Welcome to criminalize a production of scandal and audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to Criminality, we explore the intersection of history and true crime. I'm Maria Aramaki. And I'm Holly Fry. And in today's episode, we're going to look at the life of Catherine de Medici, who became one of the most well-known or maybe just most notorious queens when she became queen of France in the 1980s.

And unlike some of our other poisoners who may have been new to you, you know her name. And that is because Catherine led a very big life. And there is a lot in the historical record about her, really. Right. We'll unpack that problem. Catherine may or may not have introduced the artichoke to France and she may have been at least partly responsible for starting the French wars of religion. Nothing really.

She's also famous for being the mother of three three kings. Our primary focus, though, today is to untangle whether or not the accusations that Catherine was a homicidal poisoner actually had any truth to them or even were at least plausible.

Catherine may have been a queen of France, but she was not actually born in France. She was born in Italy in Florence in April of 15 19.

Her mother was Madeleine Delatour Dover and the cousin of Francis, the first king of France.

And her father was Lorenzo de Medici, who was the ruler of Florence and had several other titles.

But at the end of the day, he was the ruler of Florence.

She gathered herself, actually was said to have exhibited the same physical traits as her father and the rest of the Medici clan. And we quote this from a Venetian envoy right around the time of Catherine's fortieth birthday, she was described as her mouth is too large and her eyes too prominent and colorless for beauty.

I dream that one day someone will write that about me. Your eyes are too colorless.

I'm dead inside and I think that's where it comes from. All right, guys, but this is not the only way that she was described. She was also described as, quote, a very distinguished looking woman with a shapely figure, a beautiful skin and exquisitely shaped hands. So this is clearly an eye of the beholder situation, right?

I mean, yeah. I mean, she like hands should the dead eyes and gorgeous hands. Well, see, I mean, like, hands do come up a little bit later. So she was she's from a famous political family. The Medicis were the ruling wealthy class of Tuscany in Italy, which was they are also known as the House of Medici. And they came to their wealth and political power long before Catherine. It was back in the 13th century.

And primarily they came to it through banking and commerce.

But if you know the media, she's probably banking is not the first thing that comes to mind. No, no, not at all. A really good interest rates, three point two. They went on to become patrons of Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo and Galileo, among other names that you would recognize today. They were considered the first family of the Italian renaissance, the Catherine herself.

Her story is because tragically so. She was orphaned when she was less than a month old.

So when she was two weeks old, her mother died. Her father's death, which was probably the result of syphilis, happened very quickly after her mother and she spent her childhood being cared for and educated in convents.

And then in fifteen, thirty three, when she was 14, Katherine's uncle, who happened to be Pope Clement, the seventh, arrange for her to marry the Duke of Orleans, calling it the greatest match in the world, in the world.

I mean, I like how he builds it like mine of wrestling matches. I think it's a world that is like like WWE or like like a monster truck.

Races like days. There's like a monster truck, a marriage thing that we can put together here. Everybody's got a little flag, you know.

So the Duke who would become her husband, he was the second son of the king of France. And he despite being the second son, he did go on to be crowned. He was crowned Henry, the second in March of fifteen forty seven.

So during her first ten years of marriage, Catherine lived with the fact that Henry the second had a Mistress DeAnda party who had been his caregiver during his childhood. That's got some baggage. We're not unpacking today. We're just going to let that stay where it is. Oh, Henry. Right. Diane had all of the influence and Henry actually wore her colors. Just sort of a way to symbolize his his affinity for her rather than his wife, Catherine's, which had to be both just personally upsetting and embarrassing.

Can you even imagine she would be at different various events that were happening?

And there's Henry in like whatever the Diane were, you know, she just had to sit there and clap. Just shove it all down inside. Catherine. It'll be fine. Henry's mistress actually kept all of the influences she had over him through childhood and into adulthood. She kept it through until Henry's death.

