The scandalous (“porn”) queen, Margaret of Valois
The next French king was Henry IV. († 1610). Son of Henry III. He was known as a notorious womanizer. Henry IV married to Margaret of Valois in 1572. The wedding was followed by a horrific massacre: tens of thousands of Protestants were killed in a massacre known as “St. Bartholomew’s Night”. Then, Henry practically lived as a prisoner with his wife in the Louvre for four years. And as horrible as the wedding was, so did the marriage. Margaret was only truly Henry's wife for the first three years, but she kept lovers from the beginning.
Henry and Margaret hated and despised each other all along. The queen was extremely intelligent, but also unbalanced and hysterical.Margaret was also a nymphomaniac (here you can read about another nymphomaniac woman, Messalina, who was also wife or ruler). She may have been oppressed by her infertility and sought solace for it. What is certain, that she had sexual intercourse with every prince and butler boy she had ever met. Her adventures also often caused scandal in the relaxed atmosphere of a 16th-century French court. Henry did not trust his wife, considered her as a spy for the royal family. And he was right about that. And Margaret despised her husband, who was a poor compare to the Valois.
In 1576, when Henry escaped from the courtyard, he left not only his opponents there, but also his wife. The marriage was no longer restored, Margaret became embroiled in more and more scandals.
The masculinity of the king
Henry IV’s masculinity is one of a stable fact of French history. But perhaps only a fraction of the legends about him are true. Even then, there is no doubt that many noble women and peasant girls, and sometimes even a nun, spent the night with her. Henry was lovingly called “Vert-Galant” by his soldiers, a “good cock”. This name has also passed into the public consciousness. However, the stories that he was a “sexual athlete” is only partially true. The king was nineteen years old, when he got married at he released from his marriage when he was forty-seven. He and his wife lived separately for twenty-five years, so he had no hope of having legal heirs from each other.
Henry IV’s lovers
Besides several adventures and two unloved marriages, he had only three serious loveful relationships.
Corisande
Henry found a proper companion at the age of thirty. She was Countess Diane de Gramont. The king called this, beautiful and clever widow Corisande. She was also thirty years old, when they met. Henry IV. was not able to spent too much time with Corisande during the years of the Civil War, but he sent her plenty of letters.
He told her everything. He boasted of his military successes to her, but about his illnesses and anxieties in an almost childish way. Over the years, Corisande became from a lover a soulmate.
Gabrielle
In 1590, Henry fell in love with a barely seventeen-year-old aristocratic girl, Gabrielle d ’Estrées. The beauty of the woman was well known. When Henry saw her, he immediately fell in love. At first, however, Gabrielle did not reciprocate the emotions of the thirty-eight-year-old king. However, the girl's family recognized this as a great opportunity. So Gabrielle became the king's lover. But in order to avoid the scandalum she entered into a name marriage with an upscale nobleman. The king in love lavished the girl’s family with estates and plenty of money, and the girl with beautiful jewelry.
The king's love did not decrease over the years, and he even decided to marry Gabrielle. The ruler easily separated his lover from her obedient husband, but she had a harder time dealing with her own wife. Margaret didn't oppose the divorce, but she wanted to extort as much money as possible from Henry, furthermore, she did not want the king to marry below rank. So the negotiations dragged on. However, the king had already decided at that time to marry Gabrielle, who gave 3 children to him: Caesar, Catherine, and then Alexander.
In 1599, the king kept two irons in a fire. He waited for the pope to annul his marriage to Margaret. And Gabrielle was already trying on her wedding dress while pregnant. However, fate intervened. Gabrielle died in childbirth in the spring of 1599. Her wedding dress was only given to her at the funeral.
Henriette
The king's pain was sincere and boundless. But he soon found solace. In the summer, as negotiations continued on his new marriage, the king already had a new lover. She was Henriette d ’Entragues, barely 17 years old. Henry, after marrying the fat and dull Medici Mary in 1600, practically lived in bigamy with his wife and lover for several years. In 1601, Mary Medici gave birth to the long-awaited heir Dauphin to the throne, He became Louis XVI. Then Henriette gave birth to a boy for a month. The following year, Henry had a daughter from both women, a few weeks apart.
The king loved his children equally, and he raised his heir to the throne together with the royal princes and his descendants born of his lover.
Charlotte
In 1609, fifty-seven years old Henry was considered old when he became “mortally” in love again. The daughter of his old comrade-in-arms. Charlotte, had just turned fourteen.
Henry then noticed the beautiful girl. But she was not a simple court lady, but a girl from an upscale family. Plus, she was a virgin. Therefore, as was the custom of the age, Henry looked around to find a “understanding husband” for her. He chose one of his relatives for this role, Prince Condé Jr.
Prince Condé was one of the most noble lords of France, so no one could object.
Prince Condé, perhaps because of his terrible childhood, he was a clumsy, grimly man. Plus, everyone in the court knew, that he had homosexual adventures (remember how natural this was for the ancient Greeks). The king needed just such a husband!
However, the young prince unexpectedly rose to self-awareness and refused to play the role intended for him. After the wedding, he took his wife to his country mansion. The king also undertook ridiculous adventures, in order to see Charlotte. Henry even visited the beautiful girl in disguise. The young woman was flattered by the royal attention. Some night she appeared in a nightgown on the balcony of the castle. Even with untangled hair, which according to the morals of the age was synonymous with “half-naked”! Prince Condé hated the king's courtship and simply “kidnapped” his wife. The young couple fled to Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands. Henry could no longer see his beloved little Charlotte because a few months later, he was stabbed by a fanatical Catholic assassin.
Read about Henry II. of France here!
