ABSTRACT
This chapter compares the key stages in the developments affecting etiquette and architecture in the sixteenth century. The main protagonists are, in the order of their entry on stage, Francis I, Henri II, Catherine de' Medici and Henri III; the royal chateaux are the theatres. The development of court society in France during the sixteenth century is all the more noteworthy on account of the enormous damage inflicted in the previous century on the image of the sovereign by the Hundred Years War. Francis I saw himself as personifying the new age. But like Rabelais's giant Gargantua, with whom he shared many traits, not least his tall stature, he had received an old-fashioned upbringing. Under Charles IX and Henri III, the household of the 'queen consort' had some one hundred women and that of Marguerite de Valois about fifty.
