Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France

by Kathleen Wellman

This book tells the history of the French Renaissance through the lives of its most prominent queens and mistresses, beginning with Agnès Sorel, the first officially recognized royal mistress in 1444; including Anne of Brittany, Catherine de Medici, Anne Pisseleu, Diane de Poitiers, and Marguerite de Valois, among others; and concluding with Gabrielle d’Estrées, Henry IV’s powerful mistress during the 1590s. Wellman shows that women in both roles—queen and mistress—enjoyed great influence over French politics and culture, not to mention over the powerful men with whom they were involved. The book also addresses the enduring mythology surrounding these women, relating captivating tales that uncover much about Renaissance modes of argument, symbols, and values, as well as our own modern preoccupations.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, France, Biography, Renaissance, Royalty, Historical

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some chapters were better than others, but overall one could expect much more neutrality from such introductory books that cover a lot of material. The author made several mistakes that a person knowing the context would never have made. If she knew the context, she would have never called Sebastian Zamet “the Swiss finance minister” (he was in fact a financier from Florence).
But this lack of deep knowledge doesn’t prevent the author from sharing her very subjective opinions on queens, kings and their mistresses. Probably reading J.Boucher’s books made her overly sympathetic to Henri III. And she seems to despise Henri IV, allowing herself some questionable and dated remarks about this king. If she read recent scholarship, she would know that Henri IV didn’t take Chartres or Noyon because of his feelings for Gabrielle (see, for example, Sutherland’s works on the subject).

I can continue giving examples of the author’s partiality and selective approach to the source material, but I think that’s enough not to consider this book credible or neutral.
To end up by citing something positive from the book, I agree with the author that Henri IV and Gabriells ended up having "a relationship that seemed based on mutual affection, respect, and trust".

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Kathleen Wellman's "Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France" truly easy to read. I've been getting into nonfiction slowly. I've read some books in the genre that are dull, boring, hard to get through. Wellman's text is decidedly not one of those books.

What makes Wellman's text so readable is her clever organization. Wellman writes about 10+ women, and she allots each of those women a single chapter. This makes each chapter manageable for the reader because no chapter feels too long, all the while allowing Wellman to go into great detail for each subject. Only chapter 3 focuses on multiple main characters at once (Louise of Savoy, Claude of France, Margaret of Angouleme, and Eleanor of Austria), but Wellman breaks that chapter down into subsections focused on one woman at a time. Chapter 3 is thus as easy to get through as the shorter chapters.

This book served as my introduction to the French Renaissance. Always interested in England at this time, I realized I knew very little about its neighbor beyond some keywords like the Wars of Religion, Diane de Poitiers, and Catherine de Medici. Wellman's book allowed me to learn not only about queenship in Renaissance France and the evolution of the official mistress, but the history of the French Renaissance as a whole. This is due in part to Wellman's decision to organize her book chronologically, allowing the reader to easily move through French history as the chapters progress.

Some of the questions I took away from this book were "Who gets remembered?" and "Why do certain figures get remembered, and others forgotten?" I asked these questions mostly as a result of reading Chapter 3, in which Wellman explored the extraordinary career of Louise of Savoy. I'd barely even heard of her before I read that chapter. Though Louise co-ruled France with her son for 15 years, she's not a historical figure who occupies a place in our cultural memory. Part of this is because of where I live, I believe. As part of the Anglosphere, French royals aren't on the mind in general. But still, Francis I is a French king I'm fairly certain some could name where I'm from. Nevertheless, we know nothing about the women in his life, even as many can name all 6 wives of his contemporary Henry VIII.

In the last two chapters, Wellman pointed out that by the end of the 16th century it was understood that French noblewomen could and did have extramarital affairs. I thought that was just fascinating. Wellman stays cautious, noting that plenty of the rumors (especially regarding the highest ranked women) were probably intended to be defamatory and to have political repercussions. But nevertheless, Wellman argues that there were in fact French noblewomen who carried on extramarital affairs, openly enough that we have record of it. Wellman thus posits that French noble culture at that time had changed somewhat. That left me wondering: Was this trickledown from the all the kings and their open affairs with many mistresses? Had elite masculinity and femininity both changed as court culture did? Was it now considered masculine to have affairs, but little to no relationship with one's wife? And so had it become feminine for noblewomen to seem and to actually be more sexual?

I also enjoyed Wellman's shorter essays at the end of each chapter analyzing the perceptions of each woman through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. One of my favorite aspects of history to study is how events and people get remembered in different times. For each woman, Wellman goes through not only the different time periods in which these women were written about, but also different angles historians have taken to judge them (such as religious, republican, monarchist, feminist, etc.). This allowed me a glimpse into later French history and French cultural memory as well.

