Type of bind: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: April 01, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 948177
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Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor, and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles five hundred years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them.
Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with women of their own choice. And what women they were! From Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen years despite her frigidity, to modern-day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped none other than the glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.
The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts, she was never to be exhausted, complaining, or grief-stricken.
True, financial rewards for services rendered were of royal proportions -- some royal mistresses earned up to $200 million in titles, pensions, jewels, and palaces. Some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur, a royal court was a scorpion's nest of insatiable greed, unquenchable lust, and vicious ambition. Hundreds of beautiful women vied to unseat the royal mistress. Many would suffer the slings and arrows of negative public opinion, some met with tragic ends and were pensioned off to make room for younger women. But the royal mistress often had the last laugh, as she lived well and richly off the fruits of her 'sins.'
From the dawn of time, power has been a mighty aphrodisiac. With diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman's trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge, at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, Sex with Kings is a chapter of women's history that has remained unwritten -- until now.
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Rated by buyers 
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For as long as there have been kings, kings have had mistresses. But, who were these women, what did they want and what did they get out of being the king's lover? In this fascinating book, author Eleanor Herman takes an unvarnished look at the secret life of the royal mistresses, the maitresse-en-titre - covering everything from why women would desire such a position to what the position entailed, and goes forward to what was the eventual fate of the royal mistress.
This is such a fascinating book. Some of the women portrayed were contemptible, being so terribly common and course. But, most of them were actually tragic characters - they often loved the king, but were unacceptable as wives, sometimes merely because they had in fact been the king's mistress; they were often thrown over by the king at the merest whim; if they were lucky enough to maintain a long relationship with king, at his death they often found themselves the target for revenge by the late king's wife, or the new king; and even those who died first, were often stripped of they dignity after death, they houses ransacked, their funerals shunned.
You know, for a work of non-fiction, this book is so terribly touching. It wasn't all glamour for the royal mistress - it was a hard life, a race that had to be continually and strenuously run. My heart went out to these women.
This is a great book, one that I highly recommend to everyone!
(Review of Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge)
Rated by buyers -
Author Herman gives us a racy, fun, interesting, fascinating, sexy look at the 'royals' and their lovers of the past. I enjoyed it and thought she did an outstanding job in bringing some of these flamboyant, humorous characters (and sometimes ugly and nasty) to life for us to have a chuckle in the 21st Century. I also liked her dressed up in her royal dress and crown - nice touch! It's obvious that Princess Diana and the Windsors come from a long history of love, lust and romance. There's nothing new between 'boys and girls' but it's still intriguing and fun to read about it from the past. The research was excellent and I'm sure the author's family lost her many days to the archaives and museums. Imagine what the modern paparazzi could have done with Charles II or Henry VIII, or Lola Montez or Lady Castlemaine? The index was very helpful in keeping all the players straight.
Rated by buyers -
one of the funniest and most interesting books i have ever read. i would highly recommend this book. think of it as a sassy history of monarchs.
Rated by buyers -
this author make history something you want to read.i can't wait for her subsequent book.
Rated by buyers 
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I couldn't wait to read this book, but when I saw the photo of the author in a costume, I started to worry. Very interesting subject material, but the organization made me crazy - people kept jumping back and forth in time, I felt as if I were reading the same story over and over again. And yes, some of the stories were fascinating, but the book seemed like an overlong magazine article. Very disappointing.
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