The City of Tears

France, 1572. After a decade of religious war, Minou and Piet travel to Paris for the marriage of the Catholic Marguerite de Valois to the Huguenot Henry of Navarre. The wedding is intended to secure peace, but tension around the royal court, the Guise faction and Admiral Coligny quickly turns into organised violence against Protestants.

The Joubert family is caught in the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and forced to flee towards Amsterdam. Separation, bereavement and the disappearance of a child transform a political catastrophe into a long family search. The novel combines documented royal figures and events with the experience of refugees, showing how religious policy and factional ambition enter households and continue to shape lives long after the immediate killing ends.