She told her story — or enough of it that the person who received it could recognize its significance and ensure it was preserved.

We do not know the exact circumstances of that telling.

We do not know who she spoke to first, or how the story made its way to the queen of Navarre.

We do not know whether Marguerite was aware that her story was being written down, or whether she would have wanted it recorded, or how she would have felt about the specific form in which it was preserved.

What we know is that her voice reached across the centuries in this attenuated form — mediated by the queen of Navarre’s literary conventions, filtered through the assumptions and interests of a Renaissance court, preserved in a collection of tales designed to entertain and instruct.