Born into an aristocratic French family in January 1500, Diane de Poitiers wanted for nothing. Her father, Jean de Poitiers, was one of the most cunning nobles of his day, and Diane inherited both his intelligence and his ambition—two dangerous traits for a woman of her time. At fifteen, her family placed her on the marriage market, and she caught the eye of Louis de Brézé, a grandson of the old King Charles VII. They married in 1515.
The match brought her family enormous prestige, but it was a personal horror story: her new husband was nearly forty years older than she was, practically one foot in the grave by the life expectancy of the day. Perhaps that is why she began to act out. Diane was already famous for her boundless energy, and marriage only increased her restless activity. In 1523, her life was ripped apart when her husband, a loyal royalist, uncovered a plot against King Francis I.
He exposed the men involved—unaware of one crucial detail: Diane’s father was right in the middle of the conspiracy. The king sentenced Jean de Poitiers to execution. Diane and her relatives worked tirelessly to save him, and her persuasive powers eventually convinced Francis to stay the execution, but the damage was done. Jean went to prison for years, and his health never recovered.
Diane was none too happy with her blundering husband, but she would get her revenge soon enough. King Francis’s son, Henry, was only seven years old when Diane was a blossoming woman in her twenties, yet she made quite an impression on the boy. When the prince went to Spain in 1526 as a diplomatic hostage, Diane—serving as a lady-in-waiting to his grandmother—gave the boy a ceremonial goodbye kiss. It was a small gesture with enormous effects.
Historians now believe that following that moment, young Henry began to develop a massive crush on Diane de Poitiers. He spent four long years in Spain as a hostage, and every one of those years he yearned for her, idealizing her in his mind as the perfect gentle woman. When Henry returned to France in 1531, he immediately set tongues wagging. At the coronation of his new stepmother, Queen Eleanor of Austria, all of Henry’s family wore the new queen’s colors as a gesture of respect—except Henry.
The twelve-year-old wore Diane’s colors instead, in a public declaration of his obsession. Months after coming home, the prepubescent prince began trying to seduce the thirty-something Diane. Then her elderly husband finally died. Diane broke free from her shackles and reinvented herself as a single woman.
She could see how in love Prince Henry still was, and she was no fool. She craftily used his crush for her own benefit, keeping herself at arm’s length from his bed while getting closer and closer, consolidating her power over him. But there was a bump in her plan: every prince needs a wife. In 1533, Henry’s family married the fourteen-year-old off to Catherine de’ Medici, an Italian noblewoman from the notoriously wealthy Medici clan.
At first, Diane might have thought she was in trouble. But Catherine played right into her hands. Catherine wasn’t particularly good-looking, while Diane was a noted beauty. And while Diane came from aristocratic stock, people sniffed at the new bride’s common merchant origins.
Diane understood that Catherine was an asset she could control. Just months after Henry’s marriage, Diane committed the act that has gone down in infamy: at thirty-five years old, many historians believe she slept with the now fifteen-year-old Henry herself, finally giving the prince what he had wanted for so long. After years of maneuvering and playing the long game, Diane de Poitiers was officially a royal mistress. Catherine de’ Medici was wild with jealousy, but Diane knew what to do.
She positioned herself as not quite Catherine’s friend, but at least an experienced adviser to help her learn the ropes of court. Catherine’s duty as Henry’s wife was to give him an heir, but there was one huge problem: as the months rolled into years, then into a decade, Catherine and Henry remained childless. This was very bad news for Diane too, who feared having to ingratiate herself with a new queen if there were a royal divorce. Diane started recommending all sorts of fertility treatments for the increasingly despondent Catherine, including drinking mule urine.
Throughout these years, Henry stayed so glued to Diane’s side that she had to insist he go to Catherine’s marriage bed more frequently, hoping he could finally produce a legitimate heir. In 1543, Catherine was pregnant at long last. In January 1544, she gave birth to a coveted boy, Francis. Incredibly, nine other children followed in short succession, with Catherine constantly pregnant for over a decade.
But if Catherine thought this meant she’d gotten rid of Diane, she was wrong. With Catherine’s fertility issues resolved, Henry proved his love to Diane with a grand gesture in 1544. An enemy at court accused Diane of being involved in a plot against the king, and Francis banished her from Paris. Henry was furious.
He and his followers left the royal court and went to Diane’s château, refusing to speak to his father for a year. In 1547, Diane got what she always wanted: Henry’s father died, making her lover the King of France. The minute he took the reins, Henry swept Diane back into the court’s inner circle and banished many of the enemies who had exiled her. Diane was on top of the world, which meant there was nowhere to go but down.