She was always there. And it took four Catherine years of living with infertility and some extraordinarily humiliating treatments for that infertility, often involving urine and animal parts, but for the cause of the problem that they were having. She and Henry conceiving a child was finally uncovered. What actually was revealed was that the king had a physical issue called Hippo Speediest, which makes conception really difficult.

Oh, I was going to say also, he probably had to have sex with her, like, regardless of the fact that he had a physical issue. You know, I mean, he was doing it with dance like they needed to be in the same room as well. So for 10 long years, like this is this is crazy.

So even though this was revealed to be a problem of Henry's physiology, Catherine was still considered to be the one to blame. And she was often called frigid by the people at court and the people of the country.

Yes. So society was not nice to her at this time. And so Henry had one living brother who was unmarried and childless. And I can only imagine that that would have made Katherine feel like the entire fate of that dynasty was in her hands. And so for her to have that first child was just incredibly important.

There are actually even some accounts of Katherine tearfully pleading with the king, her father in law, Francis, the first before they had ascended to the throne to please allow Henry to marry a woman who could give him an heir. But Francis the first was not interested in this. He considered their marriage to be God's will and thus not something that could be dissolved. Greatest pairing in the world.

I think he was on board with pope, right. The pope made it happen. So it's God's will. God's will. OK, Clement.

OK, so 10 years it took 10 years of their marriage and all of his treatment of fertility treatments, societal treatments. Catherine finally gives birth to her first child with Henry. And after that, they went on to have a total of 10 children of whom seven survived into adulthood. That was four boys lived and and three girls. Her final pregnancy. It was just terrible and tragic. And she was pregnant with twin girls. It wasn't going well. One of them died in the womb.

The other died shortly after delivery. And Catherine herself almost died giving birth to them.

And that was the last time that they tried to have children.

Yes. It is not really within the purview of a poison podcast to discuss it. But if you ever just in the the market for a really horrifying pregnancy story, look that one up. Oh, yeah. Wow. It's gruesome. So before we move on, we're going to take a little breather of our own. And when we return, we will talk about France's teenage kings and why they had no interest in the throne.

Welcome back to criminality. We're about to talk about how much Catherine's life changed, about the time she turned 40. So Catherine is best known for being the queen consort of Henry, the second of France. Consort in this context means that she did not come from a royal bloodline and that she became a queen through marriage.

But she also ruled as queen regent for her two sons, Francis and Charles, who came to power when they were just 14 and 10 respectively. I can't imagine any 10 year old really being super interested in ruling France.

So we're prepared. I don't want to be ruled by a 10 year old. Thank you so much. Right. I mean, that's just that's just crazy right there.

So her third son, Henry, also came to power and she remained he was an adult when he did, but she remained heavily influential in his court, too.

So if you actually add up all of the years that Katherine was ruling as a regent and was the de facto ruler of France, it totals to about 30 years, which is amazing.

Amazing. Like who gets to say they rule France for 30 years?

And a woman, Catherine de Medici, that's who Catherine gets to.

She doesn't need anybody to wear her colors. She's got her own colors.

So her life actually really begins to take shape around this time. When she's 40 years old, she's got teenagers, she's got a four year old. She has a husband who was in an accident.

So Henry was killed in a crazy sounding and certainly painful sounding jousting incident.

Yeah, this is another one. If you're squeamish, maybe like go lalala for the next ten seconds. Yes. So amazingly, after he took a lamp in the eye and into his brain. Oh, Henry. The second did not immediately die. He in fact went on to live for ten. We're imagining very long days.

So Henry did die. And when he did, his eldest son, Francis, who was 14, was proclaimed king.

So just in case you're wondering, why didn't Katherine ascend to the throne?

She was never able to rule is queen because women were excluded from succession to the throne under Salick Law in France. So then let's take a moment and talk about Francis. Francis was always considered weak. He was young and by weak, I mean physically weak.

He was never particularly interested in being the king of France or in charge of anything or royalty. I kind of imagined him as a kid who liked to sit in his room and play video games with his friends. They didn't have Xbox.

