Diane de Poitier, Poisoned by Vanity

Diane de Poitier has been known throughout history primarily for being the beloved mistress of France’s King Henri II.  Only in recent years, has it been discovered that her incessant search to remain beautiful became her demise.

I wanted to write about her because even though her story happened many years ago, the basic underlying feelings , fears and  needs of women don’t change, just the times they lived in.

Few of us can relate to her extremely sumptuous  and palatial surroundings that she lived in till her death , but a lot of us can understand her struggle in relinquishing her youthful looks.   History records that she indeed looked much younger than her years, even after she was 60.

She was born on New Year’s eve of  1499 into a wealthy and noble family from the Rhone Alps region that had ties to French royalty. Legend has it that an old woman in the village predicted that someday she would be elevated higher than that of a queen.

Her mother died when she was only 6 years old, so she was more or less raised by Anne de Beaujeu who was the eldest daughter of Louis XI.  We can say that she grew up in the court and was well schooled in all the rules and regimentary that comprised the  life of royalty.

She learned to read Latin and Greek, the art of courtly conversation, and from youth was an avid sportswomen, who enjoyed riding, swimming in rivers and even hunting.

At the mere age of only 15, she was married off to a man 40 years her senior, Louis de Brézé, with whom she had two daughters.  It was a few years after his death, that she allegedly started her life long love affair with King Henry II.

She had met Henri, when he was  a child , when she was appointed his caregiver and mentor by his father . Henri, who had lost his mother in childhood became extremely attached to her, spending much time with her and apparently she became his first love, which lasted till his death.

When Diane’s husband died in 1531, she was only 31 years old and from that time on she took on wearing the colors of black and white that persisted for the rest of her years.   Approximately 5 years later in 1536, she started her life long affair with Henri, who was 16 at that time and married.

It is said she helped arrange for his marriage when he was  only 14 years old to Catherine de Medici, who actually was a distant cousin of hers, knowing that Catherine would never become a rival to her for the love of Henri. When over 10 years passed without an heir, it was Diane who encouraged young Henri to pay more visits to his wife’s bed chamber.

Throughout his marriage to Catherine de Medici, Henri II never hid his attachment nor love for Diane de Poitier.   His emblem was several crescents forming two letter D’s intertwined with an H as seen in the photo.

She wrote official letters for him and they were often signed Henri-Diane.  He sported her colors and their conjoint emblem on all his belongings, his properties, and including his clothing.

He sought her out exclusively in all court matters and it was Diane who received correspondence from him when he was away, not his wife.  Her apartment was situated just below his in the royal palace of the Louvre.

Henri II gifted her with crown jewels, and castles, one of which was the exquisite Chateau de Chenonceau in the Loire.  She was also given several titles such as the Duchesse of Valentinois, and Duchesse d’Etampes.

Despite the fact that Catherine de Medici eventually bore 10 children from her union with Henri II, the court was well aware that is was Diane de Poitier who was in reality more of a queen than Catherine. Diane often was involved with their children’s welfare and even nursed Catherine  back to health when she had scarlet fever.

There were rumors that Diane had a daughter by Henri called Diane de France, though this has never been confirmed as truth.

Diane’s perfect world came to an abrupt end, when her beloved Henri II was accidentally wounded during a dueling match to celebrate the marriage of his daughter.  The lance penetrated his right eye and lodged in his brain.

Despite the efforts of Ambroise Pare, the famed surgeon, who even used cadavers of executed prisoners to learn techniques of how to remove the lance , Henri II died from a massive cerebral infection.

Though he called out incessantly for Diane before he died, Catherine saw to it that she was prohibited from seeing him in his final days and was not even invited to his funeral.

When Catherine took her power as queen, she asked that the jewels given to Diane be returned and banished her also from Chenonceau, offering the Chateau of Chaumont instead.

Rather than stay at Chaumont, which Diane felt held too many reminders of Catherine, she decided to returned to her own Chateau Anet, where she lived until her death in 1566, at the age 66.

Chroniclers of the time would often describe her as a beguiling beauty, that never seemed to age. She had extremely pale skin, reddish-brown hair and blue-gray eyes. Portraits of her included several in the nude.

Being upheld as a model and the epitome of feminine beauty must have been a difficult task for Diane, as it would for any woman today.  Her beauty secrets apparently went with her to her grave until just a few years ago.

Had it not been for the efforts of her village of Anet, wanting to return her remains to their orignal resting place in the chapel of her Chateau Anet, we would never have known the mystery of her very pale skin, described as almost white,  which was considered the ultimate tint of beautiful women.

In knowing that her corpse was taken from the chapel by French revolutionaries in 1795 and dumped into the village cemetery, it was decided to try to recover her remains to return them to original resting place.    Archeologists, paleontologists and pathologists were asked to try to dig in the area in an effort to recover and identify her remains.

When they dug up skeletal remnants that included a right femur with a fracture, that corresponded to a recorded one Diane had suffered falling off a horse at age 64, they felt it was a good chance the bones were of this noble woman.

Because there was saved locks of her hair kept int the Chateau, geneticists were able to match DNA in the discovered leg bones and mandible as that of Diane de Poitiers.  Further toxicology tests revealed a startling and unexpected discovery.

Diane’s locket of hair and her bones had over 500 the times the level of gold one ordinarily finds.  Knowing that she never wore a golden crown, as she was never officially a queen, it was a puzzle to  how she was intoxicated by such elevated gold levels.

Remembering that during the 16 th century, potable gold elixirs were in fashion as a beauty enhancement, said to preserve woman with youthful traits, it was deduced that Diane de Poitier must have drunk practically daily this potable gold emulsion.

These gold elixirs were prepared also with mercury , which is also toxic to the human body.  Symptoms of gold intoxication was severe anemia, which resulted in very pale skin, and brittle bones.

So while Diane dutifully drank her little gold potion, thinking she was doing the very best that money could afford to help her stay young, she was inadvertently slowly poisoning herself with gold and or mercury.

Heaven knows, any woman can understand the underlying motivation of Dianne to stay as youthful and pretty as she could despite her advancing years.  Things have not changed at al in all these years in so far as the pursuit of endless youth.

Women since eons have used makeup, wigs, tight corsets, and lately advances in cosmetic surgery to defy age.  Diane obviously could have loved to have taken advantage  of the nicks and tucks so common today.

She would have abhorred though the endless tan faces now deemed “beautiful and healthy”. I sometimes think that women must inherit a vanity gene along with their gender, though we are not alone on this vein.

Vanity may be normal in that all women, throughout the ages have been pressured to be seductively coquette  for the male species and keep whatever attractive traits they were lucky enough to be born with as fresh as possible.

Pathologic vanity can lead us into some dangerous pursuits.  Drinking gold potions was not known to have been toxic during her life, so one can not say that Dianne de Poitier was vain in extremis.

None of us would refuse to drink from the fountain of youth, if it were known to be safe and effective, but to put our lives in danger doing unproven remedies is risky at best.  Even when scientists label the latest youth promising craze as safe, further research can turn up dangers down the road.

The thoughts of consumer beware might not have been around in Diane’s time, but today her story merits attention , as it reminds us of the risks in pursuing  any newly proclaimed youth in a bottle mentality.

I would hate to think that any current treatment to retard aging might be on the wrong track, but prudence is called for before throwing yourself to the newest age defying potions of today.