Dirty Girl Things
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Number One-Hundred-Five
Sex With Kings
500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge
by Eleanor Herman
Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshipped, feared, envied and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman’s SEX WITH KINGS takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe’s most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles 500 years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them.
Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex, but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with a woman of their own choice. And what women they were! From Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen years despite her frigidity, to modern-day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped no other than the glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.
The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable, catering to each of the king’s five senses. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts she was never to be exhausted, complaining or grief-stricken.
True, financial rewards for services rendered were of royal proportions—some royal mistresses earned up to $200 million in titles, pensions, jewels and palaces. Also, some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur a royal courts was a scorpion’s nest of insatiable greed, unquenchable lust, and vicious ambition.
Hundreds of beautiful women vied to unseat the royal mistress. Many would suffer the slings and arrows of negative public opinion, some met with tragic ends, and often they were pensioned off to make room for younger women. But the royal mistress often had the last laugh, as she lived well and richly off the fruits of her ‘sins.’
From the dawn of time, power has been a mighty aphrodisiac. Using diaries, personal letters and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman’s trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, this is a chapter of women’s history which has remained unwritten—until now.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Sex with the King
Chapter 2: Beyond the Bed—The Art of Pleasing a King
Chapter 3: The Mistress and the Queen—Rivals for a King’s Love
Chapter 4: Cuckold to the King – The Mistress’ Husband
Chapter 5: Unceasing Vigilance – The Price of Success
Chapter 6: Loving Profitably – The Wages of Sin
Chapter 7: Political Power between the Sheets
Chapter 8: Red Whores of Babylon—Public Opinion and the Mistress
Chapter 9: The Fruits of Sin – Royal Bastards
Chapter 10: Death of the King
Chapter 11: The End of a Brilliant Career and Beyond
Chapter 12: Monarchs, Mistresses and Marriage
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Chapter 5
Unceasing Vigilance—The Price of Success
They lay siege to the heart of a Prince as to a citadel.
- Louis XIV
Unlike the Queen, whose position was cast in stone, the mistress’s was made of far flimsier stuff. There would be no peace for her, no rest. Having obtained the great prize, the new mistress could not sit back and enjoy her rewards. She could not look around her magnificent rooms with satisfaction, or smile contentedly as she toyed with her glittering jewelry—not if it meant letting her guard down for a moment.
“Every woman was born with the ambition to become the King’s Favorite,” wrote Primi Visconti, an Italian fortune-teller who lived at Louis XIV’s Court. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women hoping to attain the position, which meant toppling the current maîtresse-en-titre, even as she had unseated her predecessor. Retaining the position usually took more effort than winning it. In fact, the position of royal mistress was like a marathon where the finish line kept moving.
To defend her turf, the maîtresse-en-titre kept an unblinking eye on pretty women attempting to gain the King’s attention. Prostitutes, chambermaids and the like had no hope of rising to the lofty position of royal mistress and therefore posed no threat. Though these minor infidelities might hurt, the maîtresse-en-titre had to pretend that they were too insignificant for her to notice. Some royal mistresses even procured lower class women for the King to distract his attention from the real menace of beautiful noblewomen.
But when a smiling countess insinuated her way into the King’s company, the savvy royal mistress would call in her troops. She had a bevy of friendly courtiers and well-paid servants ready to whisper to the King that the woman in question had a venereal disease, a greedy family, or total lack of discretion. Such whispers usually shrank the size of the King’s interest.
Most of the mistress’s work to seek and destroy her enemies had to be conducted behind the King’s back. The mistress could not afford to degenerate into a nagging jealous wife. The monarch already had one of those whom he could not get rid of. But a nagging jealous mistress could be banished at a snap of the King’s fingers.
“There is the scent of fresh meat,” wrote Madame de Sévigné to her daughter with acidic candor. When the royal eye wandered, as it did with alarming frequency, there was great speculation as to whether the object of kingly desires would prove a meaningless flirtation or if she would completely replace the existing power structure at Court. Whatever the King’s decision, there was always celebration on the winning side. In 1677 Madame de Sévigné wrote of yet another victory of 10-year veteran Madame de Montespan over fleeting rivals for the affections of Louis XIV.
“Ah, my daughter, what a triumph at Versailles!” Madame de Sévigné gushed. “What pride redoubled! What a solid reestablishment of favor!… There is evidence of added zest in the relation – all the sweeter, now, after lovers’ quarrels and reconciliations. What a reaffirmation of possession! I spent an hour in her – Madame de Montespan’s – chamber… the very air charged with joy and prosperity!”
Royal mistresses maneuvered adeptly in an environment rife with intrigue, where the fundamental human matters of life and death and love meant little compared to the crumbs of success or specks of failure at Court. To courtiers a little nod from the King in passing spelled exultant victory, the lack of a nod humiliating defeat. The Court was a world of twisted values, strange honor, and disgraces incomprehensible to later generations.
In 1671 Francois Vatel, the maître d’hôtel for the Prince de Condé, was instructed to prepare a lavish feast for Louis XIV. Before the royal visit, Vatel hadn’t slept for 12 nights running after he had been two roasts short of a full banquet for hundreds. “I have lost my honor,” he said to a friend who had noticed his disquiet. “This is a disgrace which is more than I can bear.” Then, the next morning when his order of fish did not arrive at the expected time to prepare for the King’s feast, Vatel ran himself through with his sword. The cart that took his body to the parish church was passed on the road by the cart delivering the fish.
