#agnes sorel

[amatesura]

Portrait of Agnès Sorel after Jean Fouquet, 16th-Century

[nanshe-of-nina]

Medieval Women Week || Favorite royal mistress ↬ Agnès Sorel

Tradition holds that Agnès Sorel rose “in golden glory like a phoenix from the ashes of dark centuries” to wield “political influence over country and king.” Charles VII laid eyes on her for the first time in 1443 and, within a year, set her up in a household that upstaged the queen’s. For six years, he showered her with gifts and accorded her unprecedented political influence. She then abruptly died of a massive overdose of mercuric chloride. Historians often regard Agnès as the first “official” mistress of a French king. A recent study explains that “in 1444, Agnès Sorel became the first officially designated French royal mistress, when the forty-year-old king Charles VII (1422–1461) selected this extraordinarily beautiful twenty-two-year-old young woman as his mistress. When he presented her to his court and gave her a position within it, he defined a new role for women and defined a new practice for French kings. This recognition . . . gave her a quasi-official status.” One would want to know in what sense Agnès was the first “officially designated” French royal mistress and what the author’s source for the claim is. But it is not footnoted. Later in the text we read that during a “joyous entry” of the same year the king “publicly designated Agnès Sorel as the first official royal favorite.” Once again, there is no footnote. Such impasses are common in the scholarship on Agnès. Any discussion of Agnès’ significance during her lifetime, then, must begin by returning to the sources to see what they actually say. Relative to the other royal mistresses, her career is sparsely evidenced. A handful of documents record the king’s donations to her and others on her behalf, and some mentions in court records are suggestive of her political influence. The physical evidence of her tomb and bones is also significant. We will return to these. But because the resident ambassador did not yet exist, we have none of the detailed letters of daily court life that fill in so much of what we know about the careers of later mistresses, and the genre of the memoir that brings to life the intrigues of later courts did not yet exist. The main source of information on Agnès is the chronicle, which we explore in the first section of this chapter. It is important to recognize that chronicles do not necessarily give an accurate picture of Agnès’ role. Still, they do make clear that the attention the king paid her was perceived as extraordinary, the position he awarded her far above what she deserved. — The Creation of the French Royal Mistress: From Agnès Sorel to Madame Du Barry by Tracy and Christine Adams

[wonder-worker]

[Agnès Sorel] has been paired with her cousin Antoinette de Maignelais in a binary relationship that flatters the former at the latter’s expense.

-Tracy Adams, "Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources"

Different from her nineteenth-century historians, contemporary chroniclers write little that is positive about Agnès Sorel, except that she was beautiful. They are still less enthusiastic about Antoinette de Maignelais. Antoinette’s reputation worsens in seventeenth-century historical romances, where she becomes Agnès’s dark and envious double, sometimes responsible for Agnès’s death. Following Antoinette into the nineteenth century, we find nothing good about her in histories of that period, either, where she is typically depicted as motivated by the desire for wealth. […] Even some recent historians read the cousins in this way. According to one, Agnès’s “replacement was greedy and cynical;” in contrast with Agnès, who had “brightened the maturity of a fragile and tormented man, raising him above himself, Antoinette lowered him to the level of a lustful old man whose excesses outraged his entourage.”

The difference in the reputations, or afterlives, of the cousins is striking. Several factors can explain the discrepancy. The first, as I have noted, is that Antoinette later became the mistress of Duke François II. Breton chroniclers did not describe Antoinette favorably, and the relationship undoubtedly diminished her prestige, suggesting that she was motivated by greed rather than love. In contrast, Agnès died at the height of her glory, adored by the king. Another factor is the Melun diptych, commissioned from painter Jean Fouquet by one of the executors of Agnès’s will and royal favorite Etienne Chevalier, whom we have just seen with Antoinette and the king at the chateau of Ville Dieu. This gorgeous Virgin with child depicted on the left panel of the diptych is said to bear the facial features of Agnès. The image has left an enduring impression of Agnès as both pure and erotic. No image at all memorializes Antoinette, much less a fabulous one like the Melun Virgin. Still another is that Charles VII never married Agnès to anyone, which might suggest a particularly deep affection; in the eyes of historians over the years, the “double” adultery of Antoinette and the king has been regarded as the more sinful of the two relationships.

In addition to these factors, as I have noted, the king fathered none of Antoinette’s children: two of her sons, Artus and Antoine, were fathered by André de Villequier, and two sons and two daughters by Duke François II of Brittany. The king recognized his three daughters by Agnès, and all were handsomely married. This matters because Agnès’s daughters and their families took the lead in shepherding Agnès’s positive image into future generations.