They think of how history would change if they had a ten year old kings, even though he was a 10 year old.

He was a husband. He had been married to Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, when he was just four years old. And at that time, Mary was six. So a cougar, an older woman. Yeah, it sounds off-putting and really strange to modern ears. Obviously it is. But this sort of thing happened often when it came to arrange marriages among royal families as kind of a whole, you know, political move. These marriages were meant to be alliances and in this case, an alliance between France and Scotland.

It had nothing to do with love. Right.

I mean, think of it more like a business transaction that involved her children as pawns. Not that that's much better, but it would at least let us get away from any of the romantic notions that we today hold with marriage.

Right. And history suggests that it was actually Mary who ran things instead of Frances much to Catherine's displeasure. And since he was only a teenager, it was Catherine who was technically in charge as Queen Regent and not Mary. So it's not surprising to discover there was constant friction. Can you even imagine?

So it it didn't actually go on for very long. Frances only ruled for less than a year, and he, too, died reportedly from something fairly minor, like an ear infection or, you know, I kept coming across an ear infection, something small that today we would just have drops to take care of.

He's always described as having a weak constitution. And soon after Francis died, Catherine made sure that Mary had a one way ticket back to Scotland.

Thank you for your service. We're done now. We're done. Pink slipped. So Henry and Catherine's second son at this point, Charles, was crowned King Charles, did 9th at age 10 because of his age and his lack of interest in being king. Again, I don't want to be ruled by 10 year old Katherine once again acted as Queen Regent throughout his reign, which was also fairly short, though not nearly as short as his brother. Charles died at age 24.

So 14 years.

Right, right. And I actually don't think that she ever really gave up her ruling during his reign. I don't think he ever turned on to it. I don't think I ever got interested.

I imagine when you've grown up with all of the benefits and doing none of the work, even when your age changes over to it, you're like this. This arrangement is still working for me. So. Exactly.

Feel like I'm 80 now and I've got plenty of time to go. Look at the other royal ladies while he ruled for me.

Mom, you're doing a great job. Mom, keep it up. While I'm sure Katherine was like, yep, go out. Am I got him on it.

Thank thanks. Got your homework right here doing it.

It's rumored that Katherine had a favorite child.

And I ask all of my friends if they have their child and they all lie and tell me that they don't. But I know that it's true and that you all do. When Katherine son Charles died, her son Alexander Edward was next in line to take a spin at being the king.

But he was an adult at the time. He was twenty two when he came to the throne as King Henry.

The third and one thing that we know for certain about Catherine de Medici is that she wrote extensively both to her children and also to her European political peers. And while she was not technically serving as regent for Henry, the third since he was an adult, she was hugely influential in his life and his reign in this way.

She really was.

In fact, she wrote to advise him, for example, that when contemplating going to war, which, you know, comes up a lot when you are a king, that he should remember that, quote, peace is carried on a stick because diplomacy is often attributed to US President Theodore Roosevelt, whose foreign policy was speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far.

And Tony Stark say that peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.

I think they both stole the idea from Catherine. I think so, too. So off the battlefield, though, Catherine, like her Medici relatives, was also a huge patron of the arts.

Indeed, this is the part of her I love because she was known to commissioned drawings and paintings. She had extensive architectural projects carried out and her court was known for its.

Extravagant entertainment, and she featured everything from plays, ballet and other types of dance jousting, and she also had fireworks displays.

Yes, she's considered to have introduced the concept of ballet to France and then France kind of took it over for themselves. So Italian born Katherine is also often credited with introducing a lot of food innovations to France, something that France is known for now. And really some of those seeds are with Catherine's reign. She was sometimes called in in history books. She sometimes referred to as the foodie queen, which I actually didn't know.

I thought this was particularly great about her. She is said to have introduced the fork to the French table at a time when using a fork was seen as pretentious. And she was also. I don't use that. Put it down.

