ENGLISH

Athénaïs: the life of Louis XIV's mistress, the real queen of France

By Hilton , Lisa;King of France Louis XIV;Montespan , Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart de;Montespan

Book information

Publisher
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN
9780316030458, 0316030457, 9780316141642, 031614164X, 9781306769907, 1306769906
Language
english
Format
EPUB
Filesize
519 kB (531009 bytes)
Edition
First U.S. edition
Pages
(x, 358 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : ill
Time added
2020-07-26 19:24:52
-- 1638-1715;Montespan-- 1641-1707;Louis -- XIV-- King of France-- Madame deBIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY--Historical;Courts and cFrançoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart de Mortemart

Description

As lovely and charming as she was shrewd and calculating, Athénaïs de Montespan became the most powerful noblewoman of her day by brilliantly manipulating her forbidden role as mistress of King Louis XIV. With a lively narrative style that reads like fiction, Lisa Hilton reveals the woman behind the most dazzling days of the Sun King's reign. As a lover, Athénaïs risked the disgrace of adultery to conduct an affair that scandalized Europe. As a patron, she supported the leaders of the cultural renaissance. As a mother, she was the ancestor of most of the royal houses of Europe. The greatest beauty of her day, she lived publicly and sensationally until bizarre accusations of witchcraft forced her from grace in the "Affair of the Poisons," a mystery that remains unsolved. Athénaïs is an informative look at a true age of extremes and a woman who achieved the heights of power at a time when it was denied to most of her sex.

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