...The Agnès/Antoinette binary, like its Marie/Eve counterpart, allowed the role of the royal mistress to be conceived of positively, anchoring the role in its positive guise to Agnès while pushing negative associations onto Antoinette. For the long-term effect of the binary I return to the narrative of the French royal mistress as it emerged in the nineteenth century, when Agnès and Antoinette became the two essential faces of the role: Agnès as the ideal that justifies or hides Antoinette, the political reality, or, put slightly differently, Agnès as the loving mistress persona giving cover to Antoinette, the political actor. Agnès and Antoinette, beautiful muse versus greedy opportunist, combined, offer a perfect standard for distinguishing the good mistress from the bad and promoting the good. For this reason, Antoinette’s role might be considered a sort of supplément to the role of royal mistress as realized by Agnès, who was typically assumed to have been little interested in politics. Antoinette might be seen as the active element required to complete the role; the cousins together add up to the French royal mistress of the later type.

[grumble-all-you-like]

Favorite royal mistress: Agnès Sorel

[you-belong-among-wildflowers]

Notorious Women → Women of Charles VII’s Court

Though Charles VII had successfully expelled the English and oversaw the conclusion of the Hundred Years’ War, his legacy became largely overshadowed by the women in his life. From the brilliant political strategy of his mother in law, and martyrdom of a young peasant girl, who guided his path to victory, to the love of an extravagant beauty and bitter betrayal by her cousin, each woman’s story correlates with all of his success and ultimate downfall.

[heather123fan-blog]

Day 3: Tuesday, 9th July — Favorite royal mistress (yes, you can still count women who later married their royal lover):

Agnès Sorel (born c. 1422, Fromenteau, France—died Feb. 9, 1450, Anneville) was the mistress (1444–50) of King Charles VII of France, sometimes known as “Dame de Beauté” from the estate at Beauté-sur-Marne, which he gave her.

Born of a family of the lesser nobility at Fromenteau in Touraine, Sorel was attached at an early age to the service of Isabel of Lorraine, queen of Sicily and wife of René of Anjou, who was the brother-in-law of Charles VII. From 1444 until her death in 1450 she was the acknowledged mistress of the king, the first woman to hold that semiofficial position which was to be of so great importance in the subsequent history of the old regime. Her ascendancy dated from the festivals at Nancy in 1444, the first brilliant court of Charles VII. There her great beauty captivated the king, whose love for her remained constant until her death. He gave her wealth, castles, and lands and secured for her the state and distinction of a queen. This first public recognition of his mistress by a king of France scandalized people and awakened jealousy and intrigue. Her sudden death from dysentery, shortly after the birth of her fourth child, was accordingly attributed to poison. Burgundian historians even openly accused the dauphin, afterward Louis XI, of her death, and later the enemies of Jacques Coeur, in their search for crimes to be brought against him, used this rumour to charge him with the one crime most likely to turn the king against him.

Legend has made an entirely different character of this first official mistress of the French kings. The date of her birth was placed at about 1409, her liaison with the king dated from 1433. Then, so the story ran, she drew him from his indolence, continuing the work of Joan of Arc, both by nerving the king to warlike enterprises—she did apparently induce him to take part personally in the conquest of Normandy—and by surrounding him with that band of wise advisers who really administered France during her ascendancy. Later investigation exploded this romantic story by simply showing that Charles VII had not met her until 10 years later than the time of the legend.

[higherentity]

[drolesdedalesalbumphoto]

L'épisode "La cage aux dames".

[fashion-designer-diary]

Agnes Sorel Coiffure

The Definetion of Agnes Sorel Coiffure The Anges Sorel coiffure was a woman  hairstyle design with ribbon bands in the  front and tie in a knot on the back. The  was worn during the 1830s to 1850s

[comeseimportasse]

La speranza di possedere sorpassa il piacere del possesso.

Agnes Grey, A. Brontë

[divinaaugusta]

I´m curious to understand what led perfectly proper upper-class ladies of the mid to late 18th century to pose half-topless, especially when it comes to non-fantasy portraits. I wonder if this happened in pictures alone, or if it was equally usual in real life (as it was back in Agnes Sorel´s time). Not wanting to lie, I recently did a quick search and got something along the lines of "a suggestion of a nipple peaking through the decolletage being considered delicate and chic".

1 and 2- Duplessis, Portrait of the Princess de Lamballe (1780s-1792)

3- Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Elizabeth Grigoryevna Temkina, 1798

4- Jean Baptiste Greuze, c.1780, Le Chapeau Blanc.