I love the idea of someone like picking up a fork and being like, what are you, the pope?

We don't want to be pretentious, but she she also introduced foods to France that I think of today as being French, like quintessentially French, like the puff pastry.

Yeah, Catherine, it gets a lot of things attributed to her. It is also said that she introduced underwear to France. That's a much more complicated topic. And the truth is really kind of less exciting than that makes it seem.

In addition to her love and support of the arts, she was also really curious about science.

But remember that like science at the time is a little bit different than science in modern times.

So like many of her peers, she was known to regularly consult astrologers and ETS with an L, not astronomers, because they were able to predict or they at least they claimed they were able to predict the future by the position of the stars. And this was all considered just as important as art, literature and all other studies at the time as one does during the Renaissance.

Astrology and astronomy very tightly linked during this period. And Catherine also became an admirer of Nostradamus, who was her contemporary.

But then her story starts to take a turn and and in a strange way, OK, so let me describe this, Catherine.

It was believed among some in French society that Catherine had commissioned an amulet from Nostradamus and she wanted it made from a mixture of metal and blood that would be human and goat blood if we're going to really get into the guts of this amulet. But it may or may not have happened. Right.

And another one of her contemporaries, the philosopher Jean Boden, claimed in his 15 A-T book on witchcraft that Catherine invented the black mass invented.

Then that's that is a statement right there. Right.

This would have actually been about nine years before her death when he wrote this. But there is no record of Catherine acknowledging or commenting on this claim.

You know, one of the things that I really like about Catherine as we were learning about her for this episode was that she doesn't really seem to read the comments, you know what I mean?

Like, she she knows that they're out there. She knows that they're happening. If they're not right in her face, she just sort of seems to go on. She she doesn't put out any statements. She has no PR department that is really worried about whether or not she invented the black mask. She just kind of nods along and does everything. And I just thought that was great.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there's also an element of, fine, let them think I can do witchcraft. Absolutely right.

I mean, if you were in charge of France, wouldn't you want people to think that you were a sorceress? Although, I mean, it's actually highly unlikely she was a sorceress.

It's highly unlikely that there's any truth to either of these allegations about the black mass or the amulet.

But the mainstream press. Yeah, it's the no no press is bad press ideology of ruling. Exactly.

Exactly.

But what is worth noting is that in France at this time, Italians in general and most definitely Italian women there were very often suspected of being poisoners or at least regarded as being the murderous type, regardless of whether or not they actually were or whether they were in Italy or France to the French just pointed and said poisoner.

Right. It was it was a pretty well-established truth. And we got to use the air quotes there in French society. At the time that Catherine ordered the poisoning of probably a handful of people, she was credited with being involved with the poisonings of gin, that Billey, who was the queen of Navarre, as well as the cardinal of Lorrin Kosei, a marshal of France and the Duke Dongzhou.

It's also important to remember that during this period in history, poison wasn't really well understood. It was really hard for authorities to determine whether or not it was the cause of a person's death.

And consequently, you can imagine that there were people accused of being poisoners willynilly who weren't actually poisoners, as well as people who poisoned and totally got away with it.

Right. Remember, this is a time when astronomy and astrology are both considered equal sciences, one and the same.

So this is another good moment where we're going to laugh ourselves into a little break.

When we return, we are going to talk about Catherine's alleged epic stash of poison.

Welcome back to Criminality, where we're about to talk about the accusations that Katherine poisoned people with a pair of gloves.

The massive Chateau W.R has been home to many notable members of the French aristocracy, including seven kings and 10 queens of France, and that includes Katherine. It was known for its beautiful three storey external spiral staircase and for its gargoyle downspouts and its 500 plus rooms and and and the list goes.

I know it's it's a real dream to show, really.

There's one room in particular in this home that is famously part of Katherine's legend, because it was believed by many in her at her time that she kept her stash of poisons in a tiny apothecary style cabinetry work that was in the woodwork of one of this particular room.

