Every young woman struggles to define herself and stand out from her own family, but princesses seem to have had a particularly hard time of it. Sophie Perinot’s MEDICIS DAUGHTER is the latest coming-of-age story centered on a young royal. The woman in question here is Marguerite “Margot” de Valois, princess of France and daughter of the notorious schemer Catherine de Medici. Margot spends the course of the book seeking to define herself as anything but that, and regrettably only becomes interesting when she succeeds in doing so.

"When Margot begins to take power into her own hands and think for herself like a true heroine, no one can stand in her way."

Perinot weaves a fascinating backdrop for Margot’s tale, set against the Renaissance reign of King Charles IX of France. This 16th-century seigneur is the puppet prince of his devious mother, the dowager queen who holds the reins of power firmly in her own hands. This is an era in which Catholic and Protestant are pitted against one another in violent conflict after violent conflict, making the streets of Paris run red with blood. Against all this appears Princess Margot, a willing pawn in her mother’s plots in order to get some long-denied parental love. At times, she comes across as a somewhat plaintive and pathetic child, rather than a young woman worthy of her mother’s mantle.

But Margot’s willingness to prove a true Medici, obedient to her mother, clashes with her newfound love for court hunk Henri, duc de Guise. An ardently Catholic noble, Guise enflames Margot’s desires, and the two pretty young people conduct a complicated romance worthy of any young adult novel. Perinot cleverly plays up Guise’s religious affiliations, foreshadowing his later involvement with what we would now understand to be acts of terrorism.

Margot is manipulated by her mother and brothers for the first half of the book, making her seem like little more than an angsty teen. It’s in the second half that she finally begins to both distinguish herself from the title of “Médicis daughter” and come into her own as a political figure worthy of her mother. When Margot begins to take power into her own hands and think for herself like a true heroine, no one can stand in her way. She appears ineffectual and comes across as unlikable at first, but grows into her own…eventually.