From Madame de Pompadour to Jeanne du Barry, these women wielded power in pre-Revolutionary France as companion to the king. She often ruled both his heart and his political decisions. As a result, French royal mistresses reached heights of power unknown to most women of their day. Here are the stories of just four of the many mistresses who left their mark in history. Many European royals had extramarital affairs, but in France, mistresses enjoyed both royal favor and official recognition.
Many queens were foreign-born, and all royal marriages were carefully arranged alliances. This led to everything from distrust to downright animosity between kings and queens, and often kings sought affection and companionship outside royal marriages. What you might not know about Marie Antoinette. Because of this inferiority, they made the best choice for political advisors, Adams says.
Most French kings from Charles VI took counsel from their lovers. Sorel and the king had three daughters who survived infancy; the king recognized all three and gave them dowries when they married. A few years after her affair with Charles began, she developed a stomachache and died after great suffering. The cause of her death remained an mystery until , when researchers found traces of mercury poisoning. That mercury might have been a treatment for roundworms, but others suggest she was assassinated, by political enemies or perhaps even Charles VII himself.
Though Francis respected her, she made an even greater impression on his son, Henry. Why France was the dueling capital of Europe. In , Henry was injured in a joust , again wearing black and white. As the king slowly died of sepsis, the queen forbade his mistress from visiting his bedside. After his death, de Poitiers lived in exile. She lived a comfortable life in her grand chateau until her death, possibly from poisoning from a gold concoction designed to maintain her youth.
Intrigued and in want of a new mistress, he began meeting with her. Soon, they took the affair public: At a lavish masked ball in the Hall of Mirrors, the king allowed himself to be seen unmasked, in intimate conversation with his new, still-married mistress. The king gave her the title of Marquise of Pompadour, dispatched her husband with a position as an ambassador at a far-off embassy, and gifted her a room with a secret staircase leading to his bedchamber and a variety of chateaus and royal gifts, including the building now known as the Petit Trianon.