And it had as many as two hundred and thirty seven individual drawers.

What's interesting about this particular piece of her story is that there is a story written by the the writer, Alexander Dumas, about a character named Queen Margot, and that is Catherine's daughter, Margaret, and she was married to a leader and a shrewd political move, as if there are any other types of, you know.

Right. So this story, which was written by Alexandra Domar pair, is based on real characters and events, but don't get it twisted. That does not mean that this historical record. Right. Not only do historians agree that Dumar took a very wide artistic license in his work, he most certainly also engaged in spreading a bit of propaganda about Catherine as well as other influential figures.

And he appears to be the original source of this wall of Poison's account, which I love the idea of poisons. Are you kidding me?

But like but he comes from this like vaguely fictional, vaguely, very untruthful account of Semih history.

Right. It's just truthful enough that people believe the rest of it. That was made up. Exactly. And as cool as a wall of poison sounds, historians believe that this was really more likely a place where Catherine kept small objects or perhaps confidential letters in all of those teeny tiny woodwork to draw.

But regardless, like the French still could not give up on the fact that they wanted Catherine to be a poisoner. And this was just an idea that they kept harping on.

Allegedly, they believed one of Catherine's favorite methods for committing homicide with poison was with poisoned gloves.

So Italy, in the 16th century centuries, you recall where she is from, was a well perfumed country and scents were used on your skin as well as on your clothing. And it may sound a little bit nutty today, but during the 16th and 17th centuries, perfumed gloves were all the rage across Europe. They were the must have accessory, and Catherine was said to have introduced them to the French court.

So this was the time when people didn't bathe as frequently as we do today. And so perfect gloves, which were called and I love the name of the perfume gloves.

Sweet gloves were used to mask, odors, and the accessory became really popular.

And it was a pretty easy murder weapon to use during the Renaissance as well.

Everybody's got everybody had gloves. Yeah. So let's get into how the French thought Catherine was using these sweet gloves to her advantage. Susan 1072 Catherine's daughter Margaret referenced earlier. Also as Margot was engaged to marry Henry of Bourbon, who would later become Henry, the fourth of France. Henry's mother was a woman named Gendell Buckley. And the story goes. The Zhun had been reluctant for her son to marry Catherine's daughter, who we also mentioned earlier.

Suspicions were raised about Catherine when John died suddenly just two months before her son's wedding, because maybe she wanted her son to marry for love now.

No, nobody wanted that at this phase of the game. Maybe she just didn't like Catherine and found her to be kind of mean. She may have just not wanted any kind of alliance with Catherine de Medici.

That's totally plausible. I read a lot about how she just really did think that Catherine never said anything nice to her was always mean. She didn't like being around her.

So naturally, rumors started to swirl. The agent's death was actually the result of poisoning.

And even though there was little love between these two women and that was well known throughout France, many people just assumed that Catherine sent a pair of sweet gloves to Jordan as a pre wedding gift in society. At the time, it actually would have been considered kind of rude if she hadn't done so naturally.

It was believed, of course, that Katherine did it. She had allegedly gifted her with a pair of perfumed and possibly poisoned leather gloves shortly before the event happened.

If if she did kill with sweet gloves, the idea was actually kind of brilliant. And if she didn't, they were the perfect weapon for the rumor mill.

But the sweet gloves tainted with poison would have changed it a little bit. These gloves are really common gift of the royal courts. They were valued for their symbolism and gifted gloves, especially gloves that came from a queen conveyed with them a certain sentiment of affection and loyalty.

So she may have been trying to be like, look, I know we don't always get along, but you're marrying and I'm trying.

I bring I love gloves. Maybe you love gloves to like sweet gloves all around. So as an example of another time when something like this was done, to give you an idea of how common and important it was, the queen of Portugal in fifteen twenty one awarded the winning Jousters of her court, each with a pair of perfumed gloves. They again perfumed but not poisoned.

