grant a dispensation for the wedding, and the different faiths of the bridal couple made for an unusual wedding service. The King of Navarre had to remain outside the cathedral during the mass, where his place was taken by Margaret's brother, the Duke of Anjou. François Eudes de Mézeray, a 17th century historian, invented the anecdote that Margaret was forced to marry the King of Navarre by her brother Charles IX, who pushed down her head as though she were nodding her assent. This was Bourbon propaganda to justify the subsequent annulment of the marriage, 27 years later, part of the myth of the "Reine Margot". Margaret did not mention this in her Memoirs, nor did any of her contemporaries. Just six days later, the Catholic faction assassinated many of the Huguenots gathered in Paris for the wedding (the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre). In her Memoirs, Margaret remembered that she saved the lives of several prominent Protestants during the massacre by keeping them in her rooms and refusing to admit the assassins. Her eye-witness account of the massacre in Memoirs is the only one from the royal family. These facts inspired Alexandre Dumas for his famous novel La Reine Margot (1845). After St. Bartholomew's Day, Catherine de' Medici proposed to Margaret that the marriage be annulled, but she replied that this was impossible because she had already had sexual relations with Henry and was "in every sense" his wife. Later she wrote in her Memoirs: "I suspected the design of separating me from my husband was in order to work some mischief against him." In the libelle Le Réveil-matin des Français, written by an anonymous Huguenot author in 1574 against the royal family, Margaret was accused for the first time of incest with her brother Henry. This libel was another part of the myth of the "Reine Margot". Malcontent conspiracy In 1573, Charles IX's fragile mental state and constitution deteriorated further, but the heir presumptive, his brother Henry, was elected king of Poland. Due to Henry's support of suppressing Protestant worship, moderate Catholic lords, called Malcontents, supported a plot to raise Charles' youngest brother, Francis of Alençon, to the throne of France instead. Alençon appeared willing to compromise in religious affairs, making him an appealing option to those tired of violence. Allied with the Protestants, the Malcontents executed several plots to seize power. Due to her inclination for her two