The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

Fran�oise d'Aubigne, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden's seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family's fortunes, and Fran�oise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at...
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Fran�oise d'Aubigne, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden's seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family's fortunes, and Fran�oise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and ambitious court in all Europe.At fifteen, she was married off to the forty-two-year-old satirical poet Paul Scarron, a former roue now grievously deformed by rheumatism-"a sort of human Z," as he described himself. Despite his ailments, Scarron presided over the liveliest and most scandalous literary salon in Paris, and Fran�oise quickly became its most prized ornament.After Scarron's death, she enjoyed a merry widowