This paper, inspired by Denis Crouzet's book on Renaissance thought in Michelet, examines how Michelet views the political role of women in the French royal elite, particularly queen mothers and princesses. Stigmatised as bearers of violence and corruption, and delegitimised as historical actors, they are ultimately excluded from the heroic realm of the great movement of emancipation that Michelet considers to have been the Renaissance, in conjunction with the Reformation. This exclusion is achieved through the naturalisation of gender roles and the universalisation of masculine domination. Michelet establishes an explicit link between the domestication of women and modernity. The foundational nature of this negative representation in historiography should be explored further by women's and gender historians.