Being a mistress is hard work. I didn’t have to read Sex with Kings to know that, but I suppose a little European context never hurt anyone. Basically, marrying a queen for a womb or an international alliance led kings to pursue mistresses. Many mistresses accepted the thankless jobs because it was an opportunity to increase their stature even for very short periods of time. Sex, money, power—the game hasn’t changed that much in several hundred years. But I thought I was going to read a totally different book. I was hoping for stories of women who parlayed their dalliances into some grand shift in fortune. A couple did some good in the world, a couple went on to live happy lives with husbands and children, but most were utterly ruined. The last thing I wanted from this book by a woman who has committed her life to writing about women was to read about how many beautiful but stupid, ugly but good in bed, sinister but desperate women were literally thrown away after their reign as the royal mistress. It was hard to read. The author claims from the outset that there’s very little record of the royal mistress but since she took enough license to write about the smell of their perfume or what a mistress might have been thinking, she could have been gracious enough not to belittle and belabor her subjects with the same trite descriptors we use to create hierarchies among women today. That’s my fault though, for wanting something different. I guess having sex with a king or the husband next door will still ruin a woman. I’m going to have to write the book where that isn’t the case.