Medieval Royal Mistresses

Medieval Royal Mistresses Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Medieval Royal Mistresses book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.

Medieval Royal Mistresses

Julia A Hickey
Medieval Royal Mistresses Book PDF

Author : Julia A Hickey
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2023-01-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781399081979

Get Book

Medieval Royal Mistresses by Julia A Hickey Pdf

Marriage for Medieval kings was about politics, power and the provision of legitimate heirs. Mistresses were about love, lust and possession. It was a world that included kidnap, poison, murder, violation, public shaming and accusations of witchcraft. Ambition and quick wits as well as beauty were essential attributes for any royal mistress. Infamy, assassination and imprisonment awaited some royal mistresses who tumbled from favour while others disappeared into obscurity or respectable lives as married women and were quickly forgotten. Meet Nest of Wales, born in turbulent times, whose abduction started a war; Alice Perrers and Jane Shore labelled ‘whores’ and ‘wantons’; Katherine Swynford who turned the medieval world upside down with a royal happy-ever-after and Rosamund Clifford who left history and stepped into legend. Discover how serial royal womanisers married off their discarded mistresses to bind their allies close. Explore the semi-official roles of some mistresses; the illegitimate children who became kings; secret marriage ceremonies; Edith Forne Sigulfson and Lady Eleanor Talbot who sought atonement through religion as well as the aristocratic women who became the victims of royal lust. Most of the shameful women who shared the beds of medieval kings were silenced, besmirched or consigned to the footnotes of a patriarchal worldview but they negotiated paths between the private and public spheres of medieval court life - changing history as they went.

Royal Mistresses

Charles Carlton
Royal Mistresses Book PDF

Author : Charles Carlton
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2023-03-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000875423

Get Book

Royal Mistresses by Charles Carlton Pdf

First published in 1990, Royal Mistresses provides an innovative way of looking at the development of British monarchy, and at the same time investigates the relationship between sex and power. Charles Carlton focuses not so much on the amorous activities of the mistresses of British monarchs as on their influences on those monarchs and on society at large. Ranging from the early medieval period to the late 1990s, he shows that a monarch’s illicit sexual life sheds light on his character and reign. It is no coincidence that Henry I, Charles II, and Edward VII, who were successful with their mistresses were also successful in their reigns, while the divorced John and the lovelorn Edward VIII failed Not surprisingly, the affairs of the sovereign’s heart have very often become the affairs of state. This book will be of interest to students of history and literature.

The Creation of the French Royal Mistress

Tracy Adams,Christine Adams
The Creation of the French Royal Mistress Book PDF

Author : Tracy Adams,Christine Adams
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2020-03-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780271086446

Get Book

The Creation of the French Royal Mistress by Tracy Adams,Christine Adams Pdf

Kings throughout medieval and early modern Europe had extraconjugal sexual partners. Only in France, however, did the royal mistress become a quasi-institutionalized political position. This study explores the emergence and development of the position of French royal mistress through detailed portraits of nine of its most significant incumbents: Agnès Sorel, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Françoise Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Françoise d’Aubigné, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, and Jeanne Bécu. Beginning in the fifteenth century, key structures converged to create a space at court for the royal mistress. The first was an idea of gender already in place: that while women were legally inferior to men, they were men’s equals in competence. Because of their legal subordinacy, queens were considered to be the safest regents for their husbands, and, subsequently, the royal mistress was the surest counterpoint to the royal favorite. Second, the Renaissance was a period during which people began to experience space as theatrical. This shift to a theatrical world opened up new ways of imagining political guile, which came to be positively associated with the royal mistress. Still, the role had to be activated by an intelligent, charismatic woman associated with a king who sought women as advisors. The fascinating particulars of each case are covered in the chapters of this book. Thoroughly researched and compellingly narrated, this important study explains why the tradition of a politically powerful royal mistress materialized at the French court, but nowhere else in Europe. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the French monarchy, women and royalty, and gender studies.

The Creation of the French Royal Mistress

Tracy Adams,Christine Adams
The Creation of the French Royal Mistress Book PDF

Author : Tracy Adams,Christine Adams
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2020-03-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9780271086422

