Sex, a political object?

The French historian René Rémond, who died in 2007, summed up the answer to this question in a shocking phrase: sex, he wrote in 1987, entered politics in 1968! Does this aphorism imply that sex and politics, prior to that date, lived in separate spheres, intersecting only in the private lives of political actors and actresses?

To make such an assertion would be to do injustice to all kings, of France and elsewhere. Among them, the ball of wives and mistresses was undoubtedly driven by the playful moods of some or the more or less well-contained impulses of others. But it was also permeated by unfathomable political designs, in a back-and-forth between the right to an intimate life and games of power and seduction.

An activity reserved for men? Not at all: Catherine II of Russia collected