The Rivals of Versailles by Sally Christie

Told in Christie's celebrated witty and modern style, The Rivals of Versailles will delight and entrance fans as it brings to life the court of Louis XV in all its pride, pestilence, and glory. As a child, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson meets a gypsy that tells her she will one day be the kings mistress and a. Around them, war rages, discontent grows, and France inches ever closer to the Revolution. The Rivals of Versailles by Sally Christie. I had the pleasure of chatting with Sally Christie last summer at our Book Blog Ontario meet-up when her first novel (and the first in The Mistresses of. As Jeanne, now the Marquise de Pompadour, takes on her many rivals-including a lustful lady-in-waiting, a precocious fourteen-year-old prostitute, and even a cousin of the notorious Nesle sisters-she helps the king give himself over to a life of luxury and depravity. Eventually connections, luck, and a little scheming pave her way to Versailles and into the King’s arms.Īll too soon, conniving politicians and hopeful beauties seek to replace the bourgeois interloper with a more suitable mistress. As a child, a fortune teller had told young Jeanne’s destiny: she would become the lover of a king and the most powerful woman in the land. Enter Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, a beautiful girl from the middle classes.

The year is 1745 and King Louis XV’s bed is once again empty. In this captivating follow-up to Sally Christie’s clever and absorbing debut, we meet none other than the Marquise de Pompadour, one of the greatest beauties of her generation and the first bourgeois mistress ever to grace the hallowed halls of Versailles. And you thought sisters were a thing to fear.