In 1778 the Percy vault in St Nicholas’ Chapel, Westminster Abbey, was under renovation not long after the interment of the Duchess of Northumberland. As the vault was expanded beneath an impressive figural monument already installed in the chapel, the Dean of Westminster proposed that an additional coffin be placed into the vault. It was the coffin of the dowager Queen Katherine de Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France and Isabeau of Bavaria. She was the widow of Henry V and also of Owen Tudor, and she was consequently the mother of Henry VI and grandmother of Henry VII. She was the progenitrix of two English kings from two dynasties. And she had lain in a broken and delapidated coffin on the floor of Westminster Abbey, her mummified corpse exposed and displayed as a tourist attraction, for 276 years. After nearly three centuries she was laid to rest in a vault meant for someone else and named for a family that was not hers. Even so, this place of interment would not be her final one; 100 years later she would be disinterred again. Dean Stanley, by permission of Queen Victoria, would supervise the final interment of Katherine de Valois in a simple vault in the upper chantry of the chapel of Henry V. The bizarre story of the fate of Katherine de Valois’ corpse beggars belief. How could it be that the body of a queen be displaced and exposed in such a way? What, if any, meaning can be inferred by such neglect and exploitation? Some answers to these questions are found by way of a manifold theory of reading concerning Katherine's exposed corpse. Her corpse, from the time of its first disinterment in 1503 to its final interment in 1887, is the ‘thing’ around which historical and literary narrative revolves. Those narratives, however, are not consistent but are revised several times over the decades before being brought to a halt by Katherine's final interment. This continual revision of the text of the corpse is due to the appearance of the character Princess Katherine in Shakespeare's play Henry V (1599), to the emergence and growth of antiquarian interest in the royal tombs of Westminster, and to the employment of Katherine's historical and literary legacy in popular literature and historical texts.