Diane de Poitiers, scheming narcissist, drama queen and pedophile, lived a life of luxury
and prestige as mistress to King Henry II of France where she rose to great heights
only to have it all come tumbling down in the end.
Diane de Poitiers was certainly worthy of the obsession that Henry II heaped on her
as his mistress in the royal court of France; and she knew it.
She was both beautiful and extremely vain; perhaps the most vain of all the royal mistresses
in history.
She even went so far as to brand herself into the image of a goddess when she designed an
emblem of three overlapping crescents, modeling it after Diana, the (ironically virginal)
Roman Goddess of the moon and the hunt and claimed that as her symbol of her own personal
brand.
She even made her likeness into a sculpture of the Roman goddess and put the statue in
the middle of one of her castles; as well as having dozens of portraits painted of her
as the nude and semi nude goddess of the hunt (pun intended).
As the mistress of Henry II, Diane put herself squarely in the crosshairs of Henry's wife,
Catherine de Medici, The Serpent Queen; something that would later catch up with her.
Their rivalry was so intense that things got really ugly with public digs from Diane towards
her queen and private musings of Catherine as she awaited her chance for revenge.
There is some debate as to when Diane de Poitiers first started sleeping with Henry; he may
have been as young as 14 or a bit older than that; while Diane was an adult 20 years his
senior.
Either way, Henry who became King Henry II at age 28 was obsessed with Diane and had
been since he was a young child; and when he married Catherine de Medici at age 14,
the obsession was already in full force.
Catherine herself was only 14 and an easy target for the likes of Diane.
Diane was extremely intelligent having proven it by amassing a tidy fortune while she was
married to an odious man 40 years her senior.
She may have been a naive young girl once herself, but by the time her odious husband
died and left her a wealthy widow, Diane had learned the ways of the world; and of a vicious
royal court.
Henry's obsession with her made it easy for Diane to not only bed the young prince but
establish a power base as chief mistress.
Upon the death of her husband, Diane wore only the colors of black and white, (both
colors of mourning in 16th century France), with never a variation.
This was her presenting herself at court as a devoted widow and the perfect lady, while
scheming for greater things.
Once Diane had complete control of young Henry's heart, soul and dare I say, body, she was
in a power position.
So much so that Henry came to rely on Diane for statecraft advice, even getting her to
write letters for him and signing them under the joint name of “HenriDiane.”
They even had a monogram made with the letters of their first names intertwined as in an
embrace.
Essentially, Catherine de Medici, was relegated to playing the role of the docile wife but
all the while, she too was learning the strategies and tactics by which a woman could garner
power in a man's world.
Diane had managed to stay just on the edge of Catherine de Medici’s good side throughout
those early years but Catherine was never fully accepting of Diane.
She endured even while Henry gave his mistress (not his wife) the literal Crown Jewels of
France.
Added to that the insult of gifting Diane with the gorgeous Chateau de Chenonceau, a
palace that Catherine coveted for herself.
But then the power scales tipped in Catherine's favor.
In 1559, when Diane was approaching the age of 60, Henry was injured in a jousting match
(where by the way, he was wearing Diane's colors of black and white) and died a few
months after that from wounds encountered in the joust.
As King Henry’s life hung in the balance, Catherine de Medici took full control of the
situation and adamantly refused to let Diane by Henry's sick bed, even as he was calling
out Diane's name.
Months after the jousting incident, Henry’s health and mental state went into a decline,
and he gradually lost everything: His sight, his sanity, and then his life on July 10th,1559
Diane’s only claim to fame had passed at the age of 40, and her rival Catherine de
Medici was now the powerful Queen Mother to Henry’s young, legitimate son, the new king,
Francis I.
Diane’s influence at court had depended completely on Henry’s devotion to her, and
after his passing, she experienced a very rude awakening.
Queen Regent, Catherine de Medici, was in full-on vengeance mode, and she set her sights
squarely on Diane.
She not only forced the former mistress to give back those coveted Crown Jewels, but
she also yanked back Diane’s beautiful Chateau de Chenonceau.
To exact a final revenge, Catherine barred Diane from Henry’s funeral, leaving Diane,
clearly, out in the cold.
Diane de Poitier's fall from grace was very public and very precise.
After losing favor in court, she knew it was game over and she retreated into the background
to Château d'Anet in northern France, watching from afar as Catherine de Medici rose to a
power that few women of her time and place in history could ever hope to achieve.
Soon after King Henry II's untimely demise, Diane suffered a horrific fate in much the
same manner; from the back of a horse.
In 1565 when she was 64 years old, Diane was out riding when she fell off her mount, incurring
enormous injuries.
She never quite recovered.
The infamous mistress tried her best to keep going but died a year later, when Queen Catherine
de Medici, was at the height of her powers in France.
Sadly, however, this wasn’t Diane’s last indignity.
Hundreds of years after she died, during the French Revolution, the enraged citizens opened
up Diane’s tomb, desecrated her remains, and then threw them in a mass grave along
with other aristocrats of France’s bygone age.
Thus was the tragic end of Diane de Poitiers, Rival Of Catherine de Medici, The Serpent
Queen.
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