Droit Du Seigneur - Literary and Other References

Literary and Other References

Cultural references to the custom abound. Examples:

• In the Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2250-2000 BC), hero Enkidu is appalled by King Gilgamesh's use of droit de seigneur at wedding ceremonies.
• Voltaire wrote the five-act comedy Le droit du seigneur or L'écueil du sage (ISBN 2-911825-04-7) in 1762, although it was not performed until 1779, after his death.
• The Marriage of Figaro (1778) by Beaumarchais and the 1786 opera of the same name by Mozart, whose plot centres on Count Almaviva's foiled attempt to exercise his right with Figaro's bride
• La Sorcière by Michelet (1862) in which the droit de seigneur prerogative is invoked to explain why the wives of serfs succumb to the temptations of home demons who promise protection and succour from the oppression of their feudal overlords.
• In The Adolescent (1875), Fyodor Dostoevsky writes from a translation by Andrew MacAndrew: "Yes, although Miss Sapozhkov was passed over, it all began from Versilov's use of his droit de seigneur."
• Mark Twain cites the practice several times in his novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), including having King Arthur himself rule in favor of confiscation of a young woman's property because she denied her local lord his "right."
• Chapter 7 of the first part of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which "the law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories" is an element of the Party's propaganda
• The War Lord (1965), a film by Franklin J. Schaffner, starring Charlton Heston as a knight who falls in love with a peasant woman, using droit de seigneur to claim her on her wedding night. Based on Leslie Stevens' play The Lovers.
• In the 1973 movie And Now the Screaming Starts, the curse afflicting a family of British nobles is punishment for an ancestor's presumptive invocation of prima nocta.
• In Marvel Comics' Super-Villain Team-Up #7 (1976), Doctor Doom attempts to exercise his droit de seigneur with a Latverian peasant girl named Gretchen, but is prevented by a blind superhero called the Shroud.
• Wyrd Sisters (1988), a novel from the Discworld series, satirizes the idea in several places, with several characters appearing to be under the impression that 'Droit de Seigneur' is a type of dog, leading to a recurring double entendre about it having to be 'exercised' often. The late King Verence's 'exercise' of his 'big hairy thing' later proves to be a key plot point.
• In George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (1991–present), the right of first night is seen as an extinct tradition once observed by the North, but some characters suspect that some Northern lords still exercise this right.
• Braveheart (1995); ius primae noctis is invoked by Edward Longshanks in an attempt to breed the Scots out