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

by Leslie Carroll

  By reminding Henri of Catherine’s many fine qualities of character as well as encouraging him to become more acrobatic in his spouse’s boudoir, Diane was able to thwart Anne d’Heilly’s scheme to supplant the dauphine, thereby maintaining her own place in Henri’s affections and bed. Diane would get Henri all hot and bothered and then send him upstairs to his wife’s bedchamber to perform his conjugal duty.

  Catherine reveled in each visit, but for Henri it was purely an obligation. He could not even bear to look his Medici bride in the face while they made love, and when he finished he would return to his mistress’s slender arms. It was a body slam to Catherine’s ego. What did Diane de Poitiers have that she didn’t? Catherine’s curiosity got the better of her when she hired an Italian carpenter to drill a pair of holes in her floor so she could spy on Henri and his paramour. What she saw sickened her: “a beautiful, fair woman, fresh and half undressed, was caressing her lover in a hundred ways, who was doing the same to her.” They were all over Diane’s furniture, and on the floor, made more comfortable and sensuous by her velvet rug puddled about them. Brokenhearted, Catherine admitted to her friend the duchesse de Montpensier that Henri had “never used her so well.”

  In any event, Diane’s advice proved fruitful and Catherine bore children. To Catherine’s displeasure, Henri thanked his lover for her successful sex counseling by giving her a role in the raising of his children. Diane’s cousin Jean d’Humières was awarded the governorship of the nursery, and Diane appropriated Catherine’s private nicknames for the royal children. To the future queen, even in her maternal triumph, nothing remained entirely hers; her husband’s mistress was not only in his bedroom, but in their children’s sphere as well. At least she was qualified. Diane, who had successfully raised two daughters of her own, in addition to Henri’s illegitimate Diane de France, would eventually be placed in charge of the education of Henri and Catherine’s offspring, which she managed until 1551.

  On March 31, 1547, Henri became king of France upon the death of his father. After a lavish procession in which he passed beneath a trio of triumphal arches, one of which bore the motto he and Diane devised as their own, Donec totum impleat orbem—“Until it fills the whole world”—Henri was crowned at Reims on July 26. His black velvet doublet and coronation robes were embroidered not with the traditional lilies of France but with Diane’s insignias in countless seed pearls: her quivers, bows and arrows, her entwined crescent moons, and their initials—an H and double D. From then on, these would become Henri’s kingly symbols, a public acknowledgment of his liaison with his moon goddess, openly, if not defiantly, bringing their romance into the sunlight. Not only the king’s garments and his horses’ caparisons, but each royal property would eventually become emblazoned and embellished everywhere one looked with their combined ciphers and insignias.

  As queens of France were merely consorts and were not crowned beside their husbands, the very pregnant and opulently gowned Catherine was no more than an honored spectator at Henri’s coronation. But she was outshone by the even more resplendently attired Diane de Poitiers, whose fair hair was adorned with a diamond crescent that to the eye of every beholder looked like a crown. The new queen did not even spend her husband’s coronation night celebrating privately with him. According to the Italian ambassador, after the banquet, the king “went to find the Sénéchale.”

  As soon as the crown was on his head, Henri showered Diane, whom he called “madame,” or ma dame (“my lady,” in the high-flown chivalric sense), with jewels, real estate, and revenues, many of which his father had previously given to his maîtresse en titre, Anne d’Heilly. Among Diane’s new perquisites was a percentage of income from a tax imposed on every church bell in France. This unusual love token prompted the poet Rabelais to bawdily quip that the monarch had hung the bells of his kingdom about the neck of his mare.

  Rabelais realized that Diane was Henri’s paramour in the fullest sense, but there were some at court who still didn’t believe it, unwilling to wrap their brains around the idea that such a young, virile man had any sexual desire for a woman twenty or so years his senior. Ambassador Lorenzo Contarini, in his dispatches to the Vatican in 1547 (after the pair had been lovers for nearly ten years), wrote that the French king displayed a “real tenderness” toward Diane de Poiters, “but it is not thought that there is anything lascivious about it, but that this affection is like that between a mother and son.” It’s a testament to the lovers’ discretion that they managed to fool at least some of the people some of the time.

