Sex with the Queen by Elizabeth Herman
This is, quite possibly, the worst non-fiction book I have ever read. A comment on a previous post in the comm reminded me of it, and I thought I should share. Forewarning, like a literary lighthouse.
It all started in the introduction. I had misgivings going in -- it was, shall we say, an ever so slightly romanticized account of history. I was afraid that instead of recognizing that women like to have sex, even women who are queens, it would be all "Theirs was a towering and illicit passion! They loved each other deeply!" And then the introduction revealed to me that my fears were more than substantiated.
On page 7, Herman writes (bolding mine):
A scientific means of establishing paternity was not developed until the blood test of 1927. Until then, to ensure that the next generation of royals possessed the sanctified substance, the queen had to maintain strict fidelity to her husband. The ancient double standard -- men rutting with mistresses while their wives sewed altar cloths -- was rooted not in misogyny, but in biology.
Which . . . ugh, what? I'm pretty sure that's still misogyny. Distrust of women based on the fact that they have wombs that might incubate another another man's child? Isn't hatred/distrust toward people who have female sex organs and/or a feminine appearance basically the definition of misogyny?
And then, two pages later (pp 9-10), she writes:
If the queen followed the traditional pattern of bearing children, embroidering altar cloths, and interceding for the poor -- pious duties that the Virgin Mary would likely have approved of -- even if she took a lover she was usually left in peace. There was rarely reason to shoot down a political nonentity at court. But an intelligent ambitious woman who spoke her mind and built up a faction was always open to the accusation of adultery by her political rivals, whether the accusation was true or fabricated.
Which, again, misogyny. Women stepping outside of a narrowly constrained role in order to speak her mind and receiving a negative response in the form of allegations of adultery? Dude, it is going to take some fast talking to convince me that is not misogyny.
So, I have read a lot of books that I'm sure many people would classify as bodice rippers, and those books seriously have nothing on this work of non-fiction. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I was expecting this to be a history book, not a "let's use our imaginations!" book.
On Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland:
When thirteen-year-old Margaret Tudor bedded the thirty-year-old James IV of Scotland in 1503, she found to her horror not only that her husband jumped on top of her and poked her, but that he wore an iron chain around his waist, which he never took off, and to which each year he added another link for his sins. We can imagine how the rusty links felt on her tender flesh. (p. 21)
Can we? CAN WE REALLY? Jesus Christ. Not footnoted/endnoted, of course, so we've no idea where she's getting her information. "We can imagine . . ." We can't imagine shit! Stop it!
On Margaret of Valois as a collector:
Margot reportedly collected the embalmed hearts of her lovers and put them into small silver boxes, which she hung inside her hoopskirt on chains. Over the years, she built up quite a collection. (p. 47)
Of course this isn't footnoted/endnoted. And of course the author contradicts herself in the next paragraph by calling the boxes "tin" not silver. Which was it? The bibliography's two pages long, and I'm not reading all those books, so I'm just going to assume that it's a big fatty lie. It just seems so farfetched, not to mention impractical. It doesn't take much to upset the balance on a hoopskirt, even a farthingale, and I think a bunch of lover's hearts in silver boxes would make her skirt hang seriously lopsided, not to mention the clanking.
On the gifts queens gave their lovers:
If a king gave his mistress an obscenely expensive diamond necklace, all other women at court would turn pea green with envy. Naturally, such a gift was not suitable for a man; the queen’s lover wanted honorary orders for distinguished service, medals edged with dazzling diamonds and colorful fluttering ribbons. Many of these men had never fought a battle in their lives, but still eagerly sought decorations for martial valor. Their goal was to stride through palace corridors with an entire galaxy of shimmering stars and clanking medals on their chests. (p. 52)
OK, this isn't actually all that ridiculous, but it put the most ridiculous little scene in my head. I imagine the queen's lover striding through the halls of the royal palace, looking like the sparkliest Eagle Scout ever, and some newbie courtier leaning over to an old pro courtier to whisper, "What an awful lot of medals! What are they all for?" And the old pro courtier gives the lover one disparaging glance, and says, "Fucking."
Which probably only proves that my brain is as messed up a place as Eleanor Herman's.
