Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici

Focusing on representations of scandals in popular culture and print, Una McIlvenna explores Catherine de Medici's legendary 'flying squadron', the ladies-in-waiting of the sixteenth-century French queen mother who allegedly seduced politically influential men to further their mistress's Machiavellian purposes. In tracing how the legend came about and was perpetuated, she reveals accusations of poisoning and incest to be literary tropes within a tradition of female defamation dating to classical times.