8 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI

• Italian-born French queen, regent and mother of three kings of France. She was a powerful influence in 16th century France, particularly during the Wars of Religion.

• Catherine de' Medici was married to the French King Henry II (1519– 1559) and was mother and regent (one who governs a kingdom in the absence of the real ruler) of three other kings—Francis II (1544–1560), Charles IX (1550–1574), and Henry III (1551–1589).
  

• Catherine was born in 1519 to a powerful Italian prince from the Medici family. Her mother died a few days after giving birth, and her father died a week later. Her father's relatives, among them popes Leo X (1475–1521) and Clement VII (1478–1534), took over her care.
  

• The Catholic leaders of France and Spain made peace in 1559 partly because they needed money but also so they could unite against Protestantism. The treaty was sealed by the marriage of Philip II (1527–1598) of Spain to Elisabeth, the teenage daughter of Catherine and King Henry. At the joust (a fight on horseback) held during the wedding celebrations, however, King Henry was injured by a lance that pierced his eye and entered his brain. Henry's death a few days later brought his and Catherine's oldest son, sixteen-year-old Francis II, to the throne

• The signing of the Peace of St. Germain in 1570 brought a temporary end to a decade of war. Among the treaty's provisions were the decisions that Catherine's daughter Marguerite would marry Henry of Navarre (1553–1610), the Huguenot leader, that the Huguenots would be given several territories throughout France, and that Coligny would return to his position in the royal court. Catherine hoped he might act to calm his fellow Huguenots while she played the same role among Catholics. But Coligny quickly moved to become a friend and adviser of King Charles IX, leading many to believe he was planning another takeover.
  

• She's said to have taught the French how to eat with a fork, and introduced foods and dishes such as artichokes, aspics, baby peas, broccoli, cakes, candied vegetables, cream puffs, custards, ices, lettuce, milk-fed veal, melon seeds, parsley, pasta, puff pastry, quenelles, scallopine, sherbet, spinach, sweetbreads, truffles and zabaglione.

• Henry and Catherine would have ten children, three of whom didn't survive infancy, but four boys and three girls did.
  

• Catherine died 5 January 1589 of natural causes.