Just as exquisite satins and fine lace hid the reeking flea-bitten bodies of courtiers, so did warm smiles and polite words conceal the razor sharp weapons brandished on the battlefield of the Court. Women, encased in the deceiving armor of beauty and charm, were ready to wreak the most ruthless vengeance against rivals, and all who strode smiling down the gilded halls had fear stabbing at their hearts.
Some courtiers, at least, were authentic about their inauthenticity. One wrote, “It is a country where the joys are visible but false, and the sorrows are hidden but real.” And a visitor to Versailles remarked, “A genuine sentiment is so rare, that when I leave Versailles, I sometimes stand still in the street to see a dog gnaw a bone.”
Black Magic
The royal mistress who went to the greatest lengths to obtain and then retain her position against rivals was Athénaïs de Montespan. Ravishingly beautiful, venomously cunning, Madame de Montespan hoped for several years to replace Louis XIV’s maîtresse-en-titre Louise de La Vallière. But the King was unmoved by Madame de Montespan’s flirtation. “She tries hard,” he told his brother, “but I’m not interested.” In 1667, hoping to break up the relationship, Madame de Montespan visited a witch for assistance.
La Voisin, as she was called, looked much older than her 35 years. She lived in a dark and crumbling house on the outskirts of Paris, surrounded by a large unkempt garden. Garbed in flowing robes embroidered with ancient symbols, La Voisin and her colleagues performed magic tricks, read palms and tarot cards, cast horoscopes, babbled in tongues and held seances for a steep fee.
Her more innocuous services included offering lotions to beautify the skin and spells to increase breast size or firm up sagging thighs. Her more sinister services included sticking pins in voodoo dolls to incapacitate and kill an enemy, performing abortions, providing poison to slip to annoying husbands, and celebrating Black Masses with dead baby’s blood while preparing her magic potions. For years the carriages of the rich and famous lined up outside her house as her patrons vied with each other for her services, offering her rich rewards. But Madame de Montespan had no need of potions to improve her breasts or thighs. She wanted the King to forsake Louise and fall in love with her.
Louise de La Vallière was an unlikely object of black magic. Extremely religious, she came from a noble but obscure family and by a stroke of good fortune, found herself at Versailles and soon after in the young King’s arms. The Abbé de Choisy reported that Louise … “had an exquisite complexion, blond hair, blue eyes, a sweet smile … an expression once tender and modest.” Though all agreed she was a lovely girl, tenderness and modesty did not fare well on the bloody battlefield of Versailles, a Court where a healthy slathering of etiquette and a splash of perfume barely disguised savage ambition and vicious greed.
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Publisher Reviews
Publishers Weekly
When kings marry foreign strangers for dynastic or financial reasons and queens are trained in piety over sensuality, royal mistresses seem an inevitability. Kings had flings and extramarital relationships through much of European history, and in her first book, Herman offers, with relish and dry wit, a delightful overview of their sexual escapades. Her subjects are international, though France dominates and England gets a strong showing. It’s a lively account, organized by topic e.g., “The Fruits of Sin-Royal Bastards.” Herman weaves into a larger pattern the tales of recurrent figures, such as Louis XIV’s mistress Ath na s de Montespan and Madame de Pompadour, who is perhaps more famous than her royal lover, Louis XV. Fashions, love potions and cheerful conversation kept kings enthralled while mistresses made themselves wealthy, husbands acquiesced or simmered, courtiers wooed the mistresses and the public admired or ridiculed. A striking number of these relationships continued despite arguments and even the lack of sex. George II even felt it necessary to keep a mistress for his reputation despite actually loving his wife. Herman ends on a modern note, recounting how Camilla Parker-Bowles famously introduced herself to Prince Charles by noting that her great-grandmother had been his great-great-grandfather’s mistress. Herman ends on a serious note, but her wit and perceptiveness will carry readers through this royally pleasurable romp. Agent, Barbara Perlmutter. (July) Forecast: As Janet Maslin has already indicated in the New York Times, this could be the high-brow sexy beach read of the summer. And though a commoner and American-born, Herman dresses regally in her author photo. BOMC main selection. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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Kirkus Reviews
An irreproachably researched and amusingly written history of European monarchs’ jezebels. In this well-rounded study of royal mistresses past and present, newcomer Herman draws on a wealth of historical documents, letters, diaries, and ambassadorial reports-a treasure trove she mines with an intelligence that can discern between fools’ gold and the genuine article. (She makes equally good use of the contemporary lampoons and verses that dot the text.) First, Herman outlines the place of the queen and the mistresses in broad context: obviously there were exceptions, but the queen was often little more than “a walking uterus with a crown on top . . . chaste almost to the point of frigidity, thereby ensuring legitimate heirs,” while the ma"tresse en titre could play a much more complex role. After all, “the king could lift the skirts off almost anyone in his realm,” so his chief mistress had to possess a variety of talents. She needed to be skilled in bed, of course, but she also had to calm, buoy, and encourage the king; she must have been serene, loyal, and unpretentious, with “a colorful personality, dry wit, kindness, and intelligence that attracted more than high cheekbones and full lips.” (It helped if she could charm ambassadors as well.) An official mistress “exerted political influence, the influence of a loved one persuading the monarch to look at a problem from a different angle, to consider different solutions.” Herman delves into the respective roles of mistresses in England, France, Belgium, Poland, Germany, and Spain, examining the impact of their milieu on how they were treated and the influence they yielded. She also explains the role of the cuckolded husband, whofrequently got a share of the goods. Today, by contrast, “the royal mistress has no political power whatsoever-as her prince has none himself."Scholarly and entertaining, written with a keen eye for the politics, but never forsaking the pleasures. (16-page color insert, not seen)Agent: S. Fischer Verlag/Krueger Verlag, Germany
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
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