Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Kings-Adultery-Rivalry-Revenge/dp/0060585447]Amazon.com: Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (P.S.): Eleanor Herman: Books[/ame]
I read a lot of biographies. I like the "distance" because they take place outside our own time frame. I'm fascinated by historical depictions of marriage. Ever since Rush Limbaugh trotted out "2000 years of Marriage" to stop gays from getting married, I've been curious about documented marriages during the 2000 years. For gosh sakes, it's patently false that Christ or Chritianity created modern marriage 2000 years ago, and not 2500 or 4000 or 400 years ago. In my opinion, our current form of marriage dates only from about 1920 when women got the right to vote, becoming electorally and sexually equal to men, and it was legally ruled that women are not legally owned by their husbands like a couch. It's caused some men heartburn ever since. It's a point of research for me to go back prior to 1920 to see true documentation on how people really treated their spouses, and what they expected to get out of marriage.
Western social history can be maddening. Until about 1880 in the US, it was considered selfish and impolite to ever write about your own feelings and failings, even in a diary. So while we know quite a bit about what early Americans ate, and what they wore, we know almost nothing of their toilet habits, for instance, and apparently their sexual trysts.
It is written that Benjamin Franklin engaged in 32 extramarital affairs, and was considered unusual because they were all with women. One wonders why that extra tidbit "unusual" is important. Does that mean that George Washington and John Adams had affairs with men as well as women? Perhaps it was common in that time for men have trysts "behind the barn" with no further ado and no diary entries. The 1805 account of the Lewis and Clark expedition records extramarital sex with Indian women, as does the 1822 accounts of Jedediah Smith, a fur trapper and explorer who kinda walked around the entire Western US by mistake. If anyone else has found good biographical material, based on diaries, written accounts or forensics, please point me the way.
Sex with Kings is a survey of Royal Mistresses in Western Europe and Britain from 1400 to the late 1800's. So this the Mistresses of Henry II, Henry VIII, the "Louis'" of France, and all their best buddies, fathers and sons. For much of this time, the Mistress was an important figure of state, just as a Prime Minister was in the time before Democracies. In some cases, the Royal Mistress was responsible for the entertainment, dress and social tone of the Royal Court, and even had duties in entertaining foreign ambassadors and creating banquets for foreign royalty. Like the Prime Minister, the Royal Mistress served at the will of the King, and could be fired and replaced any day. Firing generally meant permanent exile, poverty and sometimes death. For this reason, many were very attentive to their position.
Queens were raised to be chaste, and had little other function than to join dynastic families and seal treaties. They had to be a virgin on their wedding day. This means most queens had no sexual experience, and little sense of sexual adventure, and little interest in their husbands. European Kings, apparently, were voracious at sex, and had little interest in their chaste wives. The King had the legal authority to ask (thereby forcing) any subjects to have sex, simply because it was illegal to say no to a king. So royal chambermaids took particular pains to appear dowdy and unkempt, to avoid being impregnated by the King, which for them would end their employment and mean permanent exile and a life of poverty.
The book points out that In Catholic Spain, the King being Ordained by God, carried the punishment that any woman he mounted could no longer be touched by any human for the remainder of their lives. After he finished with them, they would be banished to a nunnery. In France, a King was walking through the chambers at night an spied a figure in a dress and stockings asleep on a couch in the dark room. He lifted the dress and prepared to have some fun, only to find himself fondling a Cardinal from the Pope.
Also recorded in the book is the state of hygiene at the time. Louise the XV and many other kings, didn't bathe. Not weekly, not monthly. Just no bath at all. They also had no dental hygiene so it's likely their tooth odor overwhelmed their body odor. Since their mistresses bathed all the time, indeed having affairs with the bathroom attendants, this was a source of contention to join the king for a long coach ride in the hot sun. Those coaches are about as big inside as a VW Bug. Can you imagine an 8 hour ride on bumpy single track dirt roads on a hot day with someone who wears tons of clothes, but never bathed or brushed their teeth? Speaking of long treks, women weren't allowed to state any need to go to the bathroom and had to wait under all conditions until the King's attention was elsewhere to go do their business.
Overall the book is entertaining and thought provoking. Since this is part of Western cultural tradition, it's curious to gain insight from diaries and court records from some of the most famous people in European history. It certainly brings perspective on our own marriages and expectations within them. I find parts uplifting when some of the characters take a really bad situation and over years turn it into a very positive situation.
