The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner -- Book Review

A beautifully written historical novel that provides a different perspective on a legendary queen most famous for her ruthlessness, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici: A Novel by C.W. Gortner will pull you in from the very first sentence.

Catherine de Medici is known throughout history as being a ruthless queen who poisoned her enemies, arranged the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and who practiced witchcraft.

At the age of 14, the last legitimate descendant of Medici blood, Catherine departs Florence for France, to wed King Francois I’s son, Henri II. While knowing this was a political marriage, Catherine would hope for a good life with Henri; all too soon to discover he preferred his former governess, Diane de Poitiers, who he had taken as his mistress, and flaunted in front of his wife.

Together Catherine and Henri would have several children, before his unexpected death placed their sickly son, Francois II on the throne. Tragedy would come to Catherine time and again, as her power grew during a time of unrest in France. Always seeking peace, she attempted to bring Huguenots and Catholics together, though not always assisted by her children--some even plotted against her.

She would die having been accused of many things. The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is her story.

Having previously read The Last Queen: A Novel, also by Gortner, I was anxious for the release of this book. Gortner's latest is at least as good as The Last Queen, if not better.

Bringing Catherine de Medici's story to life through her own confessions pulls the reader in immediately.

"I was ten years old when I discovered I might be a witch."

And so opens The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. Gortner certainly knows the importance of hooking a reader. The important thing, however, is that once he has you, Gortner never lets you go. The abundance of historical details, the numerous complex characters that reside within the book's pages, the perfect blending of fact and fiction, all let you know that you are dealing with a master who has perfected his art.

I found it much more challenging to write a review of Gortner's book than some others because I became so involved in the story, so attached to the characters, I forgot I was reviewing it.

While history has painted Catherine de Medici as a power hungry, maniacal force during her years in France, Gortner paints a much more sympathetic image of the girl sent to marry a king who preferred his mistress. She was a woman who sought to keep peace in a time when war threatened to rip France apart. She was a mother who felt the need to protect her children after the death of their father. She even felt the sting of betrayal by those close to her.

Gortner gives Catherine de Medici a voice. He does so in an eloquent, intriguing manner that will captivate readers and leave them wishing to know more about this misunderstood woman of the Renaissance. I highly recommend The Confessions of Catherine de Medici to any lover of historical fiction and those interested in powerful women in history.


Title: The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
Author: C.W. Gortner
Pubisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN-10: 0345501861
ISBN-13: 978-0345501868
SRP: $25.00

Interview with Historical Novelist C.W. Gortner, Author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici (Giveaway

Today, we welcome back C.W. Gortner. Last May, Christopher was our guest when we reviewed his historical novel, The Last Queen, and interviewed him. You can find those posts here and here.

Christopher is back with a new historical release, a new queen, and another moving story to tell. We’re going to talk with Christopher about his new book, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici: A Novel, the inspiration behind it, and we’ll touch upon his new series, the first book of which, is due to be released in January 2011.

Welcome back to The Book Connection, Christopher. It is wonderful to have the chance to catch up with you. Can you please take a short moment to refresh our readers’ memories about you and your work?

I write historical fiction about women of power in the Renaissance. My first book The Last Queen is about Juana of Castile, known as Juana la Loca; she was a queen of Spain and sister of Catherine of Aragon. My new book is of course about the Italian-born French queen, Catherine de Medici. I was raised in Spain and now live in California with my partner and our corgi, Paris.

You’ve now written two books about controversial women in history. What is your fascination with these women and why do you choose to share their stories in a fictional setting?

Popular history is often one-sided when it comes to women, particularly women who challenged the prevailing male-dominated system. What we hear about these complex ladies are clichés: Elizabeth I is the Virgin; Anne Boleyn is the Whore; Catherine de Medici is the Crone; Jane Grey is the Victim. These types of monikers do not even begin to do justice to the incredible depth of these women’s lives, which is why I think we are seeing a current fascination with historical women. They had glamorous, tumultuous, and sometimes tragic destinies; they are, in many ways, our celebrities of the past; but they also lived in a time of more danger, when life was not as valued. I write historical fiction because for me, it offers an ideal medium for bringing these long-gone women into the present. We may know the facts—for example, Catherine de Medici spent her married life sharing her husband with his much older mistress—but what we crave is to experience their emotions, their inner lives, to share with them their trajectories and their world as they may have.

