She wasn’t a queen. She wasn’t even regent in name. But for nearly a decade, Anne de Beaujeu was the real power behind the French throne.

The daughter of Louis XI, Anne guided her younger brother Charles VIII through a turbulent minority, outmaneuvered rebellious nobles, helped bring Brittany into the French crown—and laid the groundwork for France’s centralization. Along the way, she built a vast personal empire, wrote a survival manual for her daughter, and earned a reputation as “the least foolish woman in France.”

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