On Ice Age sex:
Human nature being what it is, we can assume that back in the cave the mate of the powerful chief -- the man who wielded a big stick to bring home mammoth meat -- looked with lust upon a muscular young hunter and wondered about the size of his stick. Alas, records of Ice Age love affairs simply don’t exist. (p. 55)
Oh, yeah, too bad. Og have big penis. Og beat mammoth to death with penis. Because Og is ALL THAT IS MAN. Only, you know, expressed in cave paintings.
Oh, wait. Ideas about masculinity and ideal penis size have fluctuated throughout history and by culture, so it's just stupid to speculate about attitudes toward sex for peoples for whom the only records we have are cave paintings and chips of stone and bone.
On the affair between Isabella of France (wife of Edward II) and Roger Mortimer:
On a visit to her family in France, Isabella took a powerful lover who would help her wage war against her husband. Roger Mortimer, in his early forties, had been one of Edward’s successful generals against the Scots. But when the king confiscated his lands and castles, Mortimer became his deadliest enemy. Confined to the Tower of London, Mortimer arranged to have the guards drugged, rappelled down the battlements on a rope, swam the Thames, and escaped to France.
We can imagine that first night when Queen Isabella let Mortimer into her room. She had known only the smooth girlish hands of Edward upon her; in their most intimate joining her husband must have fantasized that he was actually making love to Piers Gaveston. And now this heated warrior took her, roughly at first, then tenderly. And he never, ever, imagined she was a man. (p. 59)
OH MY GOD. I literally burst out laughing when I read this. "And now this heated warrior took her, roughly and first, then tenderly." Seriously. How do you know, author lady? How do you know!? Were you there? Did you discover the secret diaries of Isabella of France? Is Roger Mortimer actually Lord Flashheart? Woof!
I just . . . how can anyone write something like that with a straight face? In a work of non-fiction? I'd cringe to read that in a romance novel, folks. And there's so much projection there! Of course Edward imagined Isabella was actually Piers Gaveston when he was having sex with his wife. Of course Roger Mortimer fucked like a double hung stallion. Of course he never imagined she was a man, because he was ALL THAT WAS MAN and there just wasn't room for another ego that size in the bed.
::headdesk::
Seriously, this is not how you write a non-fiction book. This much speculation only belongs in fiction, and really, probably shouldn't be written at all, given the lack of subtlety there. It's so hamhanded.
Which brings us to my least favorite part, the part which filled me with disgust for a book which I had already been growling at every other page. And that is Herman's take on Henry VIII's sex life.
Let us imagine the queen’s duties in the royal four-poster. The king would likely have suffocated his petite bride if he had perched on top of her. He must have required her to ride astride him, careful not to disturb the stinking wound on his thigh. She who had played with the charming Manox, who had rutted with the sexy Dereham, now had to perform loathsome sex acts on an obese and smelly old man. We can picture the happy king, perfectly sated, snoring, as his young wife lay silently beside him, her heart sinking. And the following day her bright eyes wandered to the young and handsome courtiers dancing gracefully before her as she sat on the throne next to Henry, who was too fat to dance.
It was no surprise that Catherine fell in love. Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber and a favorite of Henry’s, was in his late twenties, personable and polished. Culpeper was young while the king was old, slender and healthy while the king was fat and sick, merry while the king was sullen. Trim and athletic, the virile Culpeper offered her exquisite delights instead of the rising disgust she must have felt in bed with Henry. There was no festering sore on his muscular thigh, no mountain of fat on his tight belly. (p. 79)
OH MY GAWD. Do I let that speak for itself or do I say something? Like . . . aaah! Surely Henry would have crushed her with his terrible girth! Obviously his solution to this was forcing her astride him! And then he snored. Herman knows this because of her learnings!
I cannot tell you how many big guys married to small women I know. None of their wives have been crushed -- that I know of. I suppose there could be some flattened wives stored under the bed or something. Possibly. Maybe. Anything could happen.
While I'm willing to admit that Thomas Culpeper was more attractive to Catherine than Henry at that point in his life, the way Herman has written about it is not necessary to express that. It's just not. It's rude and insulting to larger men and simply not necessary. This woman is a terrible person.
I am also faintly surprised that she said nothing about Henry VIII's supposed impotence, which would make the above scene totally unnecessary to imagine, because it wouldn't have happened. But I suppose that would have been difficult for Herman to sensationalize and insert fat man snoring into.
