Thevet found it interesting enough to include in his cosmography.

Belleforest found it interesting enough to expand into a tragic history.

But none of them preserved her own words, in her own voice, addressing her own experience on her own terms.

What we have is a story about her, shaped by others.

This does not make the story less valuable.

It makes it an illustration of the general condition of women’s history in the pre-modern period — present in the record, but rarely in their own words, filtered through the interests and assumptions of the men who controlled the means of literary production.

The Survival Of A Name