Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, 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 five
hundred 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 women 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 none other than the
glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.
The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. 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. Some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise
unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur, a royal court 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 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. With
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, Sex with Kings is a chapter of women's history
that has remained unwritten -- until now.
