Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Read online

  PRAISE FOR LESLIE CARROLL’S NONFICTION

  Royal Pains

  “For those who enjoy reading about the scandals of the noble class and want to learn more about the darker side of various royal families, this is a thoroughly enjoyable, quick read.”

  —Booklist

  “If you love history and you love scandal, give Royal Pains a go. Between shaking your head at some of the antics and feeling glad Ivan the Terrible never picked you to be his Czarina of the Week, you’ll learn the odd bit of history. Or you could watch the non–Moogles and Googles shows on the History Channel, but those are few and far between. Stick with Leslie Carroll; her bank account and history majors everywhere will thank you.”

  —Book Slut Gwen

  “This installment in Leslie Carroll’s ‘Royal’ series is as thought-provoking as the first two.”

  —Historical-Fiction.com

  Notorious Royal Marriages

  “For those who tackled Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, and can’t get enough of the scandal surrounding Henry VIII’s wives, [Notorious Royal Marriages is] the perfect companion book.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Carroll writes with verve and wit about the passionate—and occasionally perilous—events that occur when royals wed…. Carroll’s fascinating account of nine centuries of royal marriages is an irresistible combination of People magazine and the History Channel.”

  —Chicago Tribune (5 stars)

  “Sex! Intrigue! Scandal! Carroll’s newest offering chronicles well-known matrimonial pairings among European royals during the last nine hundred years. With a breezy and lively narrative, she gives the dirt on a parade of often mismatched couples.”

  —The Historical Novels Review

  “Carroll is a sharp and amusing writer…. You’ll be entertained like a tabloid would entertain you, but you’ll also learn as much as you would in a European studies course in college…a perfect marriage of a book!”

  —Examiner.com (Pittsburgh)

  Royal Affairs

  “Carroll…has a true talent for weaving fascinating narratives. Her entertaining writing style makes this one book you do not want to put down. Entertaining, impeccably researched, and extremely well written, it will appeal to all readers with an interest in British history.”

  —Library Journal

  “There are lots [of] royal romps cataloged in this entertaining, enormously readable book.”

  —Las Vegas Review-Journal

  “Carroll offers…insight behind the closed doors of the last thousand years of England’s busiest bed-hopping and head-lopping kings and queens.”

  —Book Fetish

  “This book is a historical work, but because of Leslie Carroll’s strong writing and her own personal voice, it comes off like a delicious novel.”

  —Examiner.com (Pittsburgh)

  ALSO BY LESLIE CARROLL

  Royal Pains

  Notorious Royal Marriages

  Royal Affairs

  Royal

  ROMANCES

  TITILLATING TALES

  OF PASSION AND POWER

  IN THE PALACES OF EUROPE

  LESLIE CARROLL

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, November 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Leslie Carroll, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Carroll, Leslie, 1959–

  Royal romances: titillating tales of passion and power in the palaces of Europe/Leslie Carroll.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-60712-1

  1. Europe—Kings and rulers—Paramours. 2. Queens—Europe—Paramours.

  3. Favorites, Royal—Europe. I. Title.

  D107.C294 2012

  940.09’9—dc23 2012007790

  Set in Sabon

  Designed by Patrice Sheridan

  Printed in the United States of America

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  For my late grandparents

  Carroll and Norma Carroll,

  whose unflagging love and support inspired me to take their name professionally, and who introduced me to the glamour and magic of Europe’s royal courts;

  and to Lazarus and (the wisest woman in the world) Sylvia Goldsmith, whose English roots continue to inspire me to rediscover my own, even as I wonder whether I may be distantly related to the Duchess of Cambridge.

  I grew up with the best of role models: my grandparents’ lengthy and happy marriages taught me to believe in romance and the concept of an enduring love.