5 - Marie-Victoire Lemoine, Portrait de Madame [Comtesse]de Genlis, 1781

6 - Jean-Marc Nattier, Marie-Anne de Nesle, Marquise de La Tournelle, Duchesse de Châteauroux, 1740

[wonder-worker]

“...The custom of calling [Agnès Sorel] the first “maîtresse-en-titre” or the first “official royal mistress,” as the expression is typically rendered in English, make it is easy to overestimate her visibility during her lifetime. But despite the claims of modern historians, the expression “maîtresse-en-titre” was manifestly not invented for Agnès Sorel. No contemporary document refers to her in that way. Indeed, the word “maistresse,” to designate a beloved woman whom one was courting or hoping to marry, begins to appear only later. [...] The composite expression “maîtresse-en-titre” becomes common only around the mid-eighteenth century as a general way of designating a favorite or current mistress, used to refer to the king’s favorite mistress but by no means restricted to this use.

Agnès, then, is never referred to as anything like official mistress. The titles that she held were associated with the properties given her by the king: she was the Dame de Beauté, Roquecezière, Issoudun, and Vernon-sur-Seine, although it is not clear that she actually exercised any real control over these towns. Another thing that the documents do not say is that Agnès was publicly acknowledged as the king’s mistress; it is not true as one historian writes, that in 1444, the king “publicly designated Agnès Sorel as the first official royal favorite” during a joyous entry. There is no trace of such a presentation in any document. Nor was she ever mentioned as the center of attention at any festival [...]

Still, chroniclers were aware of Agnès, and the attention that she receives from them far surpasses that devoted to any other woman of comparable rank of her time. As a basis of comparison, we might take the mistress with whom Charles VII’s father, the insane Charles VI, was supplied to protect the queen from the abuses that he showered on her. Odette de Champdivers figures in exactly one chronicle and then not even by name. The chroniclers who mention Agnès and were either rough contemporaries or active within about fifty years after her death and therefore able to consult people who had known her include Thomas Basin; Jean de Bourdigné; the Bourgeois of Paris; Jean Chartier; Georges Chastellain; Jean Le Clerc; Jacques Du Clercq; Mathieu d’Escouchy; Robert Gaguin; Nicoles Gilles; Jean Juvénal des Ursins; Olivier de La Marche; Thierri Pawels; Pope Pius II, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini. With one exception, Jean Chartier, who claims that the king never touched Agnès below the chin, they affirm that Charles VII loved Agnès madly, that she was beautiful, and several note that the king bestowed inappropriate material favor upon her.

For a hint of her political activity we can turn to Olivier de La Marche, Burgundian memoirist and chronicler, who writes in an entry about negotiations that took place in May and June 1445 that the king had recently taken up with a beautiful lady and that she did much good for the kingdom “by bringing before the king young men-at-arms and excellent companions, by whom the king has since been well served.” This suggests that she was able to influence the king’s appointments. In addition, we have mentions of her influence over the king in three depositions, each related to court factionalism and plots to overthrow the king along with Pierre de Brézé, his righthand man and the dauphin’s nemesis. One recounts, for example, that Pierre de Brézé controls the king through “that Agnès who serves the queen.” In another set of depositions relative to a different bit of political intrigue, the deponent refers to Pierre who has the king’s ear partly through the help of Agnès, “from whom Pierre has whatever he wants.” The same document says that the deponent had been instructed to inform the king that the dauphin was so upset with the king that he, the dauphin, was going to put things in order himself and chase Agnès away. In addition, the deposition lists code names for members of the court. Agnès’s is Helyos: Héloïse? The sun?

Agnès unexpectedly joined the king in Normandy in January 1450, having crossed France, pregnant, to tell him, according to one chronicler, that he was about to be betrayed by some of his people and turned over to the English. She then fell mortally ill of what we now know was a sudden ingestion of a massive amount of mercury. Certain chronicles reference the dauphin’s hatred of Agnès and a handful of sources suggest that he had her poisoned. Simply the fact that contemporaries thought that the dauphin might have done her in indicates a perception that she was influential.

The evidence adds up to what may have been clout with the king, but a profile so low that no ambassador was ever given instructions to seek her out, or, at least nothing indicates that any ever did. Nor is her presence ever mentioned at festivals, something that would have suggested her importance. Ambassadors to François I’s court, for example, routinely mention that François’s most significant mistress, the Duchess of Étampes, was present at court festivities, often mentioning where she was seated and with whom she spoke. But Agnès’s presence at such events was never noted.

-Tracy Adams, "Queens, Regents, Mistresses: Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources"

[goodqueenaly]

Having recently read Thomas Costain’s The Black Rose, I have now also finished another Costain historical fiction novel, The Moneyman. To (very) briefly summarize, The Moneyman is the story of a real-life figure, Jacques Cœur, a merchant raised to the nobility by King Charles VII of France and made the king’s chief finance minister and one of his closest advisors, only to be disgraced and exiled after a false accusation of murder is laid against him by that same king. As I mentioned in my last post, The Moneyman is supposedly GRRM’s favorite of Costain’s works, so I was very intrigued to see if GRRM would borrow any ideas or character models from The Moneyman for his Westerosi works.

