A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest Weirdest Most Wanton Kings Queens Read Free Page A

upside down. Before he had even ceased breathing, Aubiac was cut down, tossed into a grave and buried alive.
    Don Juan of Austria had once said of Margot: “She looks more like a goddess of Heaven than a princess of earth. Her charms are better suited to ruin men than to save them. Her beauty was sent to damn us.” A succession of ill-fated lovers was proving Don Juan remarkably prescient.
    Over time, Margot’s once breathtaking beauty was fading, but then so was her tyrannical family. After the death of her mother and the assassination of her brother, Henri, both in 1589, she was the last of the Valois line. As French law barred women from inheriting the throne, it went to the nearest male relative. He happened to be Margot’s long estranged husband, who became King Henry IV. With him began the Bourbon line of French kings. A genuine friendship developed between the childless couple and, for a fat settlement, Margot agreed to divorce Henry so he could remarry and start a family.
    Obese and heavily made up as she aged, often sporting a little blonde wig, Margot started to look like a caricature of her former self. As she reveled in her freedom, her libido became exaggerated as well. Where once only noble gentlemen shared her bed, now she had her way with a series of virile young nobodies, among them the son of a local coppersmith, a shepherd, a strolling musician, and a son of a carpenter. The ex-queen took good care of her men, giving them positions and titles, and even sometimes arranging advantageous marriages for them. One, however, made her mad when he proved too devoted a husband to the maid she had chosen for him, leaving poor Margot out in the cold.
     
    The French monarchy reached its glorious pinnacle during the long reign of Henry IV’s grandson, Louis XIV (1643-1715), only to sputter out completely in the years following Louis XVI’s execution in 1793. If Louis XV—who reigned in between—had any idea he was occupying a throne teetering toward collapse, he wasn’t about to let that ruin a good time. And a good time for Louis meant massive amounts of sex.
    Successfully conquering a boyhood shyness around women, Louis XV became so insatiable that he had a private bordello established for himself at Versailles. This ensured a woman would be available whenever he needed one, which was most of the time. While over the years Louis had a number of official mistresses installed at court—including most famously Madame Pompadour, who wielded enormous power due to her influence on the king, and Madame Du Barry, a former prostitute plucked from obscurity to service him in splendor—they weren’t always enough to satisfy this monarch’s unrelenting libido. Certainly his homely and uninspiring Polish queen, Marie Leczinska, wasn’t up to the task. She pooped out after giving Louis ten children in ten years.
    At one point during the king’s priapic career, he went through five sisters in succession—most of them already married. “Is it faithlessness or constancy to choose an entire family?” went a popular verse of the time. The first of the sisters, Madame de Mailly, was Louis XV’s very first mistress. After she had initiated the king to the pleasures of adultery, she made the mistake of inviting her sister to court. “You bore me,” Louis sniffed as he unceremoniously dismissed Madame de Mailly and replaced her with her sister, Madame de Vintimille. This one only had a brief tenure with Madame de Vintimille dying less than a year later while giving birth to the king’s bastard. She was replaced by yet another sister, Madame de la Tournelle, who was somewhat wiser than her siblings. She demanded the title of duchess, a large apartment in Versailles, an unlimited allowance, public pregnancies, legitimatized bastards, and the exile of her already discarded sister, Madame de Mailly. She got everything she requested, but perhaps forgot to ask for protection from two more sisters waiting in the wings. They