What does popular history have to say about Catherine de Medici?

Popular history has been especially unkind to Catherine. Though I’d known about her for years, I soon discovered during my research how little I really knew her. Few queens are as notorious as this woman who ruled France in the 16th century, renowned for her ruthlessness and mastery of poison; Catherine de Medici has been accused of heinous crimes, including the massacre of 6,000 people in Paris. She lurks in the shadows of history as the perennial black widow, weaving intrigue in her Louvre apartments.

Why did you decide her story had to be told?

Because when someone lives such an eventful life, there’s always more to her story than history tells us. Catherine de Medici was a person, before she became a figure of lurid speculation. She had dreams and aspirations; hopes and disillusions, yet unlike her contemporaries Elizabeth I, who commands our respect with her splendor; or Mary, Queen of Scots, who elicits sympathy with her martyrdom, history has not been compassionate to Catherine. I wanted to depict the flesh-and-blood Catherine de Medici which history has forgotten: the teenage heiress sent to France to marry a prince she did not love; the wife who endured years of neglect in the shadow of her husband’s mistress; the regent fighting for a realm torn by conflict; the mother with children to protect; and the woman whose alliance with an enigmatic leader plunges her into a tortured maze of passion, betrayal, and murder.

You spend a great deal of time researching for your books: six years for The Last Queen and three years for The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. Having read The Last Queen, I can tell you one of the things that captured me right away was your attention to detail. But how much is too much? How do you decide between what to include and what is better left out?

It’s always a tough call. I usually make those decisions after I finish the first draft and have begun the process of polishing and revising. For me, the ‘real’ writing happens after I’ve written the last word of that first draft. At that point, I have the entire story before me—rough and messy, yes, but there. I can now start to work on honing it and that’s where the details come into play. I think you want enough to immerse the reader in this new world; you want them to smell, see, and touch the physicality of the places where your characters live but you don’t want it to become a recitation of everything you found out while researching. I learn far more in my research than I ever show on the page; details should heighten a reader’s experience, not deluge them in long paragraphs of description that go nowhere and serve only to display how much the writer knows.



Like Juana from The Last Queen, Catherine de Medici was not raised to be a queen. How do think this impacts how she ruled and the stories that have been passed down about her through the years?

Absolutely, it had an impact. No one expected Elizabeth I to rule, either, but she was in the line of succession and educated accordingly. But Catherine was expected to just be the wife of the king’s second son, the pawn in an alliance with the papal Medici, a broodmare for the Valois. That she was suddenly thrust into this position of power challenged everything she’d known; she had to re-invent herself, acquire a whole new set of skills. In many aspects, she did astonishingly well. She kept a crumbling country afloat during years of chaos that might have destroyed a less-skilled ruler. But she made mistakes, serious mistakes—and these, more than her triumphs, have defined her in popular history. She’s not the queen who saved France during one of the most savage religious conflicts of the 16th century, who kept Spain at bay and protected the throne, but rather the Machiavellian monster, who masterminded a massacre.

While I didn’t mention this in the introduction, you’re also working on a new historical novel about another queen. Would you like to share a bit about this project?

I’m currently writing a novel called THE PRINCESS ISABELLA. It’s about the early years of Isabel of Castile, her dramatic and little-known youthful struggle to win her throne; her forbidden marriage to Fernando of Aragon; and her controversial crusade to unite Spain. Isabella has also suffered from the one-sided clichés of popular history; to some, she’s a fanatic who let the Inquisition loose on the world and destroyed centuries of enlightenment in Spain; to others, she’s quite literally a candidate for sainthood, the Catholic queen who defeated the infidels and financed the expedition by Columbus that discovered the New World. As with every story, there are of course more sides to hers. She’s a fascinating woman, more complex and dynamic than even I had imagined. I’m having a wonderful time re-discovering her and hope readers will, too.

