Five sisters born into a minor branch of the Roman nobility in the mid-1600s rose to become some of the most powerful and scandalous women in Europe. The Mancini sisters owed their extraordinary ascent to their uncle, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the chief minister of France, who used them as pawns in his political schemes. Their lives were defined by ambition, beauty, and controversy, and they left a lasting mark on the courts of France, England, and Italy. The eldest, Laura Mancini, was born in Rome in 1636.
At fifteen, she was married to Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Mercœur, a grandson of King Henry IV of France, making her a princess by marriage. Laura died in 1657 from complications following childbirth at just twenty years old. Her husband later became a cardinal, and her three sons were raised partly under the care of her sisters. Olympia Mancini, born in 1638, was the second sister.
She married Prince Eugene Maurice of Savoy, and the couple had eight children. Olympia was known for her intrigues at the French court and was rumored to have been a mistress of King Louis XIV. After her husband’s death in 1673, her schemes grew bolder, culminating in her involvement in the infamous Affair of the Poisons in 1679. She was accused of conspiring with the sorceress Catherine Monvoisin to poison Louise de La Vallière, a former mistress of the king.
Although Olympia was exiled from France, she avoided execution. She spent her final years in Brussels, where she died in 1708 at the age of seventy. Marie Mancini, born in 1639, was perhaps the most famous of the sisters due to her rumored love affair with King Louis XIV. The king was said to be genuinely in love with her, but his advisors refused to allow a marriage, insisting he wed a European princess.
Heartbroken, Marie was married off in 1661 to Prince Lorenzo Colonna of Paliano. The marriage was unhappy, and Marie eventually left her husband and spent much of her later years writing memoirs with her sister Hortense. She returned to Italy only after her husband’s death in 1689 and died in 1715 at the age of seventy-five. Hortense Mancini, born in 1646, was considered the most beautiful of the sisters.
In 1661, at age fourteen, she was married to Armand Charles de La Porte, Duke of La Meilleraye, one of the richest men in France. The marriage was disastrous. The duke, who was mentally unstable, became convinced his young wife was unfaithful and subjected her to constant surveillance and humiliation. He even ordered the teeth of some of their servants pulled to prevent them from attracting men.
Hortense fled the marriage in 1668 amid rumors of her husband’s erratic behavior. Finding refuge at the English court in the mid-1670s, Hortense reconnected with King Charles II, who had been a suitor two decades earlier. She became one of his mistresses, but her position was precarious. She was suspected of being a French agent during a period of anti-Catholic hysteria in England, and her relationship with the king soured after rumors spread of a liaison with his daughter Eleanor.
Eventually, she and Charles reconciled and remained friends. Hortense died in 1699, and her estranged husband later seized her remains, parading them across France in a carriage before burial. The youngest sister, Marie Anne Mancini, was born in 1649 and was said to be the most intelligent and attractive of the five. She married Godefroy Maurice de La Tour, Duke of Bouillon, in 1662.
Their marriage was harmonious, and he reportedly tolerated her romantic affairs. Like her sister Olympia, Marie Anne became entangled in the Affair of the Poisons in 1680. She successfully defended herself at trial and was allowed to return to court, though she later retreated to a quiet life in the countryside. She died in obscurity in 1714.
The Mancini sisters produced offspring who became significant historical figures. One of Olympia’s sons, Prince Eugene of Savoy, became one of Europe’s greatest military commanders. The family’s legacy extended into the next generation through Hortense’s descendants, the Nesle sisters, who would become infamous in their own right. The five Nesle sisters were French aristocrats from one of the most prestigious noble families in the country.
Their father, Louis de Mailly, held the title of Marquis of Nesle and was a celebrated courtier and writer. Their mother, Armande Félice de La Porte, was the granddaughter of Hortense Mancini through her father, Paul Jules de La Porte, Duke of Mazarin. The sisters grew up in the glittering world of Versailles, where marriage alliances and court positions determined the fate of noble families. Their extraordinary story revolved around King Louis XV of France.