Her reign as the shadow queen of France started gloriously. She even got a legendary dig at the newly minted Queen Katherine when the pope sent Catherine the customary Golden Rose, a ceremonial floral sculpture—and also included a pearl necklace just for Diane. Henry relied on Diane for advice, even getting her to write letters for him and signing them under a joint name. While he gave Diane political power hand over fist, he staunchly kept Catherine away from his affairs.
Then, mad with lust and love, Henry gave his mistress—not his wife—the literal crown jewels of France, infuriating Catherine. Then he gifted Diane with the gorgeous Château de Chenonceau, a palace both women had their eyes on. Diane immediately moved in and started throwing lavish parties, rubbing it in Catherine’s face. For Catherine, this was the final straw.
The gloves were now off. In public, Catherine restrained herself, but her private life reveals a dark truth: the queen of France was spitting with bitterness. People always considered Diane a beauty, and as she grew older, she kept the glow of youth. She had good genes, but rumor had it she also drank liquid gold in the hopes of eternal beauty.
Just as Diane was about to turn sixty, her whole world changed. In 1559, she was attending a jousting tournament to watch her lover, King Henry, try to best all the men of his court. The king was insultingly wearing Diane’s signature black and white colors as he jousted. But karma was finally coming for them.
When the king faced the rookie Count of Montgomery, the upstart almost knocked the monarch right out of his saddle. Annoyed, the king demanded they ride again to prove his dominance. He should have walked away. On the next run, Montgomery’s lance splintered right into the king’s face.
When the dust settled, horror rained down: Henry’s face gushed with blood, and wooden splinters embedded themselves in his eye. The sight was so gruesome that Diane, Catherine, and Prince Francis all fainted. Five splinters of the lance buried themselves in Henry’s head, and one pierced through his eye and into his brain. The next few days were agony for everyone.
As Henry’s life hung in the balance, Diane was nowhere to be found. Catherine had taken full control of the situation, and Diane stayed away from Henry’s sickbed for fear Catherine would embarrassingly dismiss her. Still, Diane held out hope. For a while, it looked like the king would make a miraculous recovery.
Some days he could talk, he often listened to music, and he even dictated letters from his bed. Then, in July, Henry’s health and mental state went into decline. He gradually lost everything: his sight, his sanity, and then his life. On July 10, 1559, Diane’s constant companion passed at the age of forty.
Her rival, Catherine de’ Medici, was now the powerful queen mother to Henry’s young legitimate son, Francis. Diane’s influence at court had depended completely on Henry’s devotion to her. After his passing, she experienced a rude awakening. Catherine was in full vengeance mode, and she set her sights squarely on Diane.
She forced the former mistress to give back the coveted crown jewels and yanked back the Château de Chenonceau. In what was almost certainly a dig at Diane, Catherine took up the image of a broken lance as her emblem after her husband’s death—the lance Henry had decorated with Diane’s colors at the time of the accident. The end of Diane’s life was even more tragic than her fall from grace. Losing favor at court, she retreated to her château, watching from afar as Catherine meddled in France’s affairs.
She might have staged a comeback, but she didn’t live long enough. Soon after Henry’s demise, Diane suffered a horrific fate that mirrored her lost lover’s. Ever the athlete, she stubbornly refused to stop riding horses with all the vigor of a woman forty years younger. In 1565, at sixty-four, she fell off her mount, incurring enormous injuries.
She never quite recovered, and died a year later, all while Catherine was at the height of her powers. But this wasn’t Diane’s last indignity. Hundreds of years later, during the French Revolution, citizens opened Diane’s tomb, desecrated her remains, and threw them in a mass grave with other aristocrats of France’s bygone age. This dishonor opened up a stunning discovery.
With Diane free from her stately tomb, modern historians gained more liberal access to her remains, and in 2009, their findings shocked the world: French experts discovered traces of gold in her hair. The stories of Diane drinking gold were likely true—and this dangerous beauty regime may have led to her sharp decline. Diane de Poitiers was certainly worthy of the obsession Henry heaped on her, and she knew it. Of all the royal mistresses in history, she may have been the vainest.
She even made her likeness into a sculpture of a Roman goddess and put the statue in the middle of one of her castles. Another favorite pastime was posing nude for portraits. Some historians now believe one of the most famous possible depictions of her is François Clouet’s Lady in Her Bath, partly because nude portraiture was just her thing. Queen Catherine de’ Medici and Diane de Poitiers had one of the bitterest rivalries in royal history, and it was Catherine who struck the most hateful blow.
We now know that the entire time King Henry II lay dying, he called out for Diane to comfort him on his deathbed. Catherine’s response was devious and coldhearted: she staunchly refused to let her dying husband see Diane in his final moment, and the lovers never got to say goodbye. Perhaps even more cruelly, Catherine barred Diane from Henry’s funeral, leaving his most devoted companion bereft at his passing.