Can you tell us about your new series, The Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles?

Set during the Tudor era, the Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles feature a young man named Brendan Prescott who becomes a spy for Elizabeth I. The first novel, The Tudor Secret, is set during the final days of the reign of Edward VI, when Brendan arrives at court as a squire and stumbles upon a conspiracy that threatens Princess Elizabeth. As he races against an unknown foe to save her, he begins to unravel the secret of his own mysterious past—a deadly secret that changes everything he believes in and casts an inescapable shadow over him, Elizabeth and the future of England itself.

While this new series is set in the very popular Tudor era, it explores the unfamiliar underworld of espionage and the bond of forbidden friendship between a spy and a queen.

Does this new series have any tie-ins to your previous books?

It’s set in the 16th century, which is where I’ve so far focused my other novels, but otherwise it is a stand-alone series. While I’ve not specifically written about the Tudors before, Henry VII did appear in The Last Queen and Elizabeth was a contemporary of Catherine de Medici’s.

Where can readers purchase The Confessions of Catherine de Medici?

As of May 25, in bookstores everywhere, as well as online. Whenever possible, I encourage readers to purchase my books via IndieBound.

I know you have a website and a blog. Can you share those links with our readers?



My website is: www.cwgortner.com and my blog is: http://historicalboys.blogspot.com

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you so much for inviting me. I always enjoy meeting readers and chatting with book groups. Readers interested in having me chat with their group can contact me via my website.

Thank you for spending some time with us today, Christopher. It’s been wonderful hearing about your new and upcoming projects. I hope you’ll visit us again next year when the new series comes out.


Follow Christopher's tour all month long by visiting http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/



Based upon the sheer number of requests I had from reviewers for this book, I'm thinking everyone would appreciate a chance to win a copy. I usually run giveaways until the end of the month, but since we are leaving on vacation for two weeks at the beginning of July, I am going to cut this giveaway a bit short. The deadline to enter is going to be 11:59 PM Eastern on June 25th. I'll select a winner on June 28th.

Here are the rules:

1) Mandatory: You must be a follower of this blog to be eligible to win. Leave a comment letting us know you're a follower. Comment must include a working email address so that we can contact you if you win. If there is no email address included, the entry won't count.

2) Get three additional entries for blogging about this contest. Leave a comment (with link) here telling us where you blogged about it.

3) Get two additional entries for tweeting about this contest. Don't forget to let us know here that you tweeted and leave us a link.*

4) Get two additional entries for posting about this contest on Facebook. Leave us a link here.*

5) Get two additional entries for following Book Tours and More and leaving a comment on any post. Leave a comment here letting us know which post from Book Tours and More you commented on.

As mentioned above, the deadline to enter is 11:59 PM Eastern on June 25th. This contest is open to residents of the United States and Canada only.


* There are no buttons for these. Just go out to Twitter or Facebook and do your thing.

Interview with C.W. Gortner--Author of The Last Queen

Today’s special guest is author C.W. Gortner. The trade paperback of his historical novel, The Last Queen, was recently released by Ballantine Books (the hardcover was released in July 2008). We’re going to talk to this talented author today about Juana of Castile, the heroine of his novel.

Welcome to The Book Connection, Christopher. It’s a pleasure to have you with us. Can you please tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I write historical fiction; my novel is THE LAST QUEEN, published by Ballantine Books, Random House, was recently released in trade paperback. I’m passionate about books, animal rights and the environment. I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twenty–five years but I’m half-Spanish by birth and also call Spain home. I hold an MFA in Writing with an emphasis on Renaissance Studies and have traveled extensively to research my work.



When did you decide that you had to write about the life of Juana of Castile?