Get Book

The Creation of the French Royal Mistress by Tracy Adams,Christine Adams Pdf

Kings throughout medieval and early modern Europe had extraconjugal sexual partners. Only in France, however, did the royal mistress become a quasi-institutionalized political position. This study explores the emergence and development of the position of French royal mistress through detailed portraits of nine of its most significant incumbents: Agnès Sorel, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Françoise Louise de La Baume Le Blanc, Françoise Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart, Françoise d’Aubigné, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, and Jeanne Bécu. Beginning in the fifteenth century, key structures converged to create a space at court for the royal mistress. The first was an idea of gender already in place: that while women were legally inferior to men, they were men’s equals in competence. Because of their legal subordinacy, queens were considered to be the safest regents for their husbands, and, subsequently, the royal mistress was the surest counterpoint to the royal favorite. Second, the Renaissance was a period during which people began to experience space as theatrical. This shift to a theatrical world opened up new ways of imagining political guile, which came to be positively associated with the royal mistress. Still, the role had to be activated by an intelligent, charismatic woman associated with a king who sought women as advisors. The fascinating particulars of each case are covered in the chapters of this book. Thoroughly researched and compellingly narrated, this important study explains why the tradition of a politically powerful royal mistress materialized at the French court, but nowhere else in Europe. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the French monarchy, women and royalty, and gender studies.

Sex with Kings

Eleanor Herman
Sex with Kings Book PDF

Author : Eleanor Herman
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2009-03-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780061751554

Get Book

Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman Pdf

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.

Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France

Kathleen Wellman
Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France Book PDF

Author : Kathleen Wellman
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2013-05-21
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300190656

Get Book

Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France by Kathleen Wellman Pdf

DIV 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. /div

Blood Royal

Robert Bartlett
Blood Royal Book PDF

Author : Robert Bartlett
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 675 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2020-07-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108490672

Get Book

Blood Royal by Robert Bartlett Pdf

An engaging history of royal and imperial families and dynastic power, enriched by a body of surprising and memorable source material.

The Mistresses of George I & II

Catherine Curzon
The Mistresses of George I II Book PDF

Author : Catherine Curzon
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2021-08-04
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781526762733

Get Book

The Mistresses of George I & II by Catherine Curzon Pdf

When George I arrived in England he found a kingdom in turmoil. Mistrustful of the new monarch from Hanover, his subjects met his coronation with riots. At George’s side was his mistress, Melusine von der Schulenberg, whilst his ex-wife languished in prison. Known as the Maypole thanks to her eye-catching figure, Melusine was the king’s confidante for decades. She was a mother to his children and a queen without a crown. George II never forgave his father for tearing him from his mother's arms and he was determined to marry for love, not duty. Though his wife, Caroline of Ansbach, proved to be a politically gifted queen, George II turned to another for affection. She was Henrietta Howard, the impoverished Countess of Suffolk, and she was desperate to escape her brutish husband. As the years passed, the royal affair became a powerplay between king and queen and the woman who was mistress to one and servant to another. Melusine and Henrietta's privileged position made them the envy of every courtier. It also made them a target of jealousy, plotting and ambition. In the tumultuous Georgian court, the bedroom and the throne room weren't so far apart.

Royal Witches

Gemma Hollman
Royal Witches Book PDF

Author : Gemma Hollman
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2019-10-07
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780750993500

Get Book

Royal Witches by Gemma Hollman Pdf

'An important and timely book.' - Philippa Gregory Joan of Navarre was the richest woman in the land, at a time when war-torn England was penniless. Eleanor Cobham was the wife of a weak king's uncle – and her husband was about to fall from grace. Jacquetta Woodville was a personal enemy of Warwick the Kingmaker, who was about to take his revenge. Elizabeth Woodville was the widowed mother of a child king, fighting Richard III for her children's lives. In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives of these four unique women, looking at how rumours of witchcraft brought them to their knees in a time when superstition and suspicion was rife.

Royal Mistress

Anne Easter Smith
Royal Mistress Book PDF

Author : Anne Easter Smith
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781451648638

Get Book

Royal Mistress by Anne Easter Smith Pdf

From the author of A Rose for the Crown and Daughter of York comes another engrossing historical novel of the York family in the Wars of the Roses, telling the fascinating story of the rise and fall of the final and favorite mistress of Edward IV. Jane Lambert, the quick-witted and alluring daughter of a silk merchant, is twenty-two and still unmarried. When Jane’s father finally finds her a match, she’s married off to the dull, older silk merchant William Shore. Marriage doesn’t stop Jane from flirtation, however, and when the king’s chamberlain, Will Hastings, comes to her husband’s shop, Will knows King Edward will find her irresistible. Edward IV has everything: power, majestic bearing, superior military leadership, a sensual nature, and charisma. And with Jane as his mistress, he also finds true happiness. But when his hedonistic tendencies get in the way of being the strong leader England needs, his life, as well as those of Jane and Will Hastings, hangs in the balance. Jane must rely on her talents to survive as the new monarch, Richard III, bent on reforming his brother’s licentious court, ascends the throne. This dramatic tale has been an inspiration to poets and playwrights for five hundred years, and, as told through the unique perspective of a woman plucked from obscurity and thrust into a life of notoriety, Royal Mistress is sure to enthrall today’s historical fiction lovers as well.