The book goes on to discuss later queens and their lovers, but it's all more of the same. I seem to remember that the chapter on Catherine the Great was really enraging, but it's been so long since I've read it that I can't remember quite what it was. I pulled this from the journal entries I wrote at the time I was reading this, and at some point I just got too fed up with the book to snark it.
This book is everything that gives pop history a bad reputation. Which is shame, because there are some really good pop history books out there that aren't all speculation and schlocky sex scenes. I don't know how to break this to everyone, but The Tudors? Not actually a documentary. This book? While it predates The Tudors, is pretty much that show without the benefit of Jonathan Rhys Meyers brooding everywhere in leather pants. Just like shouting isn't good acting, wild speculation on the sex lives of royalty is not good history writing. Writing about the impact that a queen's affairs had on politics, drawing from primary and some secondary sources, would be good history writing, but this book does not do this.
One brief example of awesome was uncovered, though, and it's not because of Herman's writing. She's just quoting Marguerite-Louise d'Orleans, who was the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and married to Cosimo III de'Medici in the late 17th to early 18th century. Profoundly, deeply, unhappily married. So much so that she wrote her husband this letter:
“No hour of the day passes when I do not desire your death and wish that you were hanged . . . ,” she informed Cosimo in what must be one of the nastiest letters ever written. “What aggravates me most of all is that we shall both go to the devil and then I shall have the torment of seeing you even there. . . . I swear by what I loathe above all else, that is yourself, that I shall make a pact with the devil to enrage you and to escape your madness. Enough is enough, I shall engage in any extravagance I so wish in order to bring you unhappiness. . . . If you think you can get me to come back to you, this will never happen, and if I came back to you, beware! Because you would never die but by my hand.” (p. 96)
This was written while she was living in a convent in France in order to escape living with her husband in Tuscany, where he and his father had arranged to have her basically imprisoned in the ducal palace. And then Cosimo was all, "Hey, baby, why don't you come back to Italy?" So she wrote the letter!
The book also says that when a prioress moved into the convent that Marguerite-Louise disliked, she chased the prioress around the convent with an axe and a pistol, swearing to kill her, but I think I want corroboration of that before I believe it, since Herman doesn't cite it. And honestly? I would want corroboration if Herman said the sky was blue at this point.
It all started in the introduction. I had misgivings going in -- it was, shall we say, an ever so slightly romanticized account of history. I was afraid that instead of recognizing that women like to have sex, even women who are queens, it would be all "Theirs was a towering and illicit passion! They loved each other deeply!" And then the introduction revealed to me that my fears were more than substantiated.
On page 7, Herman writes (bolding mine):
A scientific means of establishing paternity was not developed until the blood test of 1927. Until then, to ensure that the next generation of royals possessed the sanctified substance, the queen had to maintain strict fidelity to her husband. The ancient double standard -- men rutting with mistresses while their wives sewed altar cloths -- was rooted not in misogyny, but in biology.
Which . . . ugh, what? I'm pretty sure that's still misogyny. Distrust of women based on the fact that they have wombs that might incubate another another man's child? Isn't hatred/distrust toward people who have female sex organs and/or a feminine appearance basically the definition of misogyny?
And then, two pages later (pp 9-10), she writes:
If the queen followed the traditional pattern of bearing children, embroidering altar cloths, and interceding for the poor -- pious duties that the Virgin Mary would likely have approved of -- even if she took a lover she was usually left in peace. There was rarely reason to shoot down a political nonentity at court. But an intelligent ambitious woman who spoke her mind and built up a faction was always open to the accusation of adultery by her political rivals, whether the accusation was true or fabricated.
Which, again, misogyny. Women stepping outside of a narrowly constrained role in order to speak her mind and receiving a negative response in the form of allegations of adultery? Dude, it is going to take some fast talking to convince me that is not misogyny.
So, I have read a lot of books that I'm sure many people would classify as bodice rippers, and those books seriously have nothing on this work of non-fiction. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I was expecting this to be a history book, not a "let's use our imaginations!" book.
On Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland:
When thirteen-year-old Margaret Tudor bedded the thirty-year-old James IV of Scotland in 1503, she found to her horror not only that her husband jumped on top of her and poked her, but that he wore an iron chain around his waist, which he never took off, and to which each year he added another link for his sins. We can imagine how the rusty links felt on her tender flesh. (p. 21)
Can we? CAN WE REALLY? Jesus Christ. Not footnoted/endnoted, of course, so we've no idea where she's getting her information. "We can imagine . . ." We can't imagine shit! Stop it!
