Agnès Sorel

On February 9th 1450, Agnès Sorel, Lady of Beauty, first official mistress of a king of France, Charles VII, died in Jumièges. And thus ended one of the most beautiful medieval love stories. Her end was the opposite of what her life had been by the king's side: an influential life that was very favourable to her sovereign, whom she helped ceaselessly in his reconquest of the kingdom. Spurred on by her, France awakened and recovered the prestige it had lost during the Hundred Years War.The reconstructed country could then successfully enter a new era, the Renaissance, a time that was to turn France into a model for the world. Chateaubriand was right when he wrote that of all the royal mistresses, Agnès Sorel was the only one who had been useful both to her king and her country. Yet she was to die suddenly at the age of 27. In 2004, a scientific study of her remains finally proved once and for all that she had been murdered, revealing the expedient used for this purpose.The encounter of this unknown young woman and of her royal lover gave birth to an incredible lineage: almost all of the European imperial and royal families, the families of two French Presidents and some dozens of thousand anonymous people share this precious inheritance, which makes her the most beautiful and endearing "grandmother" of Europe.