Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King » (Reprint)

Antonia Fraser is the author of numerous novels and historical works including Marie Antoinette, The Wives of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, and Faith and Treason. She is also famous for her Jemima Shore series of mysteries. She and her husband, Harold Pinter, live in London.

The superb historian and biographer Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette, casts new light on the splendor and the scandals of the reign of Louis XIV in this dramatic, illuminating look at the women in his life.

The self-proclaimed Sun King, Louis XIV ruled over the most glorious and extravagant court in seventeenth-century Europe. Now, Antonia Fraser goes behind the well-known tales of Louis’s accomplishments and follies, exploring in riveting detail his intimate relationships with women.

The king’s mother, Anne of Austria, had been in a childless marriage for twenty-two years before she gave birth to Louis XIV. A devout Catholic, she instilled in her son a strong sense of piety and fought successfully for his right to absolute power. In 1660, Louis married his first cousin, Marie-Thérèse, in a political arrangement. While unfailingly kind to the official Queen of Versailles, Louis sought others to satisfy his romantic and sexual desires. After a flirtation with his sister-in-law, his first important mistress was Louise de La Vallière, who bore him several children before being replaced by the tempestuous and brilliant Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan. Later, when Athénaïs’s reputation was tarnished, the King continued to support her publicly as Athénaïs left court for a life of repentance. Meanwhile her children’s governess, the intelligent and seemingly puritanical Françoise de Maintenon, had already won the King’s affections; in a relationship in complete contrast to his physical obsession with Athénaïs, Louis XIV lived happily with Madame de Maintenon for the rest of his life, very probably marrying her in secret. When his grandson’s child bride, the enchanting Adelaide of Savoy, came to Versaille she lightened the King’s last years – until tragedy struck.

With consummate skill, Antonia Fraser weaves insights into the nature of women’s religious lives – as well as such practical matters as contraception – into her magnificent, sweeping portrait of the king, his court, and his ladies.

From the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times - Megan Marshall

As a writer of history, Fraser has done it all—biographies, group studies, even a chronicle of England's infamous Gunpowder Plot—and done it superbly. While Love and Louis XIV doesn't quite measure up to the high standards of synthesis and narrative propulsion of her best work, the book is still entertaining and instructive…If the chief virtues of Love and Louis XIV are its sparkling vignettes and sharp character sketches…we must still be grateful to Antonia Fraser for devising so excellent a companion with which to lie back and think of France.

List of Illustrations     ix
Author's Note     xiii
Chronological Political Summary     xvii
Genealogy     xxiv
Principal Characters     xxix
Spring
Gift from Heaven     3
Vigour of the Princess     20
Peace and the Infanta     40
Our Court's Laughing Face     61
Sweet Violence     82
Summer
The Rise of Another     103
Marriages Like Death     122
A Singular Position     142
Throwing Off a Passion     161
Madame Now     179
Autumn
The King's Need     201
Grandeurs of the World     223
Becoming a Child Again     244
Winter
Gaiety Begins to Go     265
We Must Submit     289
Going on a Journey     307
Never Forget     321
Notes     323
Sources     345
Index     357