Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe by Leslie Carroll Read Free Book Online

honest,” the latter word usually taken to mean chaste or conjugally faithful. Among thisquartet, 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 cheapharlot? 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