A Thank You

And a tiny lesson in resilience from Catherine de’ Medici

Catherine de’ Medici’s signature on a letter to the Seigneur de Fourquevaux, the French ambassador to Spain.

Happy December, friends. I hope this holiday month is treating you well and leaving you some time for rest and relaxation.

Quite a few new subscribers have joined in the past few weeks, so let me take a moment to say hello and welcome. I’m very glad to have you here.

Let me take a moment, too, now that we’ve reached the end of 2023, to say a quick but heartfelt thank you. It was a big year, and I have been so grateful to everyone who has supported my work, whether it was subscribing to this newsletter, reading Young Queens, inviting me to speak, sending me a note or a picture of the 👸👸👸in the wild, or just telling me “Hey! I saw your book at the bookstore!” All of it meant something to me.

There are several of you out there — friends, podcasters, social media mavens — who have gone above and beyond to spread the word about Young Queens. You know who you are ~ please know that I know who you are, too. And that I am grateful.

A final word of thanks: I have learned even more about Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary and their world through your thoughtful questions and reactions. One of the things I loved as a teacher was when my students made me think hard about the topics we were discussing. Often they brought something to the discussion that I’d never considered. I’ve written more than a few articles that grew from insights students had during a class discussion. And I’ve had many a day since publishing Young Queens when, after speaking with a reader, I’ve had a thought that I wished had gone into the book.

Sometimes I wish I could rewrite the whole thing again, and do it a little differently.

(I can feel my family recoiling in horror). But not to worry, there will not be a YQ 2.0

A new year, a fresh start, with new projects. I’ll leave you and 2023 with a little tidbit about Catherine de’ Medici, that queen of queens, who has so much to teach us about resilience in the face of adversity. She, too, lived in a world that seemed torn apart.

On December 24, 1568 — exactly 455 years ago, as I type this — Catherine sat down at her desk to write a letter to the French ambassador in Spain. She’d had a terrible year, capped only two months earlier by the premature death of her beloved daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, Queen of Spain. Catherine felt she had entered the winter of her life.

Her thoughts were still with Elisabeth that Christmas season. On December 24th, she wrote to Spain to tie up loose ends, and to thank the ambassador for sending her news of her granddaughters, Elisabeth’s children.

“I am very happy that you’ve sent me word of the continued good health of the infantas, my granddaughters, and it would please me if you would send me their news often.”

From the 19th-century collected letters of Catherine de’ Medici, edited by Hector de la Ferrière-Percy (1880)

I’ve often wondered from where Catherine drew her strength, how she replenished her seemingly endless supply of grit. I don’t have an answer, but I think some of it came from connection with other people, her friends and also her family. We don’t think of Catherine de’ Medici as a warm and cuddly grandma (just try to picture that), but she was a devoted grandmother who invested in her grandchildren and fostered strong relationships with them.

She would never meet those infantas in person, but she would write them countless letters. She felt close to them. And I like to think those girls, Isabella Clara Eugenia and Catalina Michele, inherited some of Catherine’s grit.

In the meantime, Catherine kept her head down. She kept working, kept her focus trained on the task at hand. I think that was probably her greatest skill, the ability to just keep on going, no matter what.

Not even the holiday season would stop Catherine.

That Christmas Eve, 1568, Catherine wrote her letter to the Spanish ambassador. Then she took the 25th and 26th off, as was her habit. In the 16th century, Christmas festivities began on the 25th and stretched on for a few weeks, ending only with the Epiphany on January 6th.

But two weeks off was a tad long for the workaholic Catherine.

By the 27th of that year, she was back at her desk.

Keep on keeping on, folks. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. I’ll look forward to seeing you again in 2024.