Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France [Hardcover]

Lisa Hilton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 2002

As lovely and charming as she was shrewd and calculating, AthÈnaÔs de Montespan became the most powerful noblewoman of her day by brilliantly manipulating her forbidden role as mistress of King Louis XIV. With a lively narrative style that reads like fiction, Lisa Hilton reveals the woman behind the most dazzling days of the Sun King's reign.

As a lover, AthÈnaÔs risked the disgrace of adultery to conduct an affair that scandalized Europe. As a patron, she supported the leaders of the cultural renaissance, including MoliËre and Racine. As a mother, she was the ancestor of most of the royal houses of Europe. The greatest beauty of her day, she lived publicly and sensationally until bizarre accusations of witchcraft forced her from grace in the "Affair of the Poisons," a mystery that remains unsolved.

ATHŠNA¦S is an informative and thrilling look at a true age of extremes and a woman who achieved the heights of power at a time when it was denied to most of her sex.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beautiful, haughty, well bred and, by the author's account, "a superlative lover," Athenais de Montespan was a shoo-in for the role of official mistress to King Louis XIV. Despite being married, she spent 12 years in a passionate relationship with the Sun King, commanding his attention in a way that his own wife couldn't: she teased him, told him jokes, even scolded him and threw tantrums, and he rewarded her with not only his adoration, but jewels bigger than those he gave his wife. In independent scholar Hilton's well-researched but unevenly paced account of Montespan's "reign," the queen, Marie-Therese of Spain, is a pitiful and unattractive blight on the royal landscape, unable to compete with Montespan's manifold attractions. It may be true, but Hilton's scathing descriptions of the other women who crossed Louis's path-one was "so extremely plain" that a platonic relationship "was the best she could hope for," while Marie-Therese with her "lumpy Hapsburg nose" was "frankly far too unattractive" for sex with her "to be anything more than an obligation for the king"-raises questions about her evenhandedness. Distracting, too, is her tendency to wander off the topic, though some of the tangents are memorable-among them, that red-headed wet nurses were unpopular in 17th-century France because redheads were thought to be "a product of sex during menstruation." The life of a royal mistress usually offers an intriguing perspective on her lover's reign, and Montespan is no exception, but Hilton's debut biography would have had more impact if she had been more focused in choosing her material. 8 pages of b&w photos.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This fascinating historical romp chronicles the life of Athenais, patroness of the arts and notorious mistress of the Sun King, Louis XIV of France. Although the beautiful and intelligent marquise de Montespan became Louis' favorite mistress and bore him several children, she was eventually accused of witchcraft and attempting to obtain poisons for unsavory purposes. In addition to documenting the incredible adventures of a woman who lived brazenly, defying seventeenth-century conventions, this biography also provides an intimate glimpse into court life. The elaborate political intrigue and complex machinations that characterized life at Versailles are resurrected in dramatic detail. Hilton provides both a captivating portrait of a multifaceted woman and a window to a long-lost world. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1ST edition (December 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316084905
• ISBN-13: 978-0316084901
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,416 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Publisher should have known better!, January 6, 2004

By 

Jane Smith "Bluestocking in Lotus land" (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France (Hardcover)

I have been studying the Bourbon dynasty for many years, and am very familiar with the subject. Having just re-read Frances Mossiker's fabulous "Affair of the Poisons", I was intrigued when I spotted "Athenais" at a local bookstore. Over the course of 40 minutes I didn't read the whole thing, but certainly glanced over most of it, especially the sections dealing with the Poisons incident.

I was shocked to see that she had lifted whole passages from Mossiker, with the barest attemp at re-phrasing! I found Mossiker in the bibliography, but nowhere was she footnoted in the entire chapter!

Disgusted, I looked at the "Author"'s credentials too see who this lazy person was - a writer for VOGUE! What the F***?

The publisher couldn't even get the lingerie on the cover right! Why was the cover model in a VICTORIAN nightie?

I sincerely hope this book is not representative of the state of scholarship on this subject.

I give it one star for having given employment to the guys at the presses.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Athenais c'est mauvais, February 24, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France (Hardcover)

I found this book to be spectacularly unfulfilling. It had neither the depth to be considered as a scholarly work nor the level of characterization for a fictionalized history.

The main character remains, throughout the work unknown and undeveloped. Most of the information presented appears to be a fairly standard summation of previous works which is not assisted by the author's tendency to jump erratically from period to period with little regard for continuity.

In summary, not a book which could be recommended.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Athenais's true love is NOT Louis XIV, it's Lisa Hilton!!!, May 14, 2005

By 

A. Masion "history lover and realist" (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France (Hardcover)

I've been fascinated with the decades of the Sun King's reign and the impact of his egomania on his country since I was 7 years old. Obviously, his women were a significant part of his life.

There are several things in Hilton's book that disturb me, not the least of which is her persistent effort to justify Athenais's worst personality traits as well as to either villify or ridicule her rivals. I mean, honestly, it's pushing it to depict Athenais as being "right" in abusing her friendships with the Queen and Louise de La Valliere (Louis's first mistress, who Athenais replaced) in order to "get closer" to the King and secure his "favor," only to turn around and depict Madame de Maintenon (who supplanted Athenais) as some sort of horned monstrous ingrate for "taking advantage of her benefactress to steal her love."

The reality of that era is that virtually the only person who had any real control over who he favored and slept with was Louis himself.

The speculation/conjecture about the Affairs of the Poisons, while perhaps not entirely unreasonable, still clings to the idea that Athenais was some sort of heroine ill-used and abused by the system of the times.

The book is not a total loss, but its extreme bias leaves me wondering if the author has first-hand experience of being the "other woman who got cheated on." Athenais is an intriguing figure in history, there was no need to canonize her less than admirable behavior at times. I would have had more respect for the work if there had been a little more objectivity to that point.