The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy
The Mistresses of Versailles trilogy examines the personal life of a controversial monarch through the lives of his many mistresses. More than any other French king, Louis XV was defined by the women that who loved him and led him, and each book in the trilogy represents a discrete chapter in his life: his beginnings with the Mailly Nesle sisters in The Sisters of Versailles, showing his metamorphosis from timid, faithful husband to unfaithful lover; the middle -part of his reign in The Rivals of Versailles with his most influential mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour, in which he went further down the path of debauchery, aided and abetted by her; and finally his last years in The Enemies of Versailles with the Comtesse du Barry, and then forward to the Revolution.
Louis XV was “on trend” in his rather democratic preferences in women that coincided neatly with the emerging egalitarianism of the Enlightenment: after the Nesle sisters (from the high nobility) he was the first king to have a bourgeoise mistress (Madame de Pompadour) and then followed up that scandal by becoming the first king to install at Versailles an official mistress from the lower classes (the Comtesse du Barry).
Louis XV was “on trend” in his rather democratic preferences in women that coincided neatly with the emerging egalitarianism of the Enlightenment: after the Nesle sisters (from the high nobility) he was the first king to have a bourgeoise mistress (Madame de Pompadour) and then followed up that scandal by becoming the first king to install at Versailles an official mistress from the lower classes (the Comtesse du Barry).
