Young Queens: The gripping, intertwined story of Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots

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When she was just 18, she became the first female member of the royal family to serve in the armed forces, training as a mechanic and military truck driver.

Robert Lacey is a British historian and biographer who has made a particular study of Britain's modern constitutional monarchy. However, one of the most tragic losses the Queen, the royal family and the country had to endure was the death of Princess Diana in 1997. This striking news was echoed by a well-informed US report in May 1934 that the future Edward VIII was known to be "lukewarm towards the job for which he was born. From the time the infant Caterina disappeared into the Strozzi villa in Rome until her appearance at the gates of the Le Murate convent in 1527 when she was eight, there is hardly a trace of her in the archives. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.

Catherine, consort and regent of France, her daughter Elisabeth and daughter-in-law Mary dutifully marry and try their best (in trying circumstances) to bear the necessary children. The old monarch apparently worried that the stuttering Duke of York could collapse under the strain of royal responsibility, so little Lilibet might be thrust upon the throne as a child.

Sixteenth-century Europe: Renaissance masters paint the ceilings of Florentine churches, kings battle for control of the Continent, and the Reformation forever changes the religious organisation of society. She’d already tried out that signature once or twice, gripping the quill firmly in her fingers as the ink flowed onto the page. Catherine de’ Medici’s story begins in a convent stormed by soldiers intent on seizing the key to power in Florence – Catherine herself, a girl barely 11 years old. If they were still a child or even in their teens, a regency or minority council could be set up to govern for them.She met her final British prime minister, Liz Truss, at her Balmoral residence in Scotland in a landmark break from tradition, after it was recommended the monarch avoid travel. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. In a way, Catherine de’ Medici’s story begins not at her birth but rather on those waters, under those Mediterranean skies, the sails of her ship whipping against a late summer breeze. Elizabeth I had to cope with stabilising the realm after decades of religious and political turbulence under her father and siblings. There was joy as her family grew - here she is pictured with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, their son Archie and the duchess's mother Doria Ragland.

In 1940, with the Luftwaffe razing British cities to the ground, the king and queen changed their minds. From her earliest years, Caterina was subject to the whims of princes and the ebb and flow of Italian and European politics.

Sheds valuable light on interpersonal feelings and familial relations often missed in more traditional accounts of political power. This is an intriguing approach to 16th-century queenship, an area that is hardly short of studies, and all the more so for its choice of subjects. Her experience as a young queen navigating power, along with that of her first mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France, and Catherine’s daughter Elisabeth Valois, Queen of Spain, is the subject of Leah Redmond Chang’s book. In February of that year, Charles V’s Imperial troops pummeled French battalions in the disastrous battle at Pavia, slaughtering the flower of French nobility and sending Francis himself into Spanish captivity.