I’ve been fascinated by Juana for most of my life. In my childhood I lived near a ruined castle that had belonged to Juana’s parents; and during a trip to Granada, where Juana is buried, I found myself entranced by her marble effigy. Most school children in Spain know the tale of Juana la Loca but I immediately wanted to know more. What was she like in real life? Did she really pull her husband’s bier behind her throughout the country, venerating his corpse? Was she truly mad? What happened to plunge her into such despair?

The book is full of period details and rich descriptions. How long did it take you to perform your research for this book and did you travel to any of the locations mentioned within its pages?

It took six years to research and write THE LAST QUEEN, including several trips to Spain. I did visit most of the sites mentioned in the book, as fortunately many of them are still extant, if somewhat changed since her time. The challenge after the research was to sort through it all and decide what I wanted to write about. Fortunately, it soon became clear that I wanted to focus on the woman herself— the fallible, humane, courageous and often lonely woman, whose experiences, while different from ours, certainly, are universal in her struggle to balance life and duty, betrayal and love. I even took a drive from Burgos to Toro in Spain, tracing Juana’s own trajectory.

You’ve written The Last Queen from Juana’s point of view. Did you find that difficult?

I didn’t, actually! What I found most difficult was getting up the courage to actually do it. I had written a previous version of the novel in third person, but my agent told me she felt something was missing, that Juana seemed too enigmatic. My agent didn’t tell me how she thought I could fix this, but as I began revising the manuscript, it soon became apparent that what I really needed to do was slip into Juana’s skin, to experience her life as she might have, through her eyes. It freaked me out at first, to attempt to write in the first person as a woman, but then I realized that writing is one art form where gender shouldn’t matter. We are invisible: our characters tell the story. And while I had to do some research to portray certain experiences, like giving birth, there were many other moments and emotions that Juana felt that were very familiar to me.

You’ve portrayed a different picture of Juana of Castile than what the world has been led to believe about her. Were you ever concerned that someone would question your portrayal of Juana?

Well, I thought it might raise some controversy but it wasn’t something I worried about. No other novelist had attempted to depict her side of the story before and frankly parts of her myth were so ludicrous I was surprised no one had challenged them before. I have had a few e-mails from readers who actually sounded offended by my portrayal of her, which to me just proves how deeply we want to believe the myths told about historical characters. In a way, it’s much easier to say, “Oh, she was crazy, the poor dear,” than look at the far more unsettling possibility that she was in fact not mad at all. Juana herself left almost nothing in her own hand, and much of what she said and did was recorded by men whose prejudices reflect the era. I always kept in mind that whatever I read about her was, in essence, an interpretation by someone who wasn’t necessarily disposed to show Juana in a kind light. While today we understand the effects of prolonged stress on the human psyche, in Juana’s era no one would have considered this as a possible cause for her behavior. When I carefully examined each of her allegedly erratic moments within the context of her circumstances at the time, her behavior became not only reasonable but often quite justifiable. I think that we need to challenge the old historical guard at moments; in the case of women in particular, history can deceive.

Juana is betrayed by so many people she should have been able to trust. How do you think that impacts how she has been viewed by future generations?

I think that we want to believe that somehow she was to blame for her misfortune. It’s very discomforting to think that she was betrayed, that very few people actually fought to save her from her fate. Future generations were indoctrinated by the historical record to believe that she was unstable and incompetent to rule, and she had to be dealt with accordingly. It was a concerted effort on the part of those who usurped her throne to obscure the truth and build up a legend of this mad queen so distraught over her losses she fell apart. Her son Charles V in particular had to justify his continuing imprisonment of her because he held her throne, and to admit that an injustice had been done to his mother would have been to admit he was not, in fact, the rightful ruler of Spain – which he wasn’t, not until her death. Juana was locked away because others wanted her power, and I think that’s one of the hardest things of all to accept. We want to pigeonhole events and people so we can better understand them, and to look at Juana’s fate as I think it occurred is not easy.

