Short answers, pulled from the story.
Marguerite de Navarre (the 11th of April 1492 - the 21st of December 1549) was a French princess, Duchess of Alençon and Berry, and Queen of Navarre. She was an author, patron of the arts, and protector of religious reformers who shaped the French Renaissance. Scholar Samuel Putnam called her "The First Modern Woman."
Marguerite wrote the Heptameron, a classic collection of short stories, and Miroir de l'ame pecheresse (The Mirror of the Sinful Soul), a mystical religious poem. Sorbonne theologians condemned the poem as heresy in 1531; a monk proposed she be sewn into a sack and thrown into the Seine, and students at the College de Navarre staged a play calling her a Fury from Hell.
In 1544, the eleven-year-old future Elizabeth I translated Marguerite's poem Miroir de l'ame pecheresse into English prose, presenting the manuscript in her own hand to her stepmother Katherine Parr. Scholars conjecture the original manuscript had passed from Marguerite to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, who had served at the French court.
Francis I was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and held prisoner in Spain by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. Marguerite rode horseback through wintry woods, twelve hours a day for many days, to meet a safe-conduct deadline during negotiations for his release, writing diplomatic letters at night.
Marguerite corresponded with Marie Dentiere, a Walloon Protestant reformer in Geneva, after the expulsion of John Calvin and William Farel from Geneva in 1538. Marguerite was godmother to Dentiere's daughter. Dentiere responded in 1539 with the Epistre tres utile, urging Marguerite to promote scriptural literacy among women and to expel Catholic clergy from France.
Marguerite's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, became Queen regnant of Navarre from 1555 to 1572 and the spiritual and political leader of the French Huguenot movement. Jeanne's son, Henry of Navarre, became Henry IV of France, the first Bourbon king.