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Kings-Adultery-Rivalry-Revenge/dp/0060585447]Amazon.com: Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (P.S.): Eleanor Herman: Books[/ame]
I read a lot of biographies. I like the "distance" because they take place outside our own time frame. I'm fascinated by historical depictions of marriage. Ever since Rush Limbaugh trotted out "2000 years of Marriage" to stop gays from getting married, I've been curious about documented marriages during the 2000 years. For gosh sakes, it's patently false that Christ or Chritianity created modern marriage 2000 years ago, and not 2500 or 4000 or 400 years ago. In my opinion, our current form of marriage dates only from about 1920 when women got the right to vote, becoming electorally and sexually equal to men, and it was legally ruled that women are not legally owned by their husbands like a couch. It's caused some men heartburn ever since. It's a point of research for me to go back prior to 1920 to see true documentation on how people really treated their spouses, and what they expected to get out of marriage.
Western social history can be maddening. Until about 1880 in the US, it was considered selfish and impolite to ever write about your own feelings and failings, even in a diary. So while we know quite a bit about what early Americans ate, and what they wore, we know almost nothing of their toilet habits, for instance, and apparently their sexual trysts.
It is written that Benjamin Franklin engaged in 32 extramarital affairs, and was considered unusual because they were all with women. One wonders why that extra tidbit "unusual" is important. Does that mean that George Washington and John Adams had affairs with men as well as women? Perhaps it was common in that time for men have trysts "behind the barn" with no further ado and no diary entries. The 1805 account of the Lewis and Clark expedition records extramarital sex with Indian women, as does the 1822 accounts of Jedediah Smith, a fur trapper and explorer who kinda walked around the entire Western US by mistake. If anyone else has found good biographical material, based on diaries, written accounts or forensics, please point me the way.
Sex with Kings is a survey of Royal Mistresses in Western Europe and Britain from 1400 to the late 1800's. So this the Mistresses of Henry II, Henry VIII, the "Louis'" of France, and all their best buddies, fathers and sons. For much of this time, the Mistress was an important figure of state, just as a Prime Minister was in the time before Democracies. In some cases, the Royal Mistress was responsible for the entertainment, dress and social tone of the Royal Court, and even had duties in entertaining foreign ambassadors and creating banquets for foreign royalty. Like the Prime Minister, the Royal Mistress served at the will of the King, and could be fired and replaced any day. Firing generally meant permanent exile, poverty and sometimes death. For this reason, many were very attentive to their position.
Queens were raised to be chaste, and had little other function than to join dynastic families and seal treaties. They had to be a virgin on their wedding day. This means most queens had no sexual experience, and little sense of sexual adventure, and little interest in their husbands. European Kings, apparently, were voracious at sex, and had little interest in their chaste wives. The King had the legal authority to ask (thereby forcing) any subjects to have sex, simply because it was illegal to say no to a king. So royal chambermaids took particular pains to appear dowdy and unkempt, to avoid being impregnated by the King, which for them would end their employment and mean permanent exile and a life of poverty.
The book points out that In Catholic Spain, the King being Ordained by God, carried the punishment that any woman he mounted could no longer be touched by any human for the remainder of their lives. After he finished with them, they would be banished to a nunnery. In France, a King was walking through the chambers at night an spied a figure in a dress and stockings asleep on a couch in the dark room. He lifted the dress and prepared to have some fun, only to find himself fondling a Cardinal from the Pope.
Also recorded in the book is the state of hygiene at the time. Louise the XV and many other kings, didn't bathe. Not weekly, not monthly. Just no bath at all. They also had no dental hygiene so it's likely their tooth odor overwhelmed their body odor. Since their mistresses bathed all the time, indeed having affairs with the bathroom attendants, this was a source of contention to join the king for a long coach ride in the hot sun. Those coaches are about as big inside as a VW Bug. Can you imagine an 8 hour ride on bumpy single track dirt roads on a hot day with someone who wears tons of clothes, but never bathed or brushed their teeth? Speaking of long treks, women weren't allowed to state any need to go to the bathroom and had to wait under all conditions until the King's attention was elsewhere to go do their business.
Overall the book is entertaining and thought provoking. Since this is part of Western cultural tradition, it's curious to gain insight from diaries and court records from some of the most famous people in European history. It certainly brings perspective on our own marriages and expectations within them. I find parts uplifting when some of the characters take a really bad situation and over years turn it into a very positive situation.
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