  Contents

  Foreword

  CHARLES VII

  1403–1461

  Ruled France: 1422–1461

  AND

  Agnès Sorel (1409–1449)

  HENRI II

  1519–1559

  Ruled France: 1547–1559

  AND

  Diane de Poitiers (1499–1566)

  LOUIS XIV

  1638–1715

  Ruled France: 1643–1715

  AND

  Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, marquise de Montespan (1641–1707)

  AND

  Françoise d’Aubigné, Madame Scarron, marquise de Maintenon (1635–1719)

  SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF CELLE

  1666–1726

  AND

  Philipp Christoph von Königsmark (1665–1694)

  LOUIS XV

  1710–1774

  Rul
ed France: 1715–1774

  AND

  Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour (1721–1764)

  AND

  Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry (1743–1793)

  CATHERINE THE GREAT (CATHERINE II)

  1729–1796

  Ruled Russia: 1762–1796

  AND

  Grigory Potemkin (1739–1791)

  CAROLINE MATHILDE

  1751–1775

  Queen of Denmark: 1766–1772

  AND

  Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–1772)

  MARIE ANTOINETTE

  1755–1793

  Queen of France: 1774–1792

  AND

  Count Axel von Fersen (1755–1810)

  NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

  1769–1821

  As Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, from

  1804–1814

  and for 3 months in the spring of 1815

  AND

  Marie Walewska (1786–1817)

  LUDWIG I OF BAVARIA

  1786–1868

  Ruled: 1825–1848

  AND

  Lola Montez (1821–1861)

  GEORGE VI

  1895–1952

  Ruled England: 1936–1952

  AND

  Elizabeth Bowes Lyon (1900–2002)

  PRINCE WILLIAM OF WALES

  b. 1982

  AND

  Catherine Elizabeth Middleton (b. 1982)

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Bibliography

  Author Bio

  “…my heart is loath to remain even one hour without love.”

  —Catherine II of Russia (Catherine the Great),

  February 21, 1774

  ROYAL ROMANCES

  Foreword

  ro·mance rō-′man(t)s; rə ′rōֽ

  n.

  1.

  a. A love affair.

  b. Ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people; love.

  c. A strong, sometimes short-lived attachment, fascination, or enthusiasm for something.

  2. A mysterious or fascinating quality or appeal, as of something adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful.

  ro·manced, ro·mancing, ro·manc·es

  v. tr. Informal

  1. To make love to; court or woo.

  2. To have a love affair with.

  In fairy tales, royal romances are those happily-ever-afters that involve an unmarried pair of lovers, big dresses, shimmering jewels, and nights of untold ecstasy, although you won’t find that last bit in any of the Disney adaptations.

  Real-life royal romances, however, are somewhat different: same gowns and jewels, same nights of fevered passion—but rarely enjoyed with one’s own spouse. Indeed, many of the royals featured in the fourteen romances profiled in this volume fell in love with someone else after they were already married to their consort or to the reigning monarch. In this book, there are a couple of exceptions: Louis XV of France and Russia’s Catherine the Great were widowed at the time of their respective liaisons with the comtesse du Barry and Grigory Potemkin. Rare indeed is the marital love match, such as the union of George VI and Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the parents of Queen Elizabeth II (and featured in the 2010 film The King’s Speech), and that of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William of Wales and the former Catherine Middleton.

  One of the romances profiled here was a great affaire de coeur that may have crossed the line into the realm of the physical. The nature of their relationship remains hotly debated, with many historians insisting that it was no more than a chaste and pure, unconsummated passion in the grand tradition of medieval chivalry. Scholars can agree on one point, however, which is that Axel von Fersen more than once risked his life to save Marie Antoinette’s.

  At the other end of the sexual spectrum, some of the monarchs whose romances fill these pages were serial debauchers, the Bourbon kings Louis XIV and his great-grandson Louis XV being legendarily priapic. Louis XV even took his pleasure with nubile young girls in a mansion kept strictly for their own amusement known as the Parc-aux-Cerfs. But few of these bed warmers had the staying power of a Madame de Maintenon or a Pompadour. For that, a royal mistress needed brains and talents that could be plied beyond the bedchamber. She had to amuse the king, she could never appear tired or bored in his presence, and she had to be a true partner in every way—a meeting of minds and hearts, bodies and souls.

  In a world where marriages were arranged for political and dynastic reasons, the lover in a true royal romance is the person the sovereign or consort would likely have selected as a spouse, had he or she been permitted the choice. Yet in one rare instance, the relationship between Louis XIV and the marquise de Maintenon resulted in a marriage, albeit a morganatic one—a legal union where the lover remained uncrowned and any children would have no rights of succession. It is also believed by many historians that Catherine the Great clandestinely wed Potemkin.

  Several of the paramours in Royal Romances were perceived as the powers behind their respective lovers’ thrones. Agnès Sorel was a beautiful blond medieval life coach, less famous than Joan of Arc, but more effective in spurring Charles VII to victory over the English.