Unfortunately, once again I find very little to parallel with ASOIAF. The titular Moneyman himself might be as rich as Littlefinger, but the charges of embezzlement falsely levied against Cœur would be all too accurate if laid at Littlefinger’s door. Indeed, Cœur's deep, honest, but not sycophantic loyalty to Charles VII - a willingness to tell the king the truth coupled with a desire to look out for the best interests of the kingdom - could not be more alien to Littlefinger, whose selfishness and dishonesty are central to his personality. (In fact, the closer parallel to the Moneyman might be someone like Enguerrand de Marigny of The Accursed Kings.) I suppose you could compare Cœur to say, Davos Seaworth - the honest common man raised to the nobility by a grateful king - but Cœur is, well, defined by his substantial personal fortune in a way Davos obviously is not (because he has none, of course), nor can Charles VII’s petty jealousy of Cœur's wealth (and his subsequent willingness to condemn his devoted servant on trumped-up charges) be compared to anything in the relationship between Davos and Stannis. 

Now, is it possible that GRRM took a bit of inspiration from Cœur's trial at the end of the book for Tyrion’s trial at the end of ASOS? Maybe. Just as Tyrion was falsely accused of poisoning Joffrey, Coeur is falsely accused of poisoning Lady Agnes Sorel, the beloved mistress of King Charles. In both cases, the author makes very clear that the accused was not in fact guilty of the crime by setting the reader in the accuser’s point of view at the time of the supposed poisoning, while simultaneously using circumstantial and/or outright fabricated evidence to make the case against the accused seem that much more damning. (Nor, indeed, is an explanation lacking in either case: the author makes clear many times, through Cœur as well as other characters, that Agnes Sorel is too sickly to live long, while Littlefinger explains the Joffrey poisoning plot to Sansa in pretty plain terms after the Purple Wedding.) Just as Tyrion’s physical proximity to and post-murder handling of Joffrey’s wedding cup helped sell the testimonies to his guilt at his trial, so Coeur’s administration of medicine to the dying Agnes Sorel is used by the prosecution to portray Coeur as a fiendish poisoner. Too, much as Taena Merryweather falsely testified that she had seen Tyrion pour poison into Joffrey’s cup, followed by Shae's false testimony as to Tyrion and Sansa’s allegedly conspiracy, so on the stand at Cœur's trial Jeanne de Vendôme fabricates an elaborate story of poisoning which she supposedly witnessed firsthand. Additionally, just as Pycelle (correctly) reported that Tyrion had taken poisons from his stores in order to falsely suggest that Tyrion gave poison to Joffrey, so one witness at Coeur’s trial - a doctor whom Cœur privately derides as a “great windbag … pedantic and opinionated and yet at the same time servile to all forms of authority”, not too far off the mark from Pycelle himself - seizes on Cœur's real, though harmless, mercantile association with the East to falsely link Cœur to the “Eastern poison” which supposedly killed Agnes Sorel. Cœur also offers to confess to a crime he knows he did not commit, in order to save his alleged co-conspirator (though he later rescinds this proposal); somewhat similarly, Kevan offered, in vain, to have Tyrion confess in exchange for permanent exile at the Wall (an offer that I think was genuine on Tywin’s part). 

Now, while Cœur is not allowed to offer any defense on his own part (much as Tyrion was not at his trial), Cœur, unlike Tyrion, actually gets exonerated for the poisoning allegation, thanks to the testimony of an honest doctor who identifies the flaws in the case against Cœur. (Though Cœur is convicted of what Costain asserts were equally ludicrous charges and forced into permanent exile.) Of course, Costain didn’t invent the idea of trumped-up charges and patently untrue accusations in a legal trial (and Costain himself clearly states in his introduction and epilogue that he has, so he believes, adhered as closely to the real history of Cœur's downfall as possible), so it’s not that I think GRRM is uniquely indebted to Costain for Tyrion’s trial. Rather, while I think both are borrowing the same old tropes for similar stories, I can also acknowledge that this specific usage of those tropes may have been part of the inspiration for GRRM. 

[icarian-carrion]

thinkin tisha once had an episode/breakdown and got “iialtasasoof” tattooed on her leg in some crazy font and she had no idea what it meant until she remembered like three months later that she’d been reading about agnes sorel and it’s a reference to her last words.

[aldamiriel-necrococo]

I’m not actively following any Tears of the Kingdom content but from what I gather from posts that cross my path, Link is in his Agnes Sorel era