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The story of Madame de Pompadour is one that inspires and motivates persistence, determination and hope. Her name at birth was Jeanne-Antionette Poisson, a name she attributed to oppressive poverty and social limitations. Some of the cultural practices that have seen the oppression and subordination of women over the centuries and decades were inherited to sons after every generation. Yet amid this tirade, there were few women who stood up to the status quo, defied the odds and stood as pilgrims of women liberation. Such was the personality and achievement of Jeanne-Antionette Poisson.
In the 18th century, a girl child was born into the low class entity of the Rue de Clery, with massive limitations all around her. She was born on 29th December 1721 to Francois Poisson, who at that time was a steward for wealthy Paris brokers. The father was soon to leave the country with the law on his heels, after a back market adventure that went wrong. The mother, Louise Madeline de la Motte, had to raise the family alone, in great hardship. At age eleven, Jeanne-Antionette Poisson was taken to a fortune teller by her mother, and it is here that she learnt that she would become a king’s mistress.
 A Mistress Like No Other Nicknamed Reinette (little queen), at the time, Jeanne-Antionette Poisson was determined to be more than just a mistress. In the coming years, she eventually rose, tore through the veil of her low class, bargained a new class status, propelled her destiny, and eventually gained the title of maitresse-en-titre. Louis XV, King of France bestowed on her beyond the measure of a mistress. Her determination had paid, and now her persistent rediscovery, intelligence and wit enabled her to become the most trusted and spoiled King’s mistress in the period 1745 to 1750. For these five years, she earned the right to remain a powerful confidante of the King until she died in 1764. Her twenty years at the court were
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Diane Haeger, a famed historical novelist, achieved a masterful historical picture in The Perfect Royal Mistress, recounting a scandalous love affair that thrived endearingly between King Charles II and his mistress, actress Nell Gwynne, during the English Restoration period. Despite the voluminous amount of details she has incorporated in the story, Diane manages to paint real historical figures in her characters with an accurate sense of time and culture, dominant at that time. This novel is among the very best Diane Haeger has ever written, more so because of its storyline’s believability, plot and characterization.
In a nutshell, Diane Haeger’s The Perfect Royal Mistress relishes on a true-life heroin, raised in the seedy, pathetic public houses of a London already destroyed by fire and plague. Neil, the main character, exploits her extremely capricious wit and charm to gradually catapult herself from desperation as a hawker outside King’s Theater to leading roles on stage. It is this alluring combination of wit, charm and skill, and also her availability and or vulnerability that attracts King Charles II, the insatiable womanizer.
 Perfect Royal Mistress The story of The Perfect Royal Mistress begins with a recounting of the tale of Nell Gwynne, who was born in abject poverty and then raised in a London brothel. She ends up selling oranges outside the King’s Theater, London, to make ends meet. The theatre had just been reopened following double tragedies of the Great Fire and the plague, both of which had totally devastated the world’s glorious city. These were hard times and it was rare to find a gay person, laughing and
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The common definition of a mistress is as a man’s permanent female sexual companion and one with whom marriage has not been solemnized. A man-mistress relationship commonly occurs when the man happens to be married officially or at least legally, to another woman. A relationship between a man and his mistress is generally stable and to an extent permanent, going by accounts of historical royal mistresses. Another ideological perception about mistresses, whether royal, noble or common mistress, was that they were kept women. This inferred that they had their expenses paid by the man in form of allowances.
The history of modern civilization is full of examples of royal mistresses who lived richly satisfying lives, by providing entertainment and pleasure for kings and nobles, to whom they were not married. Yet even in these times, mistresses were not like concubines, their difference being that mistresses had no legal attachment with the man. Historical royal mistresses were beautiful women, maintained in lavish standards by Kings and royals, whom they entertained with sexual pleasure and companionship. In historical accounts, these mistresses were not thought of as prostitutes and debased as such, but respected and accepted in the royal family setup though with resentment from the legal wives and their supporters. A trend in such ladies was that most doubled up as a courtesan and a royal mistress.
 Royal Mistresses In the European 17th and 18th Century courts, particularly in Versailles and Whitehall, royal mistresses wielded great power and domineering influence over a king. Kings were also allowed, or rather known, to keep numerous mistresses with one of the royal mistress being the favorite. The French referred to such a lady as the Maitresse en titre. Louis XV of France had one such favorite mistress, the legendary Madame de Pompadour. One thing about Madame de Pompadour and her counterpart Agnes Sorel, the mistress to Charles VII, is that in their respective times, they exerted great influence to the government and in governance. Their relationship was known and accepted by all, and yet remaining an open secret. It is for these reasons why the names of these ladies have
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