  However, not every ambassador was so taken in, and the paramours weren’t always so tactful. At the outset of Henri’s reign he created an intimate circle of loyal nobles, which excluded his queen, but included his official mistress. The imperial ambassador Jean de Saint-Mauris, whose boss was the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, Charles V (the same monarch who had held Henri a prisoner when he was a boy), was exceptionally disparaging of both the king and his mistress. Saint-Mauris wrote of this relationship:

  “After dinner [his midday meal] he visits [Diane] and when he has reported to her details of all the matters he has discussed in the morning meetings, he sits on her lap and plays the guitar to her, frequently asking [his Grand Master of the Household, the duc de Montmorency] whether she had not preserved her beauty, occasionally caressing her breasts and looking at her face, like a man dominated by his infatuation…. The king has many good qualities, and I would hope much more of him if he were not so foolish as to allow himself to be led as he is…none may dare to remonstrate with the king in case he offends [Diane], fearing that the king will tell her, since he loves her so much…. He continues to yield himself more and more to her yoke and has become entirely her subject and slave.”

  Evidently Diane’s signature perfume, a lightly peppered scent, acted as an aphrodisiac for Henri. Privacy was scarce during this era, and in the presence of trusted attendants and advisers (and the occasional ambassador), the lovers felt comfortable getting blatantly physical. Signor Alvarotti, the Venetian ambassador, wrote in 1549 that on one occasion when Diane and Henri began to indulge in some heavy foreplay, the king caressed her with such abandon that the bed collapsed and Diane cried, “Sire, do not jump on my bed so violently or you will break it.”

  It would not have been unusual for Diane’s serving women to remain in the chamber during their mistress’s lovemaking, but in their presence she never entirely disrobed, for according to them, “one never saw her with hanging breasts as she was always wearing a bustier.” From Catherine’s two spy holes in the floor, however, she managed to see everything.

  Two men loyal to Catherine de Medici, the duc de Nemours and Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes, offered to disfigure Henri’s maîtresse en titre, either by cutting off Diane’s nose or by throwing vitriol, or acid, in her face—whichever method Catherine preferred. The queen declined their offer. Her motto was “Odiate et aspetate”—“Hate and wait.” She favored endurance over violence, but her fortitude was not superhuman.

  Even for the official entry into Lyon on September 23, 1548, a city filled with Italian émigrés, especially financiers—the world from which Catherine de Medici had emerged—Henri entered with Diane de Poitiers at his side on the first day of festivities. They were greeted everywhere by the good citizens of Lyon with the HD insignia and metaphorical tributes to Diane in poetry and theatrical spectacles, as though she were the queen of France. So as not to forfeit the king’s favor, the Lyonnais had decorated the entire city in black and white. Catherine was publicly mortified and never forgot the city’s slight.

  Her entrance into the city did not take place until the following day at dusk, when the light was too dim to see the procession. Her detractors insisted that the scheduling was Henri’s idea “so that her ugliness should pass unnoticed.” The Lyonnais had scrambled to replace all of the black and white buntings and banners with green ones, Catherine’s signature color, and rewrote the tributes in her honor. That day, Catherine was
covered cap-à-pie in diamonds, lest no one forget who was the real queen. Diane rode behind her in the cavalcade. But when Henri formally greeted the dignitaries of Lyon he kissed his own hand and then touched his lips to Diane’s hand before kissing the hand of his queen. The city’s movers and shakers were appalled and embarrassed.

  At Lyon, on October 8, 1548, Henri granted Diane the title of duchesse de Valentinois. This elevation placed her on a par with princes of the blood, because in France, dukedoms were reserved for members of the blood royal. Henri also had a gold medal struck with Diane’s profile on it. The motto on the obverse read, “Omnium Victorem Vici”—“I conquered him who conquered all.” As a further insult to Catherine, Henri announced that Diane would henceforth be one of her ladies-in-waiting.

