The problem of women\u2019s ability to govern is one of the most heated chapters of the renaissance 'querelle des femmes'. Can the woman rule? If the validity of the loi salique seems to make the issue of secondary interest the widespread success of regency keeps the crucial chapter open. The queen does not reign but governs, subverting in fact the provision of the law. Hotman hotly contests a beloved and undisputed institution of the French tradition. An excess of iconoclasm? the symptom of a failure in the proposal for an alternative to the absolutism of the Valois? This paper aims at opening (but certainly not at closing) one of the most interesting chapters of the Hotmanian thought
