"Marguerite de Valois" is a biographical novel on the French Queen of the same name, written by historian and author Alexander Dumas. Margaret of Valois was a French princess of the Valois dynasty who became Queen of Navarre by marriage to Henry III of Navarre and then also Queen of France at her husband's 1589 accession to the French throne as Henry IV. Her marriage to Henry III had astonished every one, given the raging religious feud among the French nobility. They found it difficult to understand the union of two parties who hated each other so thoroughly as did, at this moment, the Protestant party and the Catholic party, though the reigning King of France, Charles IX, was strongly in favor.