A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 27

This is the sixth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: The “Flying Squadron” of Catherine de Medici’s Sex Spies.

This story emerged from research I was doing on — of all things — artichokes. While going down the long tail of the Internet, I stumbled across this item about Catherine de Medici:

Catherine scandalized French society with her addiction to artichokes, which had the reputation of being an aphrodisiac. She also encouraged her entourage to eat artichokes, particularly the L’ escadron volant (the flying squadron), a bevy of beautiful girls who were coached as “spies of the couch”, bedding down with the influential nobles. The L’ escadron volant traveled everywhere with Catherine, a sort of whorehouse on wheels. By the end Catherine’s reign, artichokes had become one of the most popular French vegetables.

That struck me as interesting, so I switched from artichokes to this “flying squadron”. I found this

Until recently, the rule of Catherine de Medici (1519–89), Queen Mother and regent of France, has been depicted as dependent on her inherently `Italian’ and ‘female’ skills of manipulation and deception, culminating in the legend of the ‘wicked Italian queen’. Xenophobic stereotypes of corruption and sexual deviance were extended to describe her domineer-ing exploitation of her ladies-in-waiting, known colloquially by later historians as her escadron volant (flying squadron). She allegedly ordered these women to seduce and spy on influential noblemen, and their collective reputation has been used to discredit Catherine’s abilities as both a negotiator and a leader. For example, a 1584 satirical verse described her entourage with the lines, “Catin, you are fortunate/To have a stable of whores “? The metaphor of Catherine’s entourage as a stable (haras translates directly as ‘stud farm’) of women from whom she could choose the most suitable to seduce unsuspecting men was developed and exagger-ated until by the late twentieth century a literary scholar could describe the court thus:

Perhaps we need to recognize just how hypnotic this team of sexual Machiavels seemed to contemporaries. They were supposedly quite without prudery or inhibitions: after crises like the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre they distracted Catherine by dancing before her naked, and to celebrate the royal victory at La Charite, they served a sumptuous meal naked but for a wisp of material around their hips, while the king himself reports that the ‘Mattresses d’h8tel’ for the dinner, the irresistible madame de Sauves and the duchesse de Retz, wore nothing at all.

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The flying squadron is not a myth. The queen did not disdain the collaboration of the ladies of her household in order to accelerate or complete political negotiations.

Myth or not, my imagination went to a female version of The Three Musketeers. Or a Medieval “Charlie’s Angels” with Catherine de Medici playing the part of Charlie.

In an era of all sorts of political intrigue, we are talking about a bevy of women who, while certainly willing to use their physical charms to disarm targets and opponents, are skilled in the Art of War as well as the Art of Love. Fencing. Gunpowder. Knives. Poisons. Indeed, Catherine could have assembled a phalanx of international instructors to teach the members of her Flying Squadron fighting skills from around the world.

Pick a plot with geopolitical implications. Set the women into motion. A sexy action adventure yarn with plenty of fisticuffs, espionage, and explosions along with a healthy dose of action-humor.

There you go: My twenty seventh story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

What would you do with it?

Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

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