A Danish Royal Affair

From History Today:

In 1769 the German outsider, Johann Struensee, arrived in Copenhagen as the physician and companion to the deranged Christian VII. By the end of that year he had not only made great political strides in a country that had the most complete absolute monarchy left in Europe, but had also become the lover of the queen, George III’s youngest sister, Caroline Mathilde. With her agreement, and the acquiescence of the king, Struensee took over the running of the state and attempted to transform Denmark into a model of enlightened absolutism. Struensee and Caroline Mathilde had a daughter; radical reforms multiplied; chaos mounted; enemies massed; violence and tragedy ensued.

Now, thanks in part to the surge of popular interest in Scandinavia, the first film to tackle the story has been released. A Royal Affair stars Alicia Vikander and Mads Mikkelsen. 

It is a beautiful film, tonally taking its cue from the historical epics of Luchino Visconti. Like these, it builds tension to gathering disaster with visual clues. The director, Nikolaj Arcel, is creditably true to the facts. At no point does he seriously deviate from the historical record. But this is a feature film not a documentary attempt to recreate the past and, like every historical fiction, it is therefore also necessarily a portrait of the present. 

Remains of Legendary Succubus Mistress of Liu Fei Excavated

From China Daily:

A Dayunshan Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) tomb in Xuyi county is a great discovery for Jiangsu province. The host of the tomb is Liu Fei, the elder brother of Emperor Hanwu and the first King of Jiangdu.

Two dishes, inscribed with the Chinese characters "Naoshi", were found by the Archaeology Institute of Nanjing Museum and the Dayunshan Han Dynasty tomb archaeology team. The dishes are the first unearthed remains which are not directly relevant to the King of Jiangdu, Liu Fei. According to archaeologists' analysis, "Naoshi" dishes are consistent with the historical "Naoshi", the succubus mistress of Liu Fei.

Li Zebin, deputy director of archaeology Institute of Nanjing Museum and leader of the Dayunshan Han Dynasty tomb archaeology team, said the unearthed dishes vividly present a succubus mistress of "King of Jiangdu" and play an important part in the research of scenes from 2,000 years ago.

Mistresses Who Changed History

From Slate:

Before Monica Lewinsky, Camilla Parker Bowles, or Marilyn Monroe, there was Hagar—the world's first known mistress.

Several millenniums later, the mistress remains a tenuous position, as historian Elizabeth Abbott explores in her new book, Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman, out this week. Since Hagar's era, however, a handful of women have learned to parlay their scandalous relationships into positions of power—and some have changed history in doing so.

The accompanying gallery illuminates the lives of 10 women who used their time wisely. Each won a place in the history books because of their male attachments. But without their own formidable talents and intellects, most would not have been so admired by their lovers in the first place. Beauty, for these seductresses, was only the beginning.

See also: "Why mistresses have everything to do with marriage" from Huffington Post.

Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman

From the Telegraph:

The role of the mistress is as old as love and matrimony, but harder to define than either. Elizabeth Abbott, a Canadian academic whose previous books include a history of celibacy, has taken up the challenge in Mistresses: a History of the Other Woman.

Abbott writes that it was while researching her book on celibacy that “I came to realise that mistressdom is, in fact, an institution parallel and complementary to marriage. Though many people assume that adultery undermines marriage,” she notes, “many others believe that, paradoxically, it shores marriage up.” The material, in short, could hardly be richer or more complex.

In 13 chapters, beginning with illicit love in the ancient world and concluding with the changing role of the mistress after the sexual revolution of the Sixties, Abbott considers the careers of mistresses in a variety of different eras and cultures.