Quick Review

The Kings' Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin by Elizabeth C. Goldsmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I know when the sun's blazing away and we all of us, supposedly have gone off to sit on white sand, rub coco-butter on one another and read trash. I am not altogether immune. Occasionally, I too find I want something not quite so dense or dark or demanding as a serious novel, or some magisterial history. When the mood's on me, whatever the weather, I might read or reread a romance -- in the older meaning of a great love story and adventure, ala Dumas, not Danielle Steel. If that's my mood though, I might as likely pick a new book of history, or historical biography, preferably at least a little familiar as to period and place, but of person or people if not altogether unknown to me, then largely so. There should be, as in any good romance, intrigue, sex, money and danger. And I'd rather the subject not be a fool or a bore -- which, for instance, leaves Marie Antoinette and nearly all the royal Stuarts out. The dazzling nieces of a great and powerful Cardinal/chancellor of the King of France? Now that, is some fun.

And it was, great fun. These women are bold, bright, accomplished and funny. Their lives are fraught with all manner of peril and excitement almost from the day they are brought from their native Italy to the French court. One by one, Mazarin's nieces are made to marry, and one by one these marriages prove to be at best, most interesting and at worst oppressive and actually dangerous. Indeed, this might all be from a novel by Dumas père, but for the present author's interest not so much in the tragedy of these ladies, but in their flight, and the brave fight each put up for her own independence in a day when even the notion of such a thing was scandalous if not impossible. That very modern aspect of this history elevates it from just another tale of court, courtesans and kings. These are a couple of very interesting women, and here at last they get their due.

It's all perfectly fascinating, handsomely documented, and well told. Here then a pair of pretty and poignant beauties, too smart for the traps laid for them, their flight and their respective ends. Just the thing for a long, romantic summer evening, I think, anyway.



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