Sex with the Queen – Eleanor Herman

While everyone is scanning through over 900 pages of Bill Clinton's memoir in the hopes of finding some juicy tidbit about a powerful man and his extramarital affair, why not pick up Sex with Kings and find a tantalizing fact or two per page about powerful men and the women they bed.

Sex with Kings is an absolutely unputdownable romp through the sex lives of the men who inherited the thrones of Europe over the last 500 years. Herman's fluid and frequently cheeky text delves unabashedly into the affairs of male royalty and their mistresses. And what a fascinating history — especially in comparing the mores of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries to the more stringent standards of the twentieth century.

France has, admittedly, always held a more tolerant view towards infidelity than many Western countries, so it is not surprising that when a French king, Francois I, gave the title maîtresse-en-titre to his "official royal mistress," the woman in question wielded a fair amount of power. In fact, in France during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, these women accepted positions in court, attended council meetings, appointed ministers and generals, made laws, and influenced the arts. That said, some of the most manipulative and influential mistresses could be found behind the scenes of a British monarchy, as continental tastes took root.

Even if theirs was not a political ambition, mistresses often wore finer clothes than the queens, were bejeweled, given property and wealth, and often accompanied the King to more social occasions than the queen herself. Many ex-mistresses lived comfortably off their social status as well as the money and jewelry "earned" while in the king's company.

But lest we think the life of a king's mistress was some sort of fairy tale, Herman makes it quite clear that satisfying and placating a man who could be a horrid bore (let alone a pus-ravaged, smallpox-riddled letch) was no walk in the gardens of Versailles. Not only was their task to flatter, adore, and service their kings, a prominent mistress needed to keep a vigilant watch on any enigmatic countesses or beautiful noblewomen who may also have their eye on their man.

Valued friend and confidant to the wife of Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan betrayed her friend the queen, as well as her good friend and current mistress to the king, Louise de La Vallière, by seducing Louis. She did so over several years and utilized whatever means, including consulting a witch and slipping disgusting "love potions" made of bats blood and fetal tissue into his food and wine.

Oddly enough, while the sexual side of the relationship could fade, the political power of the maîtresse-en-titre sometimes blossomed into something far more powerful — Madame de Pompadour, mistress to Louis XV for nineteen years, being the exemplar. She worked as France's unofficial prime minister. As Herman puts it, "indeed she had far more power than Louis's ministers, as it was she who appointed them."

This is a witty and engaging book, intelligently written, with an endless amount of scandalous, hilarious, and eye-opening anecdotes. As Herman is the first to admit, though, many tales of the court were related by gossipy courtiers, memoirists eager for vindication, or contemporary biographers with an eye for comic flair and exaggeration. Be that as it may, Herman's sparkling writing and evident enthusiasm make her, to my mind, a modern-day Scheherazade.