  Diane de Poitiers cosigned state documents with Henri II. Madame de Montespan was nicknamed “the real queen of France.” And to be a “Pompadour” referred to a royal mistress who appeared to be running the country. Caroline Mathilde was the youngest sister of George III of England, dispatched to Denmark at the age of fifteen to wed a king who was madder than her brother ever would be. She eventually embarked on a torrid romance with a commoner, her husband’s physician; the pair of them seized the reins of power and overhauled the kingdom. And the overweening influence of the tempestuous dancer Lola Montez toppled the monarchy of Ludwig I of Bavaria.

  As for the two marriages profiled toward the end of the book, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, who became queen of England in the wake of a constitutional crisis and boosted British morale during the kingdom’s darkest hours of the twentieth century, was far more than a mere consort. She was her husband’s full partner and an indispensable and indefatigable helpmeet. Prince William’s wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, with her beauty, elegance, and charm, in addition to her education, appears to have been cast in the same mold.

  The lovers, mistresses, and wives in these pages are graced with a combination of qualities that rendered them utterly irresistible to their royal paramours. The romances are of the passionate, heart-stopping, I-can’t-live-without-you/you-are-the-air-I-breathe variety. However, the adulterous liaisons caused no end of heartbreak to the third wheel in the relationship—the straying sovereign’s spouse. The queen was invariably left embarrassed by the public role played by the royal favorite and by her husband’s passion for her. Queens were traditionally expected to produce an heir to the throne and to remain quiet, pious, and philanthropic, and to stay out of the limelight. But Catherine de Medici, in particular, was one consort who was pathetically in love with her husband, Henri II. She was deeply humiliated by his outsize devotion to his much older maîtresse en titre, or official mistress (a formal role at court that the French invented), the cool blond Diane de Poitiers.

  Sometimes, what was good for the gander was good for the goose—or so the goose thought, until she got cooked! Sophia Dorothea of Celle was the wife of George Ludwig of Hanover, the future George I of England. He was enjoying two simultaneous affairs, so Sophia Dorothea indulged in a lurid romance of her own with a dashing Swedish mercenary, Philipp Christoph von Königsmark. Things did not end happily for either of them.

  But many of the royal romances featured in this book infuriated, upset, mortified, and disgruntled more than the sovereign’s consort. From Potemkin to Lola Montez, and several others in between, including the bewitching (literally, perhaps) Athénaïs de Montespan and Mesdames de Pompadour and du Barry, these lovers captivated their royal paramours to such an extent that the power they wielded, over both sovereign and kingdom, became immense.
And from the monarchs’ ministers and courtiers to their relatives to his subjects and the country’s often hypocritical clerics came the hue and cry that the royal favorite’s influence with the ruler was the ruination of the nation. Sex as a weapon was never perceived as more dangerous, or more alluring.

  But there is also something to be said for the maternal “Don’t worry, darling; I’ll never let you down” kind of love as well, for that, too, has its appeal. Henri II, who never knew a mother’s affection, fell passionately in love with Diane de Poitiers, a woman nearly twenty years his senior. The marquise de Maintenon had a few years on the Sun King, and, although she was hardly old enough to be his mother, had a maturing influence on him. Potemkin was a decade younger than the libidinous Empress of all the Russias. And Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, though five years younger than the Duke of York, the future George VI, was a steadying influence on her spouse, who had never wished to assume the throne.

  Catherine Elizabeth Middleton’s marriage on April 29, 2011, to the dashing Prince William was of historical significance; she was the first true commoner (one not of noble birth and aristocratic lineage) to wed an heir to the English throne since Anne Hyde clandestinely married the Duke of York in 1660. The story of William and Kate is a genuine royal romance for the twenty-first century, a modern fairy tale absent cynicism and brimming with hope for the future, where the girl gets her prince and becomes a fully respected partner in his life. She shops for her own big dresses, sometimes on the High Street with discount coupons, and even wears them more than once, just like the rest of us.

  As for the shimmering jewels…well, one day the duchess will have access to the rather glamorous collection in the Tower of London. The pomp and circumstance connected with centuries of tradition does have certain undeniable advantages.

  CHARLES VII

  1403–1461

  RULED FRANCE: 1422–1461

  At the time, some people believed it had taken a miracle to spur Charles VII to his destiny, but the real impetus may have come not from the illiterate virgin Joan of Arc who heard heavenly voices, but from his beautiful and pragmatic paramour.