Château Love Triangle
Featuring juicy royal gossip, the Olympic torch and Cher
Hello class. Welcome to The Field Trip! Every Friday, we tell the stories of places off the beaten track, digest the week’s top international headlines, and I report from the front lines as an American mom in Italy. Permission slips are signed. Sack lunches packed. We saved you a window seat.
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A FIELD TRIP UPDATE
Last week, I sent an email about our new, exciting Field Trip referral program! Field trips are only fun when our friends are there. If you love tolerate the newsletter, share it with your friends with the link below and get:
A big fat dopamine hit for me, and for you!
Among other things
Right now, my sister Madeline is in the lead with about 678 referrals, followed closely by KayLee with about seven. Love you guys to the moon and back 🫶🏽
Table of Contents
The Field Trip: Our first newsletter for love month! We’re talking about France’s “Ladies Castle” and the seven women who lived there. Eight if you count Cher.
News from a Broad: Some royal family GOSSIP (finallyyyyy) and what I think we should do with the Epstein files
Notes from the Field: What we saw out our window this week
Show and Tell: You may know her as Miss Bird Boy. I know her as Baby Sister Maddy Mushu Pork. This week, she tells us the story of the worst day of her life.
Château de Chenonceau
Other than the iconic ballroom/bridge over the river, this castle itself isn’t especially grand. However, its “modest” halls are full of drama, scandal, pettiness, heartbreak and rebellion. It earns its title of the “Ladie’s Castle.”
I am planning to do a deep dive into the Seven Women of Chenonceau for a Senior Trip (share the Field Trip with three friends, and you’ll get access!!!) because it’s really fantastic. In a time when men ruled every aspect of their world, this significant building was a haven for generations of powerful, influential women.
Most castles have moats. Château de Chenonceau (shen-on-so) has the entire Cher River, because when you’re protecting France’s most powerful women, a regular moat isn’t enough. They call it the “Ladies Castle” because of the seven+ women who, over four centuries, built, expanded, protected, and restored the chateau into what we see today.
I try to focus on “un-touristy” spots where local school kids would actually go on a field trip. So I was a little surprised to see that this is the second-most-visited castle in France. But I don’t care! This is my newsletter, and I make the rules! We’re braving the crowds and going anyway.
The white-stoned fairytale castle doesn’t just sit by the river; it straddles the river. Its iconic gallery/bridge spans the Cher on five stone arches, creating a 60-meter ballroom suspended over the water. Why did they build it like that? It starts with a royal love triangle.
In 1547, French King Henri II gifted the castle to his mistress Diane de Poitiers, who was 20 years his senior. French leaders looove an age gap.
And Diane loved this castle. She added the famous bridge to access royal hunting grounds and designed intricate gardens that not-so-subtly spelled out her initials. When Henri died in a jousting accident in 1559, his widow, Catherine de’ Medici, took the castle back from her rival. (Note: For the record, she didn’t kick Diane out, but instead traded the castle for a slightly less-cool one, which I thought was petty but generous).
Catherine expanded the castle, added the ballroom over the bridge, and threw legendary parties. She added her own gardens, making sure they were bigger and better than Diane’s. Pettiness is timeless.
After Catherine’s death, the chateau was handed down through various gentlewomanly hands, such as:
Louise de Lorraine: Catherine’s daughter-in-law, who was at the castle when she heard about her husband’s assassination. She spent the next 11 years haunting the halls in mourning clothes, covering the walls with black tapestries stitched with skulls and crossbones.
Gabrielle d’Estrées: mistress to Henry IV
Louise Dupin: who hosted Enlightenment salons with Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. She saved the castle during the French Revolution by convincing revolutionaries that destroying the only bridge for miles would be super inconvenient for everyone. She was also kind to peasants, a revolutionary concept.
Marguerite Pelouze: a wealthy divorcee who bankrupted herself restoring the chateau.
The château’s finest hour came during World War I, when the gallery became a military hospital, and again in WWII, when it straddled the demarcation line - one side was Nazi-occupied, the other side was free. The Resistance used it to smuggle people and information across the river, right under Nazi noses.
The current owners, the Menier chocolate family, have owned it for over a century. It is currently open to the public and has one of the best audio tours I have ever experienced. In a country completely jampacked with castles, this one is special - not necessarily for its physical space, but for the people who filled it.
