The film mixes fiction and history in the years of bloody conflict known as the Wars of Religion, which not only opposed Catholics with Protestants but also involved bitter power struggles between factions of the nobility and the royal family. The culminating event is the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, during which mobs of armed Catholics hunted down and slaughtered thousands of their Protestant neighbours. Amid these dramatic events, the central story is that of the Princess, who loves a childhood friend but is forced into marriage with another man and is in turn loved by her older tutor. The film competed at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival and was released in French cinemas on 3 November 2010.