  Henri placed so much trust in his maîtresse en titre that they generated and signed government documents in tandem; the king would begin a letter, and Diane might finish it. And at the bottom, the signature would read HenriDiane. With Diane’s encouragement Henri enacted sumptuary laws that restricted expenditures for lavish entertainments and other displays of wealth; the court was drastically reduced and the number of attendants slashed. These new strictures even affected the queen, who would be limited to only four ladies-in-waiting, all of whom were to be “serious and honest,” the latter word usually taken to mean chaste or conjugally faithful. Among this quartet, however, was Diane de Poitiers, the king’s regular bedfellow and by that definition the most “dishonest” woman at court.

  One of the few times Catherine allowed her temper to get the better of her was in 1547, when Henri bestowed the Château de Chenonceau upon Diane, for the queen had always coveted this beautiful jewel box of a castle on the Cher River. That year Henri also had the Château d’Anet built for his mistress on the site of her late husband’s property near Dreux. Far removed from the center of court life, Anet became the couple’s love nest, a safe haven where they could escape for idyllic quality time, creating an alternate reality of domestic bliss.

  In August of 1548, the five-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived in France, ostensibly at Henri’s invitation. In reality she’d come at the behest of her powerful Guise uncles, whose sister Marie de Guise, the dowager queen of Scotland, was Mary’s mother. The charming auburn-haired child was contracted to wed the dauphin of France. In accordance with tradition, she would be raised in her future husband’s court until both children came of age and could be wed. Among Mary’s entourage was her thirty-five-year-old governess, the gorgeous redheaded Lady Fleming.

  In 1550, Diane broke her leg in a riding accident and quit the court for several months to convalesce. Her departure allowed Henri more time with his queen and children, and Catherine rejoiced in her rival’s absence. But her husband could not remain faithful for two seconds, embarking on a Highland fling with Lady Fleming. Catherine played the role of wronged and outraged wife to the hilt, but privately reveled that Diane de Poitiers had been displaced from her husband’s affections.

  Upon her return to court, Diane’s discovery of Henri’s infidelity marked the only time she completely lost her legendary equanimity. She waited outside Lady Fleming’s door for the king to emerge with France’s Constable and Grand Master of the Household, Anne de Montmorency—a man whose career she had advanced and supported for years. Diane accused Montmorency of betraying her by facilitating Henri’s affair with Lady Fleming. Henri tried to shuffle and shamble his way out of his massive indiscretion, but Diane asked him what the powerful Guise family might think if they were to learn that their niece, little Mary, Queen of Scots, was being raised by a cheap harlot? They might even scotch their girl’s marriage to the dauphin, on the assumption that the child suffered from malevolent influences!

  Fearful of forfeiting the crown’s vital friendship with the Guise family, with his tail meekly between his legs, Henri returned to Anet with Diane, where the couple reconciled.

  But the king did not abruptly end his liaison with Mary Fleming. She became pregnant, then flaunted her swelling belly, ostentatiously announcing to all and sundry that the king was her lover. With this wee bit of grandstanding she managed to transform the court’s two greatest adversaries into a pair of allies, as Catherine and Diane joined forces to oust her. But Henri ennobled their bastard son as the duc d’Angoulême, and the boy was raised alongside the king’s legitimate offspring. He grew up to become Grand Prior of France, notable for his particular viciousness during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the Huguenots in 1572. He was killed in a duel in 1586.

  Henri also fathered another royal bastard in 1558 by a married woman named Nicole de Savigny, but this affair did not become a cause célèbre and was quickly forgiven and forgotten. The king did not legitimize this son, who was also named Henri; the boy’s surname was that of Nicole’s cuckolded spouse, Monsieur Saint-Rémy. A descendant of this royal liaison, Jeanne de Lamotte-Valois, would make Marie Antoinette’s life hell in the mid-1780s.

  In 1551, the court noticed that the king was paying marked attention to Catherine and he had begun to rely on her political advice. By then she had given him six children. Diane was now fifty-one years old, perhaps no longer as interested in maintaining the sexual element of their romance. In an effort to demonstrate her attachment to both members of the royal couple, when Catherine came down with scarlet fever in 1552, Diane, behaving like a true cousin, nursed her kinswoman back to health.

  That year, when Henri was thirty-three, Lorenzo Contarini, now the Venetian ambassador, furnished posterity with a detailed description of the French sovereign and his daily habits, including Henri’s avid fitness regimen.

