Catherine de' Medici has been depicted as The Black Queen in a number of different period dramas, with each take tending to be more extreme in portraying her life and choices.
The show, with its light and humorous manner, forces people to view the dark, mysterious, seldom-praised queen from a different angle. As the second season of the acclaimed show airs and Catherine is once again going to vast lengths to maintain her position in court, we wonder about the real history behind this powerful queen.
The Serpent Queen is essentially a dramatization of the much-happening and enigmatic life of Catherine Liv Hill. Some aspects of the show, however, are not at all exaggerated and adhere as closely to the unanimously agreed-upon facts as possible.
The birth and upbringing of the Queen, for example, was indeed very traumatic, with both her parents dying and leaving her orphaned within a month of her birth , as detailed by Smithsonian Magazine. Born to a French noblewoman and a rich aristocratic family, Catherine, the moment she was orphaned, became susceptible to life-threatening situations. She spent the early years of her childhood with various relatives, possibly never finding the kind of love and emotional attachment a child needs growing up.
In , the Medici orphan was taken hostage and forced into a convent when rebels rose against her famed family. In October , when Florence was besieged by the Medici loyalists, the rebels used the year-old Medici child as their best bait. According to Frieda's book and Smithsonian Magazine, the rebels considered leaving the child in a military brothel, where she would likely be turned into a prostitute, or killing her in front of the entire city, with not a single piece of cloth on her body.
