This hour, our guest is Nancy Goldstone, author of The Rival Queens: Catherine de’ Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal That Ignited a Kingdom (Little, Brown and Company, June 2015). These weren’t just any 16th-century queens; these women engaged in love affairs, group sex, killing sprees, and much, much more. Goldstone researched these royal families exhaustively and boiled it down to a book that reads like a transcript of the latest season of Real Housewives.

Music this hour:

• “Elle va au Japon” by Nic Bommarito, from the album A Quiet Age
• “Soldiertype (militarised)” by Ketsa, from the album What’s Without’s Within
• “Entrance to the Queen of Sheba for Two Oboes, Strings, and Continuo allegro” by George Frideric Handel, performed by Advent Chamber Orchestra