Comtesse Diane de Stael-Holstein was a prominent French salonnière and writer. She was also a prominent member of Napoleon's court. Born in 1773, she was the daughter of the Swiss General George Emmanuel de Stael and his German wife, Countess Amélie Auguste Julie von Krüdener. She entered into a relationship with the French statesman Talleyrand in 1803, and had two children from him: one from 1804-1809, and one from 1811-1815
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In 1810, she met the Duke of Wellington at a dinner party in England and became his mistress for a time. In 1813 she met Napoleon for a second time, this time at the Congress of Vienna where he proposed marriage to her. She declined because she did not wish to be his official mistress even though she did have an unofficial relationship with him.
In 1815, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Diane was married to Baron Friedrich von Holstein, who worked as an engineer in Russia. They had two children together before he died from stomach cancer in 1822. After her husband's death, she published her memoirs under the title Mémoires d'une couronne (Memoirs of a Crown).
The memoirs were well received although many critics called them 'unreadable.'