Diane de Poitiers

Diane de Poitiers was a French noblewoman who became the long-term favourite of Henry II of France. Nearly twenty years older than the king, she exercised influence over patronage, diplomacy and court appointments and received valuable estates, including the Château de Chenonceau. Her position overshadowed Queen Catherine de’ Medici during much of Henry’s reign. After Henry died from a tournament injury in 1559, Catherine removed Diane from court and compelled her to exchange Chenonceau for Chaumont.

Diane is a major figure in Alexandre Dumas’s The Two Dianas and appears in many novels about Catherine de’ Medici and the Valois court, including Jeanne Kalogridis’s The Devil’s Queen. Historical fiction often turns the two women into simple romantic rivals, but their conflict also concerned wealth, access to the king and control of royal policy. Diane’s cultivated image of beauty and classical symbolism gives novelists unusually rich visual material.

In Jean Plaidy’s Madame Serpent, Humiliated and unloved, Catherine spies on Henry and his lover, the infamous Diane de Poitiers. In Rozsa Gaston’s Queen of Diamonds, as Anne encounters Leonardo da Vinci, Diane de Poitiers and the consequences of Mary Boleyn’s choices, she learns that brilliance at court offers opportunity only to those who can also control scandal. Other novels featuring Diane de Poitiers include Dorothy Dunnett’s Queens’ Play.