Nancy Goldstone > Quotes

“How had the Maid, a lowly commoner, gained an audience at the royal court? How had she, an illiterate young woman from a tiny village at the very edge of the kingdom, come to know so much about the complex political situation in France, and indeed, to see into the deepest recesses of her sovereign's heart?...The answers to these questions have remained hidden, not because the mystery surrounding Joan cannot be penetrated, but because their solution is inextricably tied to the life of another woman entirely, that of Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily...For those who wonder after reading these pages how it is possible that the evidence of Yolande's involvement in the story of Joan of Arc has never before been adequately explored, I can only respond that there is no more effective camouflage in history than to have been born a woman.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc

“She died early in the morning of February 13, 1662, at the age of sixty-five, one day shy of what would have been her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots

“She was obviously devastated by her loss. But not so devastated that she did not find the energy to utterly vanquish Diane.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Philosophy is one of those subjects, like astrophysics and neurosurgery, that are not for the fainthearted. To delve into the absolutes of the human experience, to seek to advance the progress of enlightenment first expounded by the likes of the revered Aristotle and Plato, to search for the answers to the profound questions of the universe, often at the risk of deadly reprisal from entrenched powers, requires not only brilliance and tenacity but a deep sense of purpose. But even among this select fraternity, [René] Descartes stands out. From him did we get practical discoveries like coordinates in geometry and the law of refraction of light. But what he really did was to shake loose the human mind from the shackles of centuries of stultifying religious orthodoxy by creating an entirely original approach to reasoning: the Cartesian method.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots

“Adversity is solitary, while prosperity dwells in a crowd.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“He rode into Vassy on March 1, 1562, accompanied by an entourage of two hundred armed knights and found the local Huguenot congregation, numbering some five or six hundred people, including many women and children, conducting its Sunday morning meeting not outside the city walls, as was specified in the Edict of Toleration, but right in town—and, worse, on his property in one of his very own buildings, which they had appropriated without his permission, an unimaginable insult. An altercation between the duke’s people and the Protestants promptly ensued. Being for the most part unarmed, the Huguenots had to improvise. Rocks were thrown. Members of the lower classes were not supposed to throw stones at their superiors from the upper classes. The duke’s soldiers retaliated by shooting and stabbing as many of the dissenters as they could (which was quite a few, as their opponents were trapped inside the building attending a church service), accompanied by rousing shouts of “Kill! Kill! By God’s death kill these Huguenots!” An hour later the Massacre of Vassy, as this infamous incident would later be dubbed, was over. Fifty Huguenots lay dead, another two hundred were wounded, and a flaming torch had been thrust into the tinderbox of religious controversy that would blaze up into the bonfire of the Wars of Religion.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“The vast majority of Huguenots supported the king and the royal family and wished to live in peace, he explained. The problem was that the Protestant movement had been more or less hijacked by extremists who desired political power. This radical element was using the general unhappiness with the Guises’ governance, and especially with their vicious policy of persecution, to forward their own ambitions.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“ominous murmur ran through the legion of onlookers, who had heretofore maintained an uncharacteristic silence. Their resentment was palpable. Five days later Coligny was assassinated, and the streets of Paris ran with blood as the entire Huguenot wedding party was hunted down and slaughtered in one of the most infamous episodes in French history, known today as the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. But this horrific mass murder, which claimed more than five thousand martyrs over the course of a week, was no spontaneous bloodletting. Rather, it was the denouement of a carefully constructed plot that utilized the unsuspecting Margot as both victim and bait to lure Coligny and his faction to their doom, an intrigue planned, instigated, and executed by the one individual in France powerful enough”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Frederick's wit was impressive. When a descendant of Ghengis Khan, who was wreaking havoc in the Muslim world, wrote threateningly that the holy Roman Emperor should surrender his lands and come to his court to become one of his vassals, Frederick replied that he'd think about it and to please hold open the position of falconer.”
― Nancy Goldstone, Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