Let’s assume for a moment that tragedy did not strike Juana’s family and she did not inherit the throne when her mother died. What do you think this would have meant to Juana’s marriage? Do you believe her husband, Philip would have acted differently?

I don’t honestly know. Juana and Philip seemed quite happy in the initial years of their marriage, and it’s possible they might have remained so had she not become her mother’s heir. In my opinion, Philip was not as mature as she was, and perhaps later on they would have gone through difficulties. I certainly don’t think it was in his nature to remain faithful to her, and that no doubt would have caused friction. But their roles would have been reversed; as his father the Emperor’s heir Philip would have eventually inherited the Habsburg Empire and Juana would have been empress, his consort, mother of his children but not a ruler. In becoming queen of Spain, she in fact inherited more power than Philip and he just couldn’t accept it, not in a woman and not in his wife, whom he believed, as did most men of his time, should be subservient to him.

One thing that comes through clearly in The Last Queen is the level of greed and lust for power on the part of many of the male characters. Was the level of corruption as bad as is portrayed?

It was probably worse! The 16th century was very brutal as far as politics go; and at court power was everything. Men sacrificed their souls in pursuit of it. I think we desperately want to see the past as a glamorous, damask-laden time of castles and chivalry, but the truth is romance was a rarity, especially among royals. Women often were married off for political and familial advantage, and disposed of limited legal rights. And still, we find many examples of courageous and defiant ladies, Juana among them.

What is one thing you would like readers to learn about Juana of Castile?

That she was a woman who did the best she could under extraordinarily trying circumstances.

Could you recommend a good resource for readers wanting to know more about Juana?

Unfortunately, there are few biographies in English about her, and fewer in print. I can recommend Bethany Aram’s nonfiction study, Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe.

What projects are you working on now?

I’ve just finished a novel about Catherine de Medici, which will be published by Ballantine Books in 2010. Catherine de Medici is a very misunderstood and maligned woman in history, accused of some of the 16th century’s most heinous crimes. But during my research I uncovered a different picture of this Italian woman who became mother of the last Valois kings and one of France’s most influential queens.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I hope readers will enjoy THE LAST QUEEN as much as I enjoyed writing it. I always enjoy meeting with reader groups / book clubs and as a Random House Readers Circle edition, THE LAST QUEEN is a perfect book for discussion. If you want to schedule a chat with me, please visit my website for more information. I also always appreciate hearing from readers, who can write to me via my website at: www.cwgortner.com

Thank you, Christopher for sharing more about Juana of Castile. Best of luck with your virtual book tour.



You may read our review of The Last Queen here.

The Last Queen by C.W. Gortner--Book Review

With unmatched eloquence C.W. Gortner's The Last Queen provides a gripping, fascinating story of Juana of Castile, the last queen of Spanish blood to inherit her country's throne.

The reader first meets Juana of Castile at the age of thirteen as she recounts her parents, Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand of Spain, ending three hundred years of Moorish domination to unite the kingdoms of Spain. As she watches Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada, surrender the keys to the city, Juana finds herself wishing to console him. She would remember Boabdil one day in her future.

At the age of sixteen, Juana is sent to Flanders to wed Philip, heir to the Habsburg Empire. She surprisingly finds love; but when tragedy strikes Juana's family, she becomes the heir to the Spanish throne and is immediately thrust into a difficult battle for power against her husband that ends up involving the major monarchs of Europe and threatens to destroy their happy life. And like her mother before her, Juana of Castile vows to secure her crown and save Spain at any-and-all cost.

In the opening pages of The Last Queen, Juana says, "The conquest of Granada changed everything--for me and for Spain." Having read Gortner's portrayal of Juana's inspiring, yet tragic, story I must concur. Never before have I read such a moving, heartrending story of a woman's dedication to her country torn apart by a pack of greedy, power hungry individuals. Seeking only to do what is best for Spain, Juana must fight against Philip, his trusted advisors, other monarchs of Europe, and even people she has known for years. The reader immediately sympathizes with Juana's plight: not knowing who she can trust, being separated from loved ones, watching as her happy marriage fades away, and making the kinds of decisions that her mother had told her she would one day need to make.

