corner, and up to the bitter end, physically exhausted, she strove in defense of her family interests. She saw out five kings (Francis I, her father in law, Henry II, her husband, and her three children, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III) and was mother in law of Mary Queen of Scots. She sprang from Florence but immersed herself in the fabric of the French state, bearing nine children for the House of Valois. She is associated with some of the worst excesses of the Catholic side in the French Wars of Religion, including the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, yet it is more accurate to see her as a mediator between the truly zealous Guise faction and the equally stubborn Hugenots. Mahoney's biography is both literate and fair, and ranks with the best of Antonia Fraser.