On Margaret of Valois as a collector:
Margot reportedly collected the embalmed hearts of her lovers and put them into small silver boxes, which she hung inside her hoopskirt on chains. Over the years, she built up quite a collection. (p. 47)
Of course this isn't footnoted/endnoted. And of course the author contradicts herself in the next paragraph by calling the boxes "tin" not silver. Which was it? The bibliography's two pages long, and I'm not reading all those books, so I'm just going to assume that it's a big fatty lie. It just seems so farfetched, not to mention impractical. It doesn't take much to upset the balance on a hoopskirt, even a farthingale, and I think a bunch of lover's hearts in silver boxes would make her skirt hang seriously lopsided, not to mention the clanking.
On the gifts queens gave their lovers:
If a king gave his mistress an obscenely expensive diamond necklace, all other women at court would turn pea green with envy. Naturally, such a gift was not suitable for a man; the queen’s lover wanted honorary orders for distinguished service, medals edged with dazzling diamonds and colorful fluttering ribbons. Many of these men had never fought a battle in their lives, but still eagerly sought decorations for martial valor. Their goal was to stride through palace corridors with an entire galaxy of shimmering stars and clanking medals on their chests. (p. 52)
OK, this isn't actually all that ridiculous, but it put the most ridiculous little scene in my head. I imagine the queen's lover striding through the halls of the royal palace, looking like the sparkliest Eagle Scout ever, and some newbie courtier leaning over to an old pro courtier to whisper, "What an awful lot of medals! What are they all for?" And the old pro courtier gives the lover one disparaging glance, and says, "Fucking."
Which probably only proves that my brain is as messed up a place as Eleanor Herman's.
On Ice Age sex:
Human nature being what it is, we can assume that back in the cave the mate of the powerful chief -- the man who wielded a big stick to bring home mammoth meat -- looked with lust upon a muscular young hunter and wondered about the size of his stick. Alas, records of Ice Age love affairs simply don’t exist. (p. 55)
Oh, yeah, too bad. Og have big penis. Og beat mammoth to death with penis. Because Og is ALL THAT IS MAN. Only, you know, expressed in cave paintings.
Oh, wait. Ideas about masculinity and ideal penis size have fluctuated throughout history and by culture, so it's just stupid to speculate about attitudes toward sex for peoples for whom the only records we have are cave paintings and chips of stone and bone.
On the affair between Isabella of France (wife of Edward II) and Roger Mortimer:
On a visit to her family in France, Isabella took a powerful lover who would help her wage war against her husband. Roger Mortimer, in his early forties, had been one of Edward’s successful generals against the Scots. But when the king confiscated his lands and castles, Mortimer became his deadliest enemy. Confined to the Tower of London, Mortimer arranged to have the guards drugged, rappelled down the battlements on a rope, swam the Thames, and escaped to France.
We can imagine that first night when Queen Isabella let Mortimer into her room. She had known only the smooth girlish hands of Edward upon her; in their most intimate joining her husband must have fantasized that he was actually making love to Piers Gaveston. And now this heated warrior took her, roughly at first, then tenderly. And he never, ever, imagined she was a man. (p. 59)
OH MY GOD. I literally burst out laughing when I read this. "And now this heated warrior took her, roughly and first, then tenderly." Seriously. How do you know, author lady? How do you know!? Were you there? Did you discover the secret diaries of Isabella of France? Is Roger Mortimer actually Lord Flashheart? Woof!
I just . . . how can anyone write something like that with a straight face? In a work of non-fiction? I'd cringe to read that in a romance novel, folks. And there's so much projection there! Of course Edward imagined Isabella was actually Piers Gaveston when he was having sex with his wife. Of course Roger Mortimer fucked like a double hung stallion. Of course he never imagined she was a man, because he was ALL THAT WAS MAN and there just wasn't room for another ego that size in the bed.
::headdesk::
Seriously, this is not how you write a non-fiction book. This much speculation only belongs in fiction, and really, probably shouldn't be written at all, given the lack of subtlety there. It's so hamhanded.
