according to her Memoirs. He had suspicions of a secret romance between Margot and Henry of Guise and their presumptive plan of marriage. When the royal family found this out, Catherine and Charles beat her and sent Henry of Guise away from court. This episode is perhaps at the root of a "lasting brotherly hatred" between Margaret and her brother Henry, as well as the equally lasting cooling of relations with her mother. Some historians have hinted that the duke was Margaret's lover, but nothing confirms this. In the sixteenth century, a king's daughter had to remain a virgin until her marriage for political reasons. Surely after their marriage she was not faithful to her husband, however, it is difficult to discern what is true or invented about her extramarital affairs. Many have no basis, others were simply platonic. Most of Margaret's alleged adventures are the result of pamphlets that have had to politically discredit her and her family. The most successful defamation was Le Divorce Satyrique (1607), which described Margaret as a nymphomaniac: nevertheless, these defamatory accusations do not stand up to a careful examination of the sources. Vermillion wedding By 1570, Catherine de' Medici was seeking a marriage between Margaret and Henry de Bourbon of Navarre, the leading Huguenot (French Calvinist Protestant). It was hoped this union would strengthen family ties, as the Bourbons were part of the French royal family and the closest relatives to the reigning Valois branch, and end the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. On 11 April 1572, Margaret was betrothed to Henry. Henry was a few months younger than Margaret, and their initial impressions of each other were favorable. In one of her letters to Henry, his mother Jeanne d'Albret, queen of Navarre, wrote about Margaret: "She has frankly owned to me the favourable impression which she has formed of you. With her beauty and wit, she exercises a great influence over the Queen-Mother and the King, and Messieurs her younger brothers." Jeanne d'Albret died in June 1572, two months after the engagement, and was succeeded on the throne by Henry, so that Margaret became queen of Navarre upon the day of her wedding. Margaret and Henry, both 19 years of age, were married on 18 August 1572 at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. The marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Huguenot was controversial. Pope Gregory XIII refused to