Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. The spelling of non-English words has not been thoroughly checked.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

The original book included a running timeline (years) at the top of most pages. Those years appear here between paragraphs in the form: {year} (where “year” is a number), with consecutive duplicates omitted within each chapter. The dates in the timeline mostly are in ascending sequence, but not always.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references. The “See”-type cross-links were added by the Transcriber, and some of them may be incorrect.

Footnotes, originally at the bottom of each page, have been collected and placed at the end of this eBook, following the Index.

Page 2: Small-caps names in the text version of the genealogy chart are shown in all-caps.

Page 45: Closing quotation mark added after “no more children.”

Page 195: Closing quotation mark added after “varlet de chambre”.

Page 310: Closing quotation mark added after “girl as she was!”.

Page 340: Closing quotation mark added after “the war in Lombardy finished.”

Page 363: “Mistress, is dead? The Queen is dead!” was printed with the question mark.

Page 375: No page numbers given for “Michelle de France”.