“It was better to take a chance on the devil she didn’t know than to leave herself completely unprotected against the man who (despite his recent assurances of devotion) had made it his business to torment her in the past.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Parisians had no doubt that, should the Huguenots succeed in seizing power in France, as it was obvious they were trying to do, the Catholic population would be either forced to convert or suffer annihilation. But”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Men commit injuries either through fear or through hate.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“They needn’t have worried. Three hundred men, it turned out, were not enough to massacre a man like Bussy.* The assassination attempt had not only failed, it backfired completely by adding to the warrior’s renown.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“The day on which he [Épernon] arrives, and so long as he remains, I shall dress myself in garments which I shall never wear again: those of dissimulation and hypocrisy,”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“The duchess of Retz, who was fluent in Latin and Greek (languages she had acquired as a result of her first husband’s frustrating lack of sociability, which had obliged her to live like a hermit out in the countryside for years, with only her books for company), was especially interested in the literary arts.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Every now and then there comes a moment in history when an individual not previously credited with any particular integrity is elevated to a position of authority and unexpectedly assumes the character of the office and rises to a higher purpose. Although it meant sacrificing her personal happiness, Marguerite, appalled by all she had witnessed and understanding that, as queen of Navarre, she was all that stood between her husband and annihilation, refused to participate in the bloodshed and elected to save Henry.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“As we are ready to give ear and credit to those we love, he believed all she said. From this time he became distant and reserved towards me, shunning my presence as much as possible; whereas, before, he was open and communicative to me as to his sister… What I had dreaded, I now perceived had come to pass. This was the loss of his favor and good opinion; to preserve which I had studied to gain his confidence by a ready compliance with his wishes.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Thus it is ever in Courts,” she observed bitterly. “Adversity is solitary, while prosperity dwells in a crowd.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Fortresses may or may not be useful according to the times; if they do good in one way, they do harm in another.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Throughout her career, Catherine seems to have believed that simply by reiterating her demands over and over she could either convince her opponents of the correctness of her position or overwhelm them until they conceded to her wishes.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“In twenty cities, or about that number, the godly [Huguenots] have been slaughtered by raging mobs,” Calvin noted grimly to his chief disciple, Théodore Beza, in a letter written in May 1561. In Provence, enraged Protestants ransacked Catholic churches and destroyed relics in retaliation.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Louis's reign was one of largely unrealized potential. The king of France was born with every advantage. He was diligently educated and admired.The first three decades of his life were spent in the protective care of an extremely competent mother, who bequeathed him the largest, strongest, most stable kingdom in Europe. The depth of anguish that resulted from his first crusade, and his obvious desire to redeem himself through good works, was so poignant that his subjects generously forgave him the disaster and shame. The world respected his suffering and looked to him as a moral compass. For a brief, exalted period he made good on the principles he so piously espoused. He made peace with his neighbors, fed the poor, dispensed justice to the best of his ability. He built the exquisite Sainte-Chapelle. But in the end he used all of that trust, goodwill, and deference not to improve his subjects' well-being about which he professed to care so much, but as an excuse to lead them to a ghastly, fetid plain in Tunisia with the intent of annihilating an alien culture for the greater glory of God.”
― Nancy Goldstone

“In short, I was constantly receiving some fresh mortification, so that I hardly passed a day in quiet.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Whoever thinks that in high personages new benefits cause old offences to be forgotten, makes a great mistake.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“Margot was utterly unable to control her fury. “I was so greatly offended with this fresh indignity, after so many of the kind formerly received, that I could not help yielding to resentment; and my grief and concern getting the upper hand of my prudence, I exhibited a great coolness and indifference towards my husband,” she admitted. “Le Guast and Madame de Sauves were successful in creating a like indifference on his part, which, coinciding with mine, separated us altogether, and we neither spoke to each other nor slept in the same bed.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“With the departure of the acknowledged head of the Catholic party, the Protestants gained a degree of influence over the royal family completely out of proportion to their numbers in the general population.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“For solace at this time of sadness and confusion, Marguerite turned to a source that would remain a refuge to her throughout her life: books.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“The character of people varies, and it is easy to persuade them of a thing, but difficult to keep them in that persuasion.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom

“with the queen”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom