Hortense Mancini was born in Rome in 1646 to Baron Lorenzo Mancini and Girolama Mazzarini. She was the fourth of five sisters who collectively became known as the Mazarinettes, as well as the niece of the famous Italian Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister to Louis XIV of France. 

As she herself once said about her life: "If the events that I have to recount to you seem like something out of a novel, blame it on my unhappy fate rather than my inclination". The Mancini family were one of Italy’s oldest noble families. Nobility dating back thousands of years in fact. The family had more titles than you can count, including dukes, counts, princes, bishops, and knights. Talk about a lineage!