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Marguerite de Valois’s Self Portrait in her MémoiresQueen Marguerite wrote her Mémoires in about 1600 and provided a founding self-portrait set in historical authenticity. Far from Brantôme’s rhetoric and his conventional praise, she intended to tell the truth about her moral being and historical person through a new kind of writing, one that was stylistically simple and elegant, and appropriate for a cultured (male and female) public in the humanist era. Her self-portrait relates the notable facts of her political life, with attention paid to their intimate consequences; the narrative is chronological, yet rhythmically fragmented, thus allowing for an unobtrusive use of different literary genres and moods, borrowed from fiction (from novel to drama), travel diaries, and history. Marguerite appears to be a cultured humanist princess, wishing to appeal to society with a tale that is devoid of pedantry but immersed in literary memory, diffusing an image of her as a heroic and sensitive individual, thus continuing, in modern form, an ancient and renaissant tradition. The literary practice opened the way to a rich tradition of women’s memoirs that are societal, “sensitive,” and political all at the same time (Mlle de Montpensier, Hortense and Marie Mancini, Catherine of Russia, etc.).