Lecture Access

This lecture will be available to view until 7 December 2026

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OVERVIEW

Watch on Demand | One-Hour Lecture


Few women of the sixteenth century cast as long a shadow over European politics as Catherine de' Medici. 

Born in 1519 into the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, she was orphaned within weeks and raised amid the volatile rivalries of Renaissance Italy before being despatched, aged fourteen, to marry the future Henry II of France. For much of her early married life she remained a marginal figure at the French court, overshadowed by her husband's celebrated mistress Diane de Poitiers and burdened by the political weight of her foreign origins.

Henry's sudden death in 1559 transformed her circumstances entirely. As queen mother to three successive Valois kings, Catherine became the de facto ruler of France, steering the realm through the brutal Wars of Religion, orchestrating dynastic marriages across Europe, and navigating a court riven by factional violence.

In this lecture, Dr Lauren Mackay reappraises Catherine's extraordinary reign and the contested legacy that endures.


LECTURER

Biography

Dr Lauren Mackay is an historian, author, lecturer and consultant, with a B.Mus from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music/University of Sydney, Australia, a Masters of History from the University of New England, and a PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research explores the interconnected worlds of the Early Modern period, from the courts of Tudor England and the famed Habsburgs, to the Ottoman Empire, and the global reach of European expansion into the New World. Lauren is also the author of three books, and her fourth, Thunder Through the Realms: Five Kingdoms and the Shaping of Early Modern Europe, is due out in 2025 with Bloomsbury Publishing. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has lectured throughout the UK, at venues including Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Sudeley Castle, Hever Castle, Windsor Castle, Leeds Castle, The National Archives, Kew, The Portrait Gallery, London, and the BBC History weekends.

Dr Lauren Mackay

Historian