  [He is] tall, well-built, with black hair and lively eyes, an attractive head, large nose, normal mouth, and a beard as long as the width of two fingers, and altogether he has one of the most gracious figures and a real air of majesty. He has a very robust complexion, which is helped a lot by his physical exercises, such that every day, from two hours after lunch until evening he spends his time playing tennis or ball or [in] archery…. He also enjoys hunting all animals…especially the deer, which he does two or three times a week…. He is extraordinarily good at swordsmanship and horsemanship…an excellent fighter…. His body is very healthy, it is only his teeth which sometimes cause him pain and he suffers from nothing except occasional migraines, for which he takes pills. He is very fit and muscular, but if he does not take care and watch his food, he could easily gain weight. His appearance is a little melancholic by nature but also shows great majesty and kindness…. He eats and drinks moderately. After his audience, he retires with a small group to Madame de Valentinois’ bedroom, where he stays for about an hour before leaving to play pall-mall, or tennis or other exercises. After dining in public, he visits the queen where he joins a large group of the court’s ladies and gentlemen and chats to them for about an hour.

  …He is never angry when something goes wrong, except sometimes when hunting, and he never uses violent words…. [H]e is very chaste in matters of the flesh [meaning, one supposes, that he was devoted solely to one lover?], and he conducts his affairs in such a way that no one can discuss them very much, which was not the case with king François [Henri’s father].

  Contarini added:

  But the person who without a doubt is the most loved by the king is Madame de Valentinois. She is a lady of fifty-two…[who] came into the hands of this king while he was still dauphin. He has loved her a great deal and loves her still. She is his mistress, old as she is. It is true to say that, although she has never worn face paints, and perhaps because of the minute care that she takes, she is far from looking her age. She is a lady of intelligence who has always been the king’s inspiration.

  Then Contarini summed up Catherine’s reaction to her husband’s grand passion:

  Since the beginning of the new reign, the Queen could no longer bear to see such love and favor being bestowed by the king on the duchess, but upon the king’s urgent entreaties she resigned herself to endure the situati
on with patience. The Queen even frequents the duchess, who, for her part, serves the Queen well, and often it is she who exhorts him to sleep with his wife.

  In 1558, Henri signed a peace treaty with Spain ceding France’s Italian possessions to either the Duke of Mantua or the Duke of Florence. Catherine, a native of northern Italy, was understandably livid. According to the terms of this Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis, their eldest daughter would be given to king Philip of Spain in marriage. Philip had been a widower since the November 17, 1558, death of his first wife, Mary, the elder daughter of Henry VIII. Mary was scarcely cold in the ground when Philip negotiated a new alliance, but despite the prestige brought by her daughter Elisabeth (to be renamed Isabel de la Paz—Isabel of the Peace) becoming queen of Spain, Catherine was furious with the terms of the treaty. She blamed the unfavorable provisions for France on Diane’s malevolent influence upon Henri.

  One day when Diane entered the queen’s presence, Catherine happened to be reading a book, and the duchesse inquired as to its subject.

  “I am reading The Chronicles of France, and I find that in every era there was a time when the affairs of Kings have been governed by whores,” Catherine replied.

  The unpopular Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis was fully ratified during the first week of April in 1559. With one stroke of the quill, France was compelled to return all of the territories she had won during the past sixty-five years, the reigns of the last four kings. Henri could now direct his attention to pressing domestic concerns, the largest of which was the issue of, in his words, the “Protestant vermin” overrunning his realm.

  During this time, he also remained unfaithful to Catherine, and more frequently strayed from the bed of the fifty-eight-year-old maîtresse en titre as well, enjoying brief, casual liaisons. Diane turned an elegant blind eye to these infidelities. Catherine, too, was less unnerved by them than she was by Diane’s impenetrable influence upon her husband. Although Henri and Diane remained passionately devoted to each other, the sexual element of their relationship may have ended by 1558, if a phrase in a letter of Henri’s, dated August 10 of that year, offers any clue to the nature of their romance at the time. Despite any of his present, relatively meaningless flings, in that letter the king urged Diane never to forget the one who always had and always would love her.