The Last Queen is filled with many complex characters. Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand of Spain, who arrange marriages for their daughters to further their goals for Spain, Ferdinand's illegitimate daughter, Joanna, and Philip's sister Margaret. They join the cast of greedy, power hungry men such as Archbishop Besançon and Cisneros of Spain to create a fascinating story that will pull the reader in from the very first page. Simply put, once you begin reading, you will not be able to put this book down.

Gortner's eloquent style combined with his attention to detail and rich descriptions make this a must read for anyone interested in historical fiction, Spanish monarchs, power struggles between the monarchies of Europe, and those seeking to read a decidely different portrayal of Juana of Castile.

I highly recommend The Last Queen by C.W. Gortner and look forward to reading more from this talented author.


Title: The Last Queen - A Novel
Author: C.W. Gortner
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 978-0-345-50185-1 (paperback)
SRP: $14.00 (U.S.)

The Last Queen by C. W. Gortner--Adding Fiction to Real Life

Historical fiction is a genre I especially enjoy. It amazes me how an author can plot a fictional story around historical events or create a fictional life for unknown portions of a historical figure's life.

I asked C. W. Gortner, the author of The Last Queen to tell us about adding fiction to a historical figure's life, what the challenges were, and how he met them. Here's what he had to say:

THE LAST QUEEN is the story of Juana of Castile, the last queen of Spanish blood to inherit the throne, and of her tumultuous relationships with her parents Isabella and Ferdinand, and fight for her throne against her husband Philip of Hapsburg. Juana is a legend in Spain, known as Juana la Loca— the mad queen. Her story has been filmed twice; there have been numerous biographies in Spanish throughout the years. But outside of Spain, she’s scarcely mentioned except as the sister of Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, and as the mother of the Emperor Charles V. Yet her life was full of drama, intrigue and passion, certainly worthy of a historical novel.

I’m often asked how I became interested in Juana. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. I was raised in Spain and am half Spanish by birth. In my childhood I lived near a castle that had belonged to Juana’s parents, Isabella and Ferdinand. Clambering to its highest tower, I knew Juana had touched these same stones, perhaps marveled, as I did, at the arid beauty of the Andalusian landscape. During a school trip to Granada, where Juana is buried, I found myself entranced by the marble effigy of this woman, whose face is turned away from the figure of her husband beside her. Most school children in Spain know the tale of Juana la Loca but I immediately wanted to know more. What was she like in real life? Did she really pull her husband’s bier behind her throughout the country, venerating his corpse? Was she truly mad? What happened to her to plunge her into such despair?

It took six years to research and write THE LAST QUEEN, including several trips to Spain. I even took the same route Juana made from Burgos to her final residence in Tordesillas. I visited the Alhambra and other castles associated with her, and read every contemporary account about her that I could find, including letters from her custodians to her son Charles V, many of which are archived in Simancas. The challenge after this rather exhaustive research was to sort through it all and decide what I wanted to write about. Fortunately, it soon became clear that I wanted to focus on the woman herself— the fallible, humane, courageous and often lonely woman, whose experiences, while different from ours, certainly, are universal in the struggle to balance life and duty, betrayal and love.

The challenge in bringing Juana to life via a fictional voice was deciding how to interpret the events that she lived, through her eyes. I had to escape the verdict of the past and see her through fresh eyes. She’s been branded with the epithet of the Mad Queen, and it is generally accepted by most historians that she was insane and incapable of ruling. While I knew these facts, I also knew rulers paid chroniclers to write their particular version of history. It is how we got the distorted image of sovereigns like Richard III, whose life was distorted by historians in Tudor pay to vilify him and exalt their dynasty. I suspected much the same occurred with Juana; every contemporary account I read about her was written by a man with an agenda, either one in service to her husband or later on, by men working for Charles V. I was taken in by these accounts at first; in fact, I thought her terribly romantic and tragic, an eccentric, possibly unstable queen, who should never have been thrust into the situation she found herself in. However, as I began to shift more closely through these accounts I was stuck by the impression that no one seemed interested in questioning whether Juana might have been sane. I had this gut feeling that her “official” story, as so many histories, contained half-truths and lies, and so I set out to paint an emotional portrait of her based on facts but untainted by what others had written. If you view her actions from her viewpoint, i.e., a woman determined to defend her country and her children but without the advantages of an army at her back, much of Juana’s alleged madness unravels itself.

