Louis XIV's Mistresses

This room displays Louis XIV's "private family" — relatives outside his official wife and the children born of that marriage. Louis XIV married once officially and twice privately, and he also had more than three mistresses. His only official queen was Marie-Thérèse of Spain, a political marriage arranged to secure peace between France and Spain.

Louis XIV is said to have poured far more passion into his mistresses and illegitimate children, however. A portrait of one of those mistresses, Madame de Montespan, hangs in the center of the room, shown together with the illegitimate children she bore the king. An illegitimate child, by definition, is born outside a legally recognized marriage — confirming that Montespan was never queen in her own right. Still, her influence was considerable: her opinions frequently shaped the king's diplomatic decisions and his handling of the nobility, and while her children had no claim to the throne, they enjoyed the status of royal nobles at court.

Madame de Maintenon, whose portrait also hangs here, served as governess to Montespan's children. Born the daughter of a convicted criminal, Maintenon endured a poor childhood, married a man in his forties at age fourteen, and entered a convent after his early death. There she mixed with the nobility before being brought to Versailles as a governess. At that time, Madame de Montespan — prone to fierce jealousy — was suspected of poisoning a rival mistress. It was into this atmosphere, with Louis XIV weary of Montespan's jealous rages, that Maintenon arrived. The two eventually held a secret marriage. Louis XIV is said to have loved Maintenon so deeply that he never looked at another woman again after meeting her, though the couple never had children of their own — by the time they fell in love, Maintenon was already in her late forties. The child shown with her in the portrait is her nephew.