Ten Mistresses Who Changed History

The Foreign Goddess

In the late 400s B.C., Athens was a land of opportunity—but not for women. Aspasia, an immigrant from Miletus who taught rhetoric and philosophy (allegedly even to Socrates), had even fewer rights than native women did. She overcame her handicaps by becoming the mistress of Pericles, the powerful Athenian general and statesman. She created a salon where city intellectuals gathered to debate, giving her huge influence over foreign policy. She also introduced the concept of gender equality into Greek philosophical discourse. Her words were recorded by the Greek philosopher Xenophon and later preserved by Roman thinkers Cicero and Quintilian.

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“Aspasia Surrounded by Greek Philosophers” by Michel II Corneille, from Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons.
Conquerer of the Aztecs

In 1519, Spain’s Hernán Cortés was just beginning his conquest of what is now Mexico when a Mayan chieftain presented him with a peace offering of 20 slaves. Among them was Malinche, who had been sold by her aristocratic family after her father’s death. Cortés recognized her beauty and her strategic value: Fluent in the Aztec language, she had no qualms about aiding the white conquistadors against “the people of her birth, who had abandoned her, traded her between them and then offered her as a gift to appease the man they feared,” Abbott writes. Malinche became Cortés' lover and grew so integral to his military strategy that "the natives stopped distinguishing between the two and considered them one indivisible unit." She shares credit for the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, leading to the subjugation and colonization of an entire civilization.

Mural of Malinche and Cortés by Jose Clemente Orozco, from Thelmadatter via Wikimedia Commons.
The Chinese Empress

Cixi (Tz'u-hsi), born in 1835, was a savvy concubine who rose to the top of the Qing Emperor’s harem by conceiving his heir. She used her elevated status to learn how to read and write and about current events, eventually guiding the emperor’s decisions during the Taiping Uprising and, later, his foreign policy. After he died, Cixi demanded to be named Empress Dowager and co-regent to her son. When her son died, she became the leader of China, a position she held for more than 30 years. Three years after her death, the establishment of the Republic of China ended centuries of dynastic rule.

Photograph of Cixi from puyi.netor.com via Wikimedia Commons.
The King's Counselor

Louis XV of France’s mistress Jeanne-Antoinette was enchantingly beautiful, but the sickly commoner couldn't satisfy in the bedroom. (At one point, Louis called her "cold as a fish.") To secure her status, she turned herself into the king’s counselor and friend. As passion faded, her political power grew. She's credited with co-founding the military training academy that Napoleon later attended and building France’s dominant and enduring porcelain industry. Perhaps most important, she was an integral and beloved patroness of artists and intellectuals during the Enlightenment. The entire movement benefited from her support.

Portrait of Jeanne-Antoinette de Pompadour by Jean-Marc Nattier, courtesy the French ministry of culture via Wikimedia Commons.
The Reviled Seductress

Lola Montez, the “Spanish” seductress—born Eliza Gilbert in Limerick, Ireland—shacked up with Franz Liszt and other creative types before she ensnared the heart of old, deaf, choleric King Ludwig of Bavaria. The two had a one-sided affair (which, at Lola’s insistence, rarely included sex): He made her a countess and paid her a small fortune in allowances, while she (likely) slept with the guard he hired to protect her. Lola was so reviled by the people that Ludwig was forced to banish her, but his reputation was already destroyed. After the revolution of 1848, he abdicated the throne and, according to one historian, strengthened Bavaria’s monarchy in the process, as the revolutionary spirit dissipated once Lola and Ludwig left. Eventually, Ludwig realized Lola had fooled him—but only after he gave up the throne.

The Reviled Seductress
Photograph of Lola Montez courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, Southworth & Hayes, via Wikimedia Commons.
Romania's Quasi-Queen

Romania's Prince Carol was so infatuated with the Jewish Elena Lupescu that he abdicated his throne for her—twice. The couple first fled the kingdom in 1925, driven out by anti-Semitic fury. After Carol’s father died and he returned to inherit the crown, Elena became one of the most powerful women in Romania. She controlled cartels, profiting substantially from armament orders, and regularly hosted meetings for influential Romanians at the home Carol had bought for her. Her great power earned her enemies: “Through her meddling in politics, no less than twelve cabinets have fallen and four Rumanian elections have followed on each other’s heels,” one Romanian politician told Time magazine in 1934. “Mme Lupescu is responsible for almost every evil in the country.” During World War II, Romania’s far right, anti-Semitic political party staged a coup and mobs in the street began demanding Elena be killed. Once again, Carol chose his mistress over the crown, and the two left the country.

Photograph of Prince Carol and Elena Lupescu from Wikimedia Commons.
Voltaire's Tutor

Voltaire and the married Émilie du Châtelet became lovers in 1733, prompting the enamored philosopher to write of her: "Beautiful; a good friend, too … She has a genius that is rare/ Worthy of Newton, I do swear." Émilie, 12 years younger than Voltaire, taught him the basics of physics (which she had studied as a girl), and she, too, produced great works of writing. Today, Émilie is revered as one of Europe’s most brilliant physicists and mathematicians. Still, Abbott writes, "Emilie and her contemporaries knew that her status as Voltaire's mistress rather than her genius guaranteed her a significant place in history."

Portrait of Émilie du Châtelet by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, from cabinetmagazine.org via Wikimedia Commons.
The Tormented Author

George Eliot, the famously homely novelist who was born Mary Ann Evans, far eclipsed her married lover, George Lewes, in writing ability. Lewes nurtured his talented yet psychologically tormented mistress, providing the emotional support for her to finish some of her greatest works—Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, and Adam Bede, arguably among the finest novels of the 19^th century. Without his guidance, Abbott writes, Eliot "would have been too frozen by her complexes to create her masterpieces." She took her pseudonym from his name, highlighting the egalitarian nature of their relationship. "He was her muse as much as she was his," concludes Abbott.

Print of George Eliot from Gutenberg.org via Wikimedia Commons.
Queen of the Mob

Chicago’s Virginia Hill was the mistress of the infamous Mafia member Bugsy Siegel. Toughened by a childhood spent with an abusive, alcoholic father, Virginia found that her fearlessness and moxie served her well in gangster society. Though she was most notorious for being Siegel’s moll in the 1940s, she cemented her status through exploits with multiple mobsters (like Joey Adonis) from the time she was 17 until her death—a suicide by poison at age 50. Virginia was “the mob’s most powerful and trusted female member,” Abbott writes. “She was as influential in the power structure as many male gangsters, and no other mob woman has ever achieved such raw power.”

Photograph of Virginia Hill courtesy U.S. Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection.
The Cuban Revolutionary

Like Malinche, Celia Sanchez was the right-hand woman and principal strategist to a man bent on conquering a nation. Sanchez, the mistress of Fidel Castro, was a weapons expert and brilliant grassroots organizer. Though Castro had other mistresses who better fulfilled his sexual urges, Celia remained his confidante throughout his tenure as prime minister and president until her death from lung cancer in 1980. Her intellectual influence catapulted her into prominent government roles, including secretary to the president. “Celia was far too intelligent and capable a woman to sacrifice herself for love,” opines Abbott. “She devoted her life to Fidel because revolutionary principles flowed in her blood as in his.”

Celia Sanchez Manduley courtesy Deena Stryker Photographs, Archive of Documentary Arts, Duke University.