She was the fourth of the five famous Mancini sisters, who, along with two of their female Martinozzi cousins, were known at the court of King Louis XIV of France as the Mazarinettes. One of five sisters noted for their great beauty, [ 2 ] she was born Ortensia in Rome to Baron Lorenzo Mancini , an Italian aristocrat. After his death in , her mother, Girolama Mazzarini , brought her daughters from Rome to Paris in the hope of using the influence of her brother, Cardinal Mazarin, to gain them advantageous marriages.
The sisters' cousins, the Martinozzis, also moved to France at the same time, for the same goal to marry well. Charles II of England , the first cousin of Louis XIV , proposed to Hortense in , but his offer was rejected by Cardinal Mazarin who believed the exiled king to have little in the way of prospects.
Mazarin realised his mistake when Charles was reinstated as King of England only months later. Mazarin then became the supplicant and offered a dowry of 5 million livres , but Charles refused. While a marriage did not materialise, the two were to cross paths later. For similar reasons, an offer made by the Duke of Lorraine was broken off as well.
On the death of Cardinal Mazarin soon after, he gained access to his wife's huge inheritance, which included the Palais Mazarin in Paris, home to many pieces of fine art. The marriage was not a success.
Hortense was young, bright, and popular; Armand-Charles was miserly and extremely jealous, not to mention mentally unstable. His strange behaviour included preventing milkmaids from going about their job to his mind, the cows' udders had strong sexual connotations , [ 7 ] having all of his female servants' front teeth knocked out to prevent them from attracting male attention, and chipping off and painting over all the "dirty bits" in his fantastic art collection. He forbade his wife to keep company with other men, made midnight searches for hidden lovers, insisted she spend a quarter of her day at prayer, and forced her to leave Paris and move with him to the country.