Which brings us to my least favorite part, the part which filled me with disgust for a book which I had already been growling at every other page. And that is Herman's take on Henry VIII's sex life.
Let us imagine the queen’s duties in the royal four-poster. The king would likely have suffocated his petite bride if he had perched on top of her. He must have required her to ride astride him, careful not to disturb the stinking wound on his thigh. She who had played with the charming Manox, who had rutted with the sexy Dereham, now had to perform loathsome sex acts on an obese and smelly old man. We can picture the happy king, perfectly sated, snoring, as his young wife lay silently beside him, her heart sinking. And the following day her bright eyes wandered to the young and handsome courtiers dancing gracefully before her as she sat on the throne next to Henry, who was too fat to dance.
It was no surprise that Catherine fell in love. Thomas Culpeper, a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber and a favorite of Henry’s, was in his late twenties, personable and polished. Culpeper was young while the king was old, slender and healthy while the king was fat and sick, merry while the king was sullen. Trim and athletic, the virile Culpeper offered her exquisite delights instead of the rising disgust she must have felt in bed with Henry. There was no festering sore on his muscular thigh, no mountain of fat on his tight belly. (p. 79)
OH MY GAWD. Do I let that speak for itself or do I say something? Like . . . aaah! Surely Henry would have crushed her with his terrible girth! Obviously his solution to this was forcing her astride him! And then he snored. Herman knows this because of her learnings!
I cannot tell you how many big guys married to small women I know. None of their wives have been crushed -- that I know of. I suppose there could be some flattened wives stored under the bed or something. Possibly. Maybe. Anything could happen.
While I'm willing to admit that Thomas Culpeper was more attractive to Catherine than Henry at that point in his life, the way Herman has written about it is not necessary to express that. It's just not. It's rude and insulting to larger men and simply not necessary. This woman is a terrible person.
I am also faintly surprised that she said nothing about Henry VIII's supposed impotence, which would make the above scene totally unnecessary to imagine, because it wouldn't have happened. But I suppose that would have been difficult for Herman to sensationalize and insert fat man snoring into.
The book goes on to discuss later queens and their lovers, but it's all more of the same. I seem to remember that the chapter on Catherine the Great was really enraging, but it's been so long since I've read it that I can't remember quite what it was. I pulled this from the journal entries I wrote at the time I was reading this, and at some point I just got too fed up with the book to snark it.
This book is everything that gives pop history a bad reputation. Which is shame, because there are some really good pop history books out there that aren't all speculation and schlocky sex scenes. I don't know how to break this to everyone, but The Tudors? Not actually a documentary. This book? While it predates The Tudors, is pretty much that show without the benefit of Jonathan Rhys Meyers brooding everywhere in leather pants. Just like shouting isn't good acting, wild speculation on the sex lives of royalty is not good history writing. Writing about the impact that a queen's affairs had on politics, drawing from primary and some secondary sources, would be good history writing, but this book does not do this.
One brief example of awesome was uncovered, though, and it's not because of Herman's writing. She's just quoting Marguerite-Louise d'Orleans, who was the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and married to Cosimo III de'Medici in the late 17th to early 18th century. Profoundly, deeply, unhappily married. So much so that she wrote her husband this letter:
“No hour of the day passes when I do not desire your death and wish that you were hanged . . . ,” she informed Cosimo in what must be one of the nastiest letters ever written. “What aggravates me most of all is that we shall both go to the devil and then I shall have the torment of seeing you even there. . . . I swear by what I loathe above all else, that is yourself, that I shall make a pact with the devil to enrage you and to escape your madness. Enough is enough, I shall engage in any extravagance I so wish in order to bring you unhappiness. . . . If you think you can get me to come back to you, this will never happen, and if I came back to you, beware! Because you would never die but by my hand.” (p. 96)
This was written while she was living in a convent in France in order to escape living with her husband in Tuscany, where he and his father had arranged to have her basically imprisoned in the ducal palace. And then Cosimo was all, "Hey, baby, why don't you come back to Italy?" So she wrote the letter!
The book also says that when a prioress moved into the convent that Marguerite-Louise disliked, she chased the prioress around the convent with an axe and a pistol, swearing to kill her, but I think I want corroboration of that before I believe it, since Herman doesn't cite it. And honestly? I would want corroboration if Herman said the sky was blue at this point.