The only reason I took off a star is because Wellman's language at times sounds as though she's supporting the misogynistic narratives she's examining. I can technically quote Wellman as writing "Their evil and petty motives were unworthy of France's heroes and national character. They exerted a destructive force by acting in personal and familial interests instead of the public or national good." (369). It's only in the next sentence Wellman reminds the reader she's analyzing 19th century interpretations: "Strong enough to stymie kings and emasculate them royal women weakened the nation, according to these historians" (396). In context, Wellman is probably assuming her reader implicitly understands she's just providing the 19th century argument. I personally hope Wellman is right about her readers' interpretive abilities. However, I received harsh criticism on my senior thesis for writing like that, so it stuck out to me.

I also wished Wellman had spoken even briefly about Catherine de Medici's three daughters-in-law. She mentioned that Mary Stuart's relationship to the Guises caused problems for Catherine, but is there more to explore there? I'd love to know if Mary Stuart had any impact on French queenship, though I know her brief tenure probably limited her seriously. But what about the longer-standing queens Elizabeth of Austria (reigned 4 years) or Louise of Lorraine (reigned 14 years)? Neither queen is so much as included in the index.

Over all, I really enjoyed this book. I greatly appreciated how Wellman was careful to present each woman on her own terms, without denigrating the mistress to lift up the queen or vice versa. The only time Wellman seemed to drop the ball was at the very end with regards to Henriette d'Entragues ("about whom little good can be said", apparently by Wellman herself, p. 352). But even this could just be another instance in which Wellman was trying to provide a 17th century interpretation of Henriette's character, but chose ineffective language to do so. Over all, I learned a great deal about many different historical women and men; about queenship, kingship, and being a royal mistress; and French history following the conclusion of the Hundred Year's War right until the rise of absolutism. I think this book is a great introduction to the dramatic and tumultuous time period that is Renaissance France.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I had vaguely heard of Agnes Sorel, and knew of both Marguerite de Valois and Catherine de Medici largely through fictionalised versions (fabulous French movie Queen Margot, anyone?). What I hadn't realised was the centrality of these Queens and Mistresses to what we would now consider the French Renaissance. While the men around them fought, dick-swung, betrayed each other and showed off to other Kings, the women (through accidents of birth, marriage or sexual attractiveness) got educated and developed the education, art and music of others: Marguerite d'Angouleme writing the first novel by a woman, Marguerite de Valois writing the first autobiography and inspiring Montaigne, Diane de Poitiers single-handedly creating the artistic movement round the goddess Diana.

And while Wellman is scrupulously fair about these women (none of them were saints, whatever image they liked to present) and weighs the historical record, the Kings of France come across as utterly spherical bastards (whichever way you look at them, they are bastards): manipulative, slutty, violent, backstabbing, paedophilic psychopaths, so unlike any of our modern rulers.

The only reason I'm taking a star off this book is the way it's constructed: Wellman seems to be aware that many people will only read one chapter of this book, so the same story gets repeated in (sometimes three) different chapters, to illustrate something about the history of the woman we are looking at, which means that if, like me, you read the book in one go, you keep thinking: "Haven't I read this before?"

But this is a totally fascinating book, which I can recommend.

[Dominique · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was going on the DNF list at first. It's written strangely in my opinion. There are unnecessarily difficult words but also the use of "many pregnancies" 3 times in one page. Or "feudal" used multiple times in one paragraph. Maybe other readers use peregrinations, hegemony, promulgating or vituperative in their daily lives but I had to look them up. It ended up being interesting enough to finish but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

[Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great introduction to powerful women in Renaissance France, though as an academic writer, Wellman sometimes let's her analytical framework get in the way of the story telling.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a great, well-researched study! I found the argument that queens and mistresses acted as lightning rods to deflect criticism from kings especially persuasive.

[Marie]

read for graduate school

[Carina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful information and provides excellent context as to how each woman's influence bled into the next one's. Unfortunately, it was the dryest thing I've read in a long while.

[Siobhán · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book and learned so much from it but ultimately once I put it down and my special interests moved on, I don't know that I'll return to it.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an exciting book I'll be the first to admit. Some of the material was dull and the intro went on forever ... but it was good. A lot of these women are not very well known and I only knew about because of Carlos Rey Emperador and Isabel tve. I was worried about overlap between some of the characters but the author was pretty good at keeping the women separate and not rehashing information.

[Lynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a weakness for historical gossip. While this added little to my knowledge, I enjoyed it.

[Gretchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too much repetition for my taste.

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting discussion!