“J’aime les natures temperées et moyennes,” avowed Montaigne in his essai on moderation, and as if he were tutored by this famous moderate, Henri III of France strove to live his life in that manner, in the middle, ambivalent, but in the end he discovered that trying to please everyone pleases no one. The middle road was not one to take during the Wars of Religion. He was a womanizer and an impotent hermaphrodite, a devout Catholic and an atheist, a debauched bon vivant and an ascetic, a unscrupulous spider and a peacemaker. He was an anointed king, a quasi-divinity, and killed at the hand of a devout Catholic. Here we will discuss King Henri III of France as a persona and the link between his sexual ambiguity and political ambivalence. I will be discussing him both as a historical political leader and as an avatar of the transgressive and situating him in terms of masculinity and gender norms in order to uncover parallels between his political and sexual persona. He is a kaleidoscope personality that inspired heretofore-unseen vitriolic attacks and embodied the contradictory nature of France during its Wars of Religion.
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