Royal Mistress

Anne Easter Smith
Royal Mistress Book PDF

Author : Anne Easter Smith
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2013-05-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781451648621

Get Book

Royal Mistress by Anne Easter Smith Pdf

As the mistress of King Edward IV, Jane Lambert finally brings the king true happiness, but when his hedonistic tendencies get in the way of being the strong leader England needs, her life hangs in the balance. Original.

Mistress of the Monarchy

Alison Weir
Mistress of the Monarchy Book PDF

Author : Alison Weir
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Great Britain
ISBN : OCLC:469830204

Get Book

Mistress of the Monarchy by Alison Weir Pdf

Historian Alison Weir brings to life the tale of Katherine Swynford, a royal mistress who became a crucial figure in the British royal dynasties. Born in the mid-14th century, Katherine experienced the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the Peasants' Revolt, and crossed paths with many eminent figures, among them her brother-in-law, Geoffrey Chaucer. At age ten, she was appointed to the household of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and fourth son of King Edward III; at twelve, she married Hugh Swynford, an impoverished knight. Widowed at 21, Katherine, gifted with beauty and charms, later became John of Gaunt's mistress. Throughout their illicit union, John and Katherine were devoted to each other. In middle age, after many twists of fortune, they wed, and her children by John, the Beauforts, would become direct forebears of the Royal Houses of York, Tudor, and Stuart, and of every British sovereign since 1461 (as well as four U.S. presidents).--From publisher description.

Women in the Medieval Court

Rebecca Holdorph
Women in the Medieval Court Book PDF

Author : Rebecca Holdorph
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2022-04-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9781526739827

Get Book

Women in the Medieval Court by Rebecca Holdorph Pdf

A surprising look at women who wielded power in medieval Europe, from queens to concubines to abbesses. Medieval society might expect the elite women who decorated its courts to play the role of Queen Guinevere, but many of these women had very different ideas. Great queens, who sometimes ruled in their own right, fought wars and forged empires. Noblewomen acted behind the scenes to change the course of politics. Far from cloistered off from the world, powerful abbesses played the role of kingmaker. And concubines had a role to play as well, both as political actors and as mothers of children who might change a country’s destiny. They experienced tremendous success and dramatic downfalls. This book tells the stories of women from across medieval Europe, from a Danish queen who waged political war to form a Scandinavian empire to a Tuscan countess who joined her troops on the battlefield. Whether they wielded power in battle, from a convent, or from a throne—or even in the bedchamber—these women were far from damsels in distress waiting for their knights in shining armor.

The King's Mistress

Emma Campion
The King s Mistress Book PDF

Author : Emma Campion
Publisher : Random House
Page : 560 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2011-02-15
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781446439203

Get Book

The King's Mistress by Emma Campion Pdf

From childhood Alice Salisbury has learnt obedience in all things and at fourteen dutifully marries the man her father has chosen for her - at the cost of losing for ever the love of her mother and the family she holds dear. But merchant Janyn Perrers is a good and loving husband and Alice soon learns to enjoy her marriage. Until a messenger brings news of his disappearance and she discovers that her husband had many secrets - secrets which have now put a price on her own head and that of her beloved daughter. Brought under the protection of King Edward III and Queen Philippa she must obediently embrace her fate once more - as a virtual prisoner at Court. And when the king singles her out for more than just royal patronage she knows she has little choice but to accept his advances. But obeying the king brings with it many burdens as well as pleasures, as she forfeits her good name to keep her daughter free from hurt. Still a young woman and guided by her intellect and good business sense, she learns to use her gifts as wisely as she can. But as one of the king's favourites she brings jealousy and hatred in her wake and some will stop at nothing to see her fall from grace...

Katherine Swynford

Jeannette Lucraft
Katherine Swynford Book PDF

Author : Jeannette Lucraft
Publisher : The History Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2011-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780752468280

Get Book

Katherine Swynford by Jeannette Lucraft Pdf

Katherine Swynford – sexual temptress or powerful woman at the centre of the medieval court? This book unravels the many myths and legacies of this fascinating woman, to show her in a whole new light. Katherine was sister-in-law to Geoffrey Chaucer and governess to the daughters of Blanche of Lancaster and John of Gaunt. She also became John of Gaunt's mistress – a role that she maintained for 20 years – and had four illegitimate children by him, from one of whom Henry Tudor was descended. In a move surprising in the fourteenth century, John of Gaunt eventually married her, making her Duchess of Lancaster and stepmother to the future king, Henry Bolingbroke. But who was this extremely well-connected woman? In this fascinating book, Jeanette Lucraft treats Katherine as a missing person and reconstructs her and her times to uncover the mystery of the 'other woman' in John of Gaunt's life.