Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Read Online Free PDF

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    Diane’s connections to the court reached back to her childhood. In 1524, when she was barely five years old, her father’s life was spared at the last possible moment by Henri’s father, François I, after Jean de Poitiers had been accused of treason. Diane was born in the south of France in a region known as the Dauphiné, which borders Provence. At the age of fifteen, she was married to a man some forty years her senior, Louis de Brézé, seigneur d’Anet, who happened, appropriately enough, to be the royal Master of the Hunt. Louis was the grandson of King Charles VII—his mother, Charlotte, was the king’s oldest daughter by his maîtresse en titre Agnès Sorel. However, Charlotte’s disastrous marriage to Jacques de Brézé ended in a double murder when he came home one day to discover his wife (who, according to trial witnesses, was “moved by an inordinate lechery”) in bed with his Master of Hounds. Jacques immediately drew his sword and ran the pair of them through—one hundred times.
    By the time Henri was old enough to know Diane, she was a lady-in-waiting to the queen. She had also given Louis de Brézé, now governor and Sénéchal of Normandy, two daughters: Françoise (whowas only a year older than Henri), and Louise, who was two years younger.
    The first scandal to enmesh Henri and Diane ensued when he was just a boy, during the March 1531 joust to honor the marriage of Henri’s father to his second wife, Eléanore, a princess of Portugal. The theme was a Spanish chivalric legend, the story of twelve-year-old Amadis, which hit bone-close to the prince, who was a few weeks shy of his own twelfth birthday. The plot revolves around the two young sons of the King of Wales exiled to a strange land and enslaved by a magician. The princeling falls in love with a lady fair and a fairy grants them eternal youth.
    At a tournament, the knights traditionally lower their lances in front of the object of their admiration so that she can tie her favor—her silken scarf—to the tip, and her knight then sallies forth into the combat wearing her colors. It was naturally expected in the grand tradition of courtly love that the new queen would be judged “ la belle parmi les belles ”—the beauty among the beauties. It was Henri’s first tournament and he was cast in the role of the hero, Amadis. But instead of lowering his lance before the auburn-haired Eléanore of Portugal, or even his father’s buxom and vivacious blond mistress, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly (who believed she deserved the honor, and privately expected it), Henri, perhaps wishing to publicly acknowledge the woman who had shown him kindness on the saddest day of his life, halted before the thirty-year-old Diane de Poitiers, Grande Sénéchale of Normandy. He dipped his lance and, in a reedy voice not yet matured by adolescence, boldly offered his protection as her gallant knight if she would favor him with her green and white colors that day.
    The crowd didn’t know whether to be shocked or charmed. Anne d’Heilly was steamed and made a dramatic exit from the wooden stands, drawing even more attention to her rejection. From then on she regarded Diane de Poitiers as her enemy and spared no opportunity to attack her beautiful rival. A couple of years later, long before their romance began, the fourteen-year-old Henri energetically defended Diane from Anne d’Heilly’s slanderous allegations that “the Wrinkled One,” as the royal mistress called Diane (who was onlynine years her senior), maintained her youthful looks by practicing witchcraft—a serious charge in the sixteenth century.
    By the time Henri became a bridegroom in 1533, the tall and slender comtesse de Brézé had already been widowed for two years. Diane had added the widow’s symbol, an upended torch, to her coat of arms, with the motto Qui me alit me extingit —“He who inflames me has the power to extinguish me.” It was a family symbol, but the semierotic