Loches: the Dame de Beauté

The Dame de Beauté

Agnes Sorel, the first royal mistress

Oooh la la, those French rascal presidents and kings! The history of France is absolutely teeming with secret love affairs and royal mistresses. And even president Mitterand had a very public second life with a mistress and illegitimate daughter. Did the French public bat an eyelid? Certainly not. For rich and powerful Frenchmen, a mistress is the ultimate accessory, and proof of their status. As for the cuckolded wives, well, they seem to bear their burden with grace and dignity but I am sure that being rich and living in a mansion with lots of domestic staff eases the pain of being cheated on. Perhaps even madame has a 'liaison dangereuse' with her gardner or personal trainer. Discreetly, of course, because the ego of her husband cannot survive the eternal embarrasment of having an unfaithful wife. Ah yes, those lovely double standards. But at least the French are more up front about them than -say- the Brits are.

But I am digressing. The history of the French kings is just as much the history of famous mistresses. Who are not seen as tarts and whores, like their tragic English 'colleagues', but as influential and highly cultured women. Names like Diane de Poitiers, Gabrielle d'Estrées, and of course the madames De Maintenon, De Montespan, De Pompadour and Du Barry are still well known, and the legacy of these remarkable women is tangible all over France, in works of art and in their chateaux and palaces.

Maybe the first famous French mistress was Agnes Sorel, the 'Dame de Beauté'. She was king Charles VII's lover, and she was apparently the first officially acknowledged royal mistress. She was also something of a Lady GaGa in her time, launching several new fashions, like showing bare shoulders and a cleavage! Although the famous portrait of her with one boob hanging out was perhaps a tad too far ahead of its time... Agnes was a great influence on Charles, practically curing him from manic depressions, and giving him the resolve to keep fighting the English. Sadly, Charles' son Louis XI sided with his sad and ridiculed mother, and hated Agnes deeply. So much so, that apparently he had her poisoned.

In the walled mediaeval town of Loches, where there's a royal castle that king Charles gave to Agnes, she rests in a beautiful tomb in the church. The monks of the church were not too pleased to have the body and very realistic marble effigy of this very sexy woman in their church, so they asked Louis XI if Agnes could be buried in the castle chapel. 'Sure', king Louis said -not wanting the body of the woman whose death he had caused anywhere near him!- 'but if the body of Agnes comes to the castle, so shall all the money she has donated to your church'. The monks did not press on and to this day, Agnes Sorel sleeps her eternal sleep under the twin pyramid domes of the St. Ours church in Loches.

I have visited her tomb three times, and I think it's one of the most lovely in the world. Agnes lies there, serene in white marble, with two beautiful mourning angels by her side. Not bad, for someone who was never a queen, but merely 'the other woman'...