During the late 16th century, Catholics and Protestant Huguenots are fighting over political control of France, which is ruled by the neurotic, hypochondriac King Charles IX, and his mother, Catherine de' Medici, a scheming power player.

Catherine decides to make an overture of goodwill by offering up her daughter Margot in marriage to Henri de Bourbon, a prominent Huguenot and King of Navarre.

The marriage goes forward but Margot, who does not love Henri, begins a passionate affair with the soldier La Môle, also a Protestant from a well-to-do family.

Murders by poisoning follow, as court intrigues multiply and Queen Catherine's villainous plotting to place her son the Duke of Anjou on the throne threatens the lives of La Môle, Margot and Henri of Navarre.

With regard to hairstyles, the king and his brothers wear their hair long, which owes more to the fashion of the time and stars such as Kurt Cobain (who died the same year) than to historical reality.

Paresys analyzes these historical compromises as a way of limiting the strangeness between what the audience will easily recognize as familiar landmarks while keeping the integrity of the films' era through time specific pieces.

[8][9] Fifteen minutes were cut from Chéreau’s version and a deleted scene of Margot and La Môle wrapped in a red cloak was reinserted.

[10] The original full-length version was available for a limited period in the United Kingdom on VHS in a collectors' edition box set in 1995, but all further releases until the blu-ray rerelease in 2014 used the shorter 145-minute cut.

For the film's 20th anniversary, Pathé restored Patrice Chéreau’s original 162-minute cut to 4k definition, and this version was given a limited theatrical release by the Cohen Media Group in 2014.

[6] Scott Tobias of The Dissolve praised Isabelle Adjani for portraying Margot "as a figure of prismatic emotional and moral complexity, at times aggressive and seemingly reckless in pursuing her romantic and sexual interests, and at others cunning and shrewd in playing the middle of two sides locked in conflict.

"[28] Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "Chéreau’s and screenwriter Danièle Thompson’s lively adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ novel remains a model of heaving, combustible history, in which period lavishness and performance energy aren’t mutually exclusive.