News from A Broad
👑 The Scandis are SO Scandy!: Drama with the royal family…but not the one you’re thinking of. Marius Borg Høiby, 29, son of the crown princess Mette-Marit of Norway, is on trial for 38 counts of rape, abuse and drug-related charges. He is not in the royal family because he was born before his mother married the heir apparent, Prince Haakon, and none of the royal family will be present at the trial. This comes days after Mette-Marit was found mixed up in the Epstein files. (more)
Another Norwegian princess also recently married a shaman charlatan crazy person, and his Wikipedia page is a wild wild ride.
✈️ You do NOT touch Abraham Lincoln (not again, at least…): The U.S. military shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, saying it acted in self-defense to protect the ship and its crew, with no U.S. casualties or damage reported. This occured whle the two countries were talking about maybe getting together to talk about making a nuclear deal, and comes in the midst of massive protests in Iran. (more)
🥶 A real cold move: Russia attacked energy centers in Ukraine this week, leaving thousands without heat, with night temperatures dropping as low as -4 F (253.15 Kelvin). (more)
🤔 The capital of Libya is Tripoli: Investigators are looking into the murder of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Libya’s long-time leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi. (more)
Unrelated, but check out Libya on a map. If Italy is a boot, Libya looks like the mattress the boot jumped off of.
🤢 Who ISN’T in the Epstein files: Ugh, I HATE talking about this guy. But the recent release of around 3 million files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case has a lot of rich and famous people scrambling for their PR managers. It’s interesting to see the different responses from the secretly disgusting people from every corner of the world. Dishonorable mentions include:
The Crown Princess of Norway, as we talked about earlier
Head of the LA Olympics committee, Casey Wasserman
Current US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick
Big-deal British politician and diplomat, Peter Mandelson
The guy who made the new Melania movie
No one is asking for my opinion, but if I were in charge, I would exile anyone caught doing or saying nasty things in the files back to the infamous island and let nature take its course. Would it majorly disrupt the world order? Probably. But we need justice to be served and move on. (Please no more)
Notes from the Field
Sometimes life feels normal and boring. And sometimes the Olympic torch passes in front of your house on a random Wednesday evening.
Despite the rain and the Italian germ theory that being wet and cold makes you spontaneously sick, the street was lined with umbrella-wielding locals waiting for the Olympic entourage to weave its way through Monza. This is its last stop before the Opening Ceremony, and we got to witness the famous stick-on-fire from the comfort of our living room window. Let the winter Olympics begin!
Show and Tell
The prompt is simple. Where is a real life Field Trip that has stayed with you (and why)?
Name: Madeline C.-O.
Field Trip: Mont Saint-Michel, France
I’ve never considered myself a city girl, and this excursion absolutely sealed the deal for me. In January 2025, my boyfriend Davis and I drove through Normandy, France where (spoiler) he became my fiancé Davis. Armed with a gas station croissant and orange Fanta, we left Paris at 4am to make it to Mont St. Michel for the first shuttle. It was the dreamiest, spookiest, foggiest drive I’ve ever done. The little towns, rolling hills, and occasional cow peeking out of the fog, I hardly have words to describe it. So romantic.
The monastery at Mt. St Michel was randomly closed that morning (never did get that refund), so we ended up jumping a fence and running through someone’s yard for the actual point of the trip - a photo op. I also got a ring on my finger and the most magical engagement I could have dreamed of. Three cheers for Davis please.
Once I stopped crying, we got in the car and drove another 3 hours back across Normandy to the cliffs of Etretat to barely catch the sunset. Davis and I were DYING to stop at any and all of those tiny towns we caught a glimpse of through the fog that morning, so we will be making another trip back and spend the whole time exploring the countryside. The cliffs were so stunning, my only regret is that we only allotted ourselves an hour to visit; I could’ve sat on that beach all day long.
We were in the car for 10 hours that day, nonetheless it was the most beautiful, romantic, is-this-really-my-life of days. I will be back Normandy! Preferably when I have longer than 2 hours to run through your hills and eat your crepes.
Until next trip,
Corinne
*all typos are on purpose
that verrett guy is a creep what in the world??? (claims to be a reincarnated pharaoh among other things for those of you considering reading through his wikipedia)
oh baby sister maddy mushu pork!! she seems so nice!