From mignonnes to mesdames: the rise of the female royal favourite in late medieval and early modern France

Modern scholars and biographers single out Agnès Sorel as a trail-blazer: the first publicly acknowledged maîtresse-en-titre of a French king. For some, she was a female favourite who wielded significant and durable political influence. A few modern scholars claim that Agnès was ‘martyred’ to neutralize this influence. Foregrounding the tradition of polygyny practised by earlier French monarchs, this article confronts assertions of Agnès’s innovativeness and influence. It probes claims of her assassination and her purported political ‘martyrdom’ and demonstrates how Agnès’s residual legacy, rather than any verifiable political influence she might have exercised during her relatively short six-year tenure, exposed a fault line in the political strength of the consortium coniugali, opening a breach that eased the rise of the politically self-aware Grandes Favorites of the early modern period.