Power, politics, and pillowtalk: The role of royal mistresses in British and French discourses on the legitimacy of monarchical rule, 1714–1774

Abstract

Unlike modern mistresses of politically powerful men, early modern royal mistresses were not merely a scandal that were best concealed from audiences. The royal mistresses were a practice and a phenomenon, even an institution, of the royal courts that had their significant role in contemporary political cultures. The mistress had an established and traditional function in which she, as well as the discourses on her and her actions, served and supported the monarch and the monarchy. However, in 1760 in Britain and 1774 in France two kings acceded to the throne who interrupted the immemorial practice of keeping a royal mistress. By then, the meaning of a royal mistress both as a practice and as a vehicle of political discussion changed. This dissertation examines the role of the royal mistresses in political discourses between 1714 and 1774. Semantically and rhetorically oriented analysis demonstrates how the writers describing the royal mistresses used her semi-fictional figure as a tool to create images and imageries about the right and wrong kind of rule, participated in defining the nature and use of legitimate power, negotiated relations of power, and strived to reassert or remodel conceptions of monarchy as a political system. The figure of the royal mistress has always been a tool of power. Yet, during the eighteenth century, the expanding debates outside the royal courts offered new uses and roles for the figure of the royal mistress. By mid-century, the role of the royal mistress faced changes, and by the 1770s at the latest, the royal mistress no longer served the monarchy in its traditional supporting and protecting role. Rather, her figure formed a tool with which criticism and discontent was directed specifically at the monarchy as a political system, at its fundamentals and its prevailing practices. This was possible due to two simultaneous trajectories. On the one hand, the mistress served as a tool through which debate and criticism was aimed at those concepts, ideals, and practices upon which the legitimate monarchy was constituted. The discourse on the royal mistresses was not essentially revolutionary. Yet, the writers utilised it when challenging certain aspects, practices, or features related to it, as for example when they delegitimated personalness in political decision-making. On the other hand, the curiosity, scandalousness, and triviality related to the royal mistresses served the formation, needs, and demands of the emerging public debate. The semi-fictional and often scandalous figure of the royal mistress offered a popularisable means to simplify complex political struggles, conflicts, and ideas. The seeming trivialness of the discourse on the royal mistresses functioned in favour of distributing a political information and message. Thus, the royal mistress functioned as a nexus in which manifold contemporary concerns and debates were brought together and in which the private and the trivial gained public and political meaning when connected in discussions on legitimate power.