Only in France: The Mistress as Institution

Abstract

pp. F rench royal mistresses have not exactly gone unnoticed by historians. Biographies of kings from Charles VII through Louis XV have analysed the king ’ s extra-marital affairs, mostly with women, examining effects of royal mistresses on court culture and politics more broadly. Collective biographies of mistresses have concentrated on the women themselves and the traditions they created. If Tracy Adams and Christine Adams tra-verse familiar ground, they do so with an eye to the institutional development of the royal mistress as a French phenomenon. They also set out to query, and where possible, to verify or reject the stories that have accumulated around royal mistresses. The result is a synthesis that sheds light on the mechanisms, possibilities, and limitations of French royal mistresses. Adams and Adams open by situating mistresses with respect to regency, male favourites ( mignons ), and the gendered understandings of power particular to France. The authors argue that women were considered ‘ as politically capable ’ as men (p.  ), an assertion that does not seem situated in the historical record. More realistically, women (because they could not inherit the throne) were less dangerous in a fundamental sense, making them poten-tially more attractive as intimate advisors. Similarly, mignons were less threatening because they were dependent on the king for continued patronage. Mistresses were even better: dependent on personal favour, usually unthreatening, and often a form of political protection for