Tracy Adams Rechtschaffen

Tracy Adams is a professor in European Languages and Literatures at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She was a Eurias Senior Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies 2011-2012, an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in the History of Emotions Distinguished International Visiting Fellow in 2014 and a fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek fellowship in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, in 2016. 

She is the author of Violent Passions: Managing Love in the Old French Verse Romance (2005), The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (2010), Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France (2014), Agnès Sorel and the French Monarchy (2022), and Reflections on Extracting Elite Women’s Stories from Medieval and Early Modern French Narrative Sources (2023). With Christine Adams, she co-authored The Creation of the French Royal Mistress from Agnès Sorel to Madame Du Barry (2020). With Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier, she is co-editor of the volume The Waxing of the Middle Ages (2023). 

The project

Title: The Rise of the French Royal Mistress: Women at the Court of Francis

"This monograph explores politics at the courts of Francis I (r. 1515-1547) and Henri II (r. 1547-1549) from the perspective of the circle of powerful women closest to the kings: Louise of Savoy, Marguerite of Navarre, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly, Catherine de Médicis, and Diane de Poitiers. These women were centrally involved in politics, cooperating at certain times, sparring at others, and often working in tandem with women of other kingdoms. It has become clear over the past few decades that French women have always been engaged in political life. Still, the parameters and exact nature of their activity has varied, based on different factors like class, religion, and ethnicity. Particular to the courts of Francis I and Henri II was a development in the role of the royal mistress, whose political significance increased at least partly as a function of the queen’s perceived “foreignness.” In addition, the well-documented theatricalization of royal power and court life, and, more generally, the culture of dissimulation that marked the two reigns, offered an environment that facilitated the development of the royal mistress as an important political figure. Over the course of the two reigns, the royal mistress became a role that was simultaneously recognized and strategically obscured, and the women who occupied the role became integral members of the royal entourage."