Search: du barry
Why: I was reading "1001 rules for my unborn son" - which you should also read if you have the rest of the day to kill - and I stumbled on "1001 Rules for my Unborn Daughter," which is not quite as insightful and pithy and has a bit too much Hepburn (both) and Austen for my tastes, but hey, what do you want? Rule 115 says:
115. No matter what, du Barry was a lady.Answer: Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry (1743-93) was the last maîtresse-en-titre (chief mistress) of King Louis XV! She was the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress who was kind of a slut. A "remarkably attractive blonde woman" -
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- Jeanne Bécu was "entertaining" in brothels by the age of 20. Her beauty brought her to the attention of Jean-Baptiste du Barry, a high-class pimp who helped establish her career as a courtesan in Parisian high society. He also arranged for her to marry his brother comte Guillaume du Barry and forged her a false birth certificate to make her of nobler descent so she could qualify as an official royal mistress.
Eventually, she became involved in a lot of complicated international politics, and she and Marie Antoinette were bitchy to each other. (In that movie, she was played by Asia Argento, who has very black hair.)
After Louis XV's death - in the wake of the French Revolution - du Barry was imprisoned and beheaded for treason.
Source: Wikipedia
The More You Know: And I guess the actual rule comes from the title of the 1943 musical Du Barry Was a Lady, which starred Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly, and Red Skelton.
