FRANCE 3 PREPARING EPIC TV SERIES WITH ISABELLE ADJANI AS 16TH CENTURY ROYAL MISTRESS DIANE DE POITIERS & NICOLAS DUVAUCHELLE AS KING HENRY II OF FRANCE

  DIANE DE POITIERS SERIES 

SENDS ISABELLE ADJANI TO THE 16TH CENTURY FRENCH COURT

As every other year, we usually spend the month of January announcing all the international epic projects to expect in the future, and earlier this week in our spotlight on French period set projects that will air this year, I

Isabelle Adjani will take the titular role

mentioned that France 3 is preparing a two 90 minute episode mini series DIANE DE POITIERS in which Isabelle Adjani will play the titular royal courtesan, who, endowed with insolent beauty and daring manager intermingling with politics, shared with King Henry II (Nicolas Duvauchelle), twenty years her junior, the most burning passion in the history of France. In so doing, she defeated two dangerous rivals: the sovereign whose name was to associate her name with the bloody Saint Bartholomew and a royal favorite educated in the art of poisons. Jean Reno, Jeanne Balibar and Mathieu Amalric will also star in this 16th century historical saga. It is interesting that almost 20 years after playing queen Margot, the daughter in law of Catherine de Medici, Adjani will now play the lover of Catherine's husband.

DEZZY'S HISTORY LESSON

Henry met Diane when he was seven and she was his grandmother's lady in waiting, well in her 20s. She will later on become his royal mistress, when he was 15 and she 35, and advisor until his death. She even took part in the

Nicolas Duvauchelle will be King Henry II

choosing of his future wife and supported the choice of Catherine de Medici. As Diane didn't give him a child, she made sure that Henry's visits to the marital bedroom would be frequent, to the point that he had ten legitimate children. Diane even helped nurse Catherine back to health when she fell ill. Although he had affairs with other women as well, Diane remained his lifelong companion and was France's most powerful woman for 25 years. When the pope sent presents to Catherine, he would  send them to Diane as well. Thanks to her loyalty she was Henry's most trusted ally at the court and as such was even in charge of the education of his and Catherine's children and of the crown jewels while Diane's daughter from her previous

Diane was almost two decades older than Henry II

marriage was in charge of Queen's house hold. Diane kept her status while the king was alive but when he got wounded in a tourna- ment, Catherine did not allow Diane near the king's deathbed nor to his funeral. She spent the rest of her life comfortably in a chateau outside Paris where she died at the age of 65. During the French Revolution, her tomb was opened, her corpse desecrated, and her remains thrown into a mass grave. When French experts dug up her remains in 2009, they found high levels of gold in her hair. It is suggested that the "drinkable gold" that she "reportedly" regularly took, believed to preserve youth, may have ultimately killed her.