It was actually it wasn't really the easiest thing in the world to to make a pair of sweet poisoned gloves. It was kind of time consuming.

They were most commonly scented with herbs, spices, flowers like jasmine, violet and orange blossom. I would love to smell like orange blossom all day long. Right.

So, like, for clarity, as you're about to hear, this is not a case where someone got a pair of gloves and then infused them somehow was sent there from the beginning, the process of making them infused. So the sense that they were chosen were mixed with animal fat or another oil and then boiled and then a pair of gloves, usually leather, but not exclusively. So was then dipped into the fragrant liquid and then left to dry. And then depending on the material of the gloves and the strength of the scent that was desired, this process could be repeated several times so that you infused the whole thing with yummy, yummy scent.

It wasn't just a casual drop of lavender oil on these clothes. It's like a process.

Right. Right. So regardless of how long it took or how popular sport gloves were, even when they were not poisoned, the French still always, just always had a great distrust for Katherine.

And June's untimely death only added fuel to that fire for them.

So part of it was the vision, who was a Hugo was considered a spiritual and political leader of the French Huguenot movement. And her death came at a time when the Catholics and Humanos were negotiating a peace treaty and that possibly ignited the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of the Huguenots just a few weeks later.

So this whole theory of death by poison gloves, it it's since been discredited by modern historians. And it's most likely that she died of tuberculosis, not of poisoned accessories.

Yet the suspicion still remains on Catherine today. If even if you do your own independent research on her, you'll you'll find that she is accused of this poison in many places with sensational, which means clicks.

Exactly. So the other thing is that there were three other rumored victims on Katherine's alleged hit list, Holly, where they poisoned. No, they were not.

Look, I'm not saying she was above poison, but we have zero evidence. Cardinal Lorem died as a result of surgery, which was a whole other dicey proposition at this point because they didn't have germ theory was not in the picture.

And you can imagine like there is absolutely no concrete record of the death of, say, a marshal of France. But there's also no reason to suspect that he was poisoned. And the Duke Dongzhou, once again, that player in a lot of historical deaths, tuberculosis. Right.

So although the intrigue of this myth continues to have legs and it's really fun to talk about somebody poisoning somebody else with a pair of leather gloves, what is certain is that Catherine, at the very least, is likely the one who popularized perfumed gloves in France, but without poisoning.

Sometimes the real story is a boring story. And sometimes she just like she made the story really popular, you guys.

But isn't it interesting how we are all I mean, it's part of human nature. And I'm not judging anybody who wants to believe the more salacious version. But we all want to believe a rumor rather than a boring reality, you know, it's more fun to think she was a witch, a sorceress, she'll kill you. She'll kill you dead.

And it's especially apparently especially fun if you are frenched in the middle.

Listen, they didn't have television yet. I know, right? Right.

The kids didn't have video games. They had to become kings instead. Like she in my life was hard. Hard.

But while it is unlikely she committed these sweet love poisonings, it is not really outside the realm of possibility that Catherine did or may have known how to dabble in poisons. That tendency did, it turns out, run in her family.

The messages, they dabbled in everything. You can't love science without a little poison in 16th century Italy.

She she had she had many relatives who dabbled in poisons. But we have a few that we pulled out.

Cosimo de Medici.

He was the Grand Duke of Tuscany and a contemporary of Catherines, which is why I thought he was interesting.

He was known to use poison as a tool for solving his political problems. His son, too, was also a widely suspected poisoner, and he likely used arsenic as his weapon of choice.

The Medici poisoners go really far back into their family history, and homicidal poisonings were fairly commonplace in France and throughout all of Europe, frankly, during this time. So much so that if you just fell ill, you wouldn't automatically think like, Oh, I'm coming down with the flu or I have a little cold. You would naturally lean right into the idea that someone had said to you what you should have thought that you had tuberculosis.

