Catherine Cheynel is more known under the name of Mère Kingdom or of Dame Kingdom .

Born with Lyon between 1540 and 1545, girl of Claude Cheynet, it marries initially a fencing master, Jehan Esmyon, then, become widowed, wife the April 12th 1564 with Lyon, Pierre Royaume, wire of Mathieu Reaulme, a potter of tin. The Kingdom leave Lyon to flee persecutions against the Huguenot S and settle with Geneva in September 1572.

Once exiled in Geneva, Pierre becomes engraver of Monnaie and so the couple resides close to the door of the Currency. The September 15th, Pierre Royaume is allowed like inhabitant of Geneva, three weeks after the Massacre of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (August 24th 1572) which had repercussions in Lyon. The Genevese middle-class is granted to the Kingdom the January 17th 1598.

The Kingdom have 14 children of which several die in low-age.

The legend wants that Dame Kingdom made mijoter a Soupe with the Légume S in the night of the 11 to the December 12th 1602. However it is this night that the Savoyards choose to launch out to the attack of Geneva. Dame Royaume would have been seized of the pot of soup and would have launched it its window on the head of a Savoyard soldier. It is this gesture which made it famous and which gave birth, several hundred years after, with the tradition of the pot in Chocolat, furnished with vegetables in Massepain.

It is obvious that, if the Mother Kingdom is one of the only women to being remained in the legend of the Climbing, she was not only this night with launching since her window of the objects on the Savoyard attackers. Table S, Chair S and another pieces of furniture was indeed briskly to fly in the streets of the city.

If the role which she played is disputed today, it does not remain about it less than she remains the symbol of resistance and of the heroism of the Genevese during the tragedy harms which saw dying 18 as of theirs. While throwing its pot on the head of an attacker, it entered the legend while becoming the popular heroin of the Genevese, a figure of their history and the symbol of their Patriotisme.