Fiction is a marvelous tool for exploring the past because it allows us to focus on the moments, and that is what I strived to do in fictionalizing Juana. From a fifteen-year-old princess sent into an arranged marriage with a handsome and callous foreign prince, to a young mother who wanted to be happy, to a daughter charged with her mother’s crown and a queen denied her voice, I tried to uncover the flesh and blood person underneath the various guises. While Juana lived over 500 years ago, and we cannot know the true “reality” of her existence, our emotions as human beings have not changed all that much. We all know what it is to suffer a loss, to yearn and hope; to fight for what we believe in. Through these common feelings, I painstakingly recreated the person I think Juana might have been. She is very different from the queen others have written about, but I think she is far more interesting and complex, as well.

None of us is a stereotype: we all carry contradictions in our characters. The biggest challenge of all was to allow Juana her contradictions and not fall into the trap of judging them. Did she always act wisely? No. Did she make mistakes? Absolutely. But she also showed great strength and endurance, and perspicacity in a time when women were expected to be passive vessels. She showed mettle, and that, more than anything else, made her into a threat. Had she submitted to what was demanded of her, her life would no doubt have been different. This gave me the key to unlocking her heart: it’s often what we don’t do that most reveals who we are.

I do hope readers will enjoy reading about Juana as much as I enjoyed writing about her.

THE LAST QUEEN is published in hardcover by Ballantine Books and will be available at most bookstores. Readers can visit me at http://www.cwgortner.com. My website has a tour of Juana’s 16th century world and special offers for book clubs, as well as a reader contest to win a free copy of the book and a gift. I’m happy to send a signed bookplate, too; just write to me at cwgortner@earthlink.net.

Thank you so much for taking this time with me!

About the book: Juana of Castile, the last queen of Spanish blood to inherit her country’s throne, is an enigmatic figure, shrouded in lurid myth. Was she the bereft widow of legend who was driven mad by her loss, or has history misjudged a woman who was ahead of her time? In his stunning new novel, C.W. Gortner challenges centuries of myths about Queen Juana, unraveling the mystery surrounding her to reveal a brave, determined woman we can only now begin to fully understand.

The third child of Queen Isabel and King Ferdinand of Spain, Juana is born amidst her parents’ ruthless unification of their kingdom, bearing witness to the fall of Granada and Columbus’s discoveries. At the age of sixteen, she is sent to wed Philip, the Archduke of Flanders, as part of her parents’ strategy to strengthen Spain, just as her youngest sister, Catherine of Aragon, is sent to England to become the first wife of Henry VIII.

Juana finds unexpected love and passion with her handsome young husband, the sole heir to the Hapsburg Empire. At first she is content with her children and her life in Flanders. But when tragedy strikes and she inherits the Spanish throne, Juana finds herself plunged into a struggle for power against her husband that grows to involve the major monarchs of Europe. Besieged by foes on all sides, her intelligence and pride used as weapons against her, Juana vows to win her crown and save Spain from ruin, even if it could cost her everything . . . .

With brilliant, lyrical prose, author and historian C. W. Gortner conjures Juana through her own words, taking the reader from the somber majesty of Spain to the glittering and lethal courts of Flanders, France, and Tudor England. The Last Queen brings to life all the grandeur and drama of an incomparable era; and the singular humanity of this courageous, passionate princess whose fight to claim her birthright captivated the world.

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