But the popularity of poisons spread through Europe like crazy at this time. So when it spread from Italy into France, France practitioners became collectively known as the French School of Poisoners. There was also an Italian school of poisoners. At this time, it wasn't really a school. It was where you went and had textbooks and things.

But like but it was a group of poisoners who helped each other, you know, work out recipes, you know, maybe shared some things with each other.

They inspired at that time as many as 30000 poisoners in France alone by fifteen seventy two, which is more than a decade before Catherine died. So it was it was in the middle of her life. Poisoning in France wasn't trivial.

It was just part of what she did was just I like thinking about the School of poisoners coursework. What's the syllabus? Right. So, I mean, we all really like this Htwe idea of Catherine using a pair of tainted sweet gloves to make a power play. But sadly, nothing in her story is really there that makes her any more power hungry or blood thirsty or poison prone than any other leader who was connected to her, as we've seen with many powerful female leaders, whether we've talked about them yet in this season, whether they're to come, whether we're not going to address them at all, it doesn't really matter.

But there's a lot of criticism that women receive based on the sexist notions in the society that they happen to be living in. And in Kathryn's case, to put on top of the fact that she was a woman, she was a foreign woman in a xenophobic culture. And so there are bound to be stories about her and not good ones.

So the French never really came around to Italian born Catherine, and they always viewed her as a manipulative foreigner with a penchant for poison and for Faulkes. And because Catherine believed in and supported the sciences in particular, she was very interested in astronomy and astrology. Again, astrology being considered a science at this point in history.

This was enough to accuse her of a cultism, the way that we have seen accordingly being accused of cultism matches up with the accusation that she had invented or at least participated in black mass.

Accusations of witchcraft have long been used to delegitimize women who had any sort of power.

Catherine died in January. Fifteen eighty nine. She was sixty nine. At this point, she died from natural causes most likely related to pleurisy. Today she is buried next to her husband in the Sundanese Basilica in Paris.

She was really influential during a period of really intense religious and civil conflict in France.

She had been had she been a man in the society that she lived in, I can imagine that she would very possibly have gone on to be remembered as one of Europe's greatest leaders during the Renaissance.

I mean, she was she had a steady hand. She was apparently in power for thirty plus years.

But, you know, the men weren't necessarily playing by the rules either, but instead she remains an object in history as the Italian woman or Madame Cell Phone or Queen Jezebel and maybe our favorite, the woman who eats little children.

What is your poison this week if you look up cocktails related to Catherine Timidities name, you will discover a whole lot of them.

There are a lot of bartenders around the world that have come up with some interesting ones. I landed on one. That's a fairly simple affair. That is, I believe, from an Australian site, Coolio's. And this is a really simple recipe. It is. I amended it a little. There's this like they go by milliliters and I'm too lazy for that. Simple. I just did roughly one part OTV. So that's also like a white brandy and then two part champagne.

And you basically pour the ottavi into a chilled champagne flute and then you pour the champagne on top.

I think that sounds like a great Catherine timidity or just a meeteetse in general. House of Medici's drink.

Well, it certainly tastes like poison. Oh, no, really. The OTV does give it this nice fruitiness, but it's just a little bidi for me. I like a very, like, sweet, you know, very juicy kind of drink usually.

So I kind of like to be kicked in the head by it, so I'll have to make it. Well, bravo.

You should be drinking earthquakes, I think. But yes. So that's the that's the Catherine de Medici. There are a million more if you're feeling adventurous and you want to have some online time mixing cocktails. But that is the one that I selected for this one. It does seem kind of perfectly appropriate for her. It does.

The ingredients seem pretty great. Did you notice that, like a lot of her inspired drinks, had a lot of champagnes or anything in particular in them, or are they tons of champagne?

None of it is like, oh, you want to sip 12 of these while you sit by a beach all day long? It's all like you want to drink one, maybe two.

Yeah, no. So that's that. So thank you for joining us. Criminality is a production of Shandley Land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio for more podcasts from Shondells and Audio. Please visit the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.