Born in 1710, the king ascended the throne at age five in 1715. His marriage to Marie Leszczynska in 1725 initially produced a stable family, but by the early 1730s, Louis began to look elsewhere for romantic companionship. Over the next several decades, he acquired a reputation as one of the most notorious womanizers in French history, keeping a succession of official mistresses. But none of his affairs were more scandalous than the rise of the Nesle sisters, four of whom became official mistresses of the same king.
The eldest, Louise Julie de Mailly, was born in 1710. Married at sixteen to her cousin, she became a lady-in-waiting to the queen in 1729, after her mother’s death. That placed her in the center of the royal court just as King Louis began to look beyond his queen. By 1732, she had become the king’s mistress.
Encouraged by the powerful Cardinal Fleury, who preferred a discreet mistress he could influence, Louise Julie was content to enjoy the wealth and status her position brought. Until 1738, the king maintained an appearance of fidelity, but when the queen was warned that another pregnancy could kill her, he ceased sharing her bed, and the court openly embraced the role of the official royal mistress. Louise Julie was shy and devoted to the king, but she made a fatal mistake. Believing she was securing her sisters’ futures, she obtained court positions for them at Versailles.
That decision opened the door for the sister who would eventually replace her. By the late 1730s, King Louis had begun relationships with her younger sisters as well. In spring 1742, she was cast aside in favor of one of them. Forced to leave her apartment at Versailles, she retreated to a convent, where she died in 1751 at age forty-one.
The second sister, Pauline Félicité, was born in 1712. Ambitious, loud, and highly intelligent, she eagerly enlisted her sister’s help to secure an invitation to court. Upon arriving, she wasted no time in seducing the king and became his mistress in 1739, while Louise Julie was still in favor. Pauline was married to the Marquis de Vintimille, who retreated to the countryside while she continued her affair with Louis.
Her rise ended tragically in September 1741 when she died during childbirth at twenty-nine. The child, likely the king’s, was legally recognized as the marquis’s son. After Pauline’s death, nursing her corpse at Versailles was broken into by a mob who desecrated her remains in punishment for her adultery. Marie Anne, the youngest and most ruthless of the five, was born in 1717.
Married at sixteen, she was introduced to court through her sister Louise Julie. When Pauline died and Louise Julie’s position weakened in 1741, the powerful Duke of Richelieu saw an opportunity and backed Marie Anne as the next royal mistress. At a lavish Mardi Gras celebration in 1742, Richelieu arranged a meeting between Marie Anne and Louis XV. Within weeks, she had captured the king’s full attention and was installed as his new mistress.
She was reportedly ruthless in her ambition, demanding that Louis dismiss his other mistresses before she accepted the role fully. She then had her own sister Louise Julie’s furniture removed from her Versailles apartment, a calculated humiliation that made clear her predecessor’s reign was over. Marie Anne then stood at the center of court politics, using her influence to support Richelieu’s ambitions during the War of the Austrian Succession. Her extraordinary rise was cut short when she fell severely ill in the winter of 1744.
Convinced she had been poisoned, she died on December 8, 1744, at just twenty-seven. Rumors of murder circulated at Versailles, though no evidence ever emerged. King Louis was said to be devastated. The fourth sister, Diane Adélaïde, born in 1713, became the king’s consort in the final weeks of 1744.
Her affair with the king was brief and largely opportunistic, lasting only about three months before she was displaced by Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, a commoner who would become the legendary Madame de Pompadour. Diane retired from court and lived quietly until her death in 1769. The fifth sister, Hortense, born in 1715, was the only one of the five who never became the king’s mistress. She resisted the king’s advances, though rumor claimed her husband threatened to kill her if she became his mistress.
Hortense married late at twenty-four and had two children. She outlived all her sisters, dying in 1799 at the age of eighty-four. The Nesle sisters’ collective scandalous legacy proved so remarkable that it outlasted the monarchy itself. In 1765, the painter Charles-André Van Loo created a work titled The Three Goddesses, a mythological scene widely understood to represent three of the Nesle sisters as nude figures.
Nearly three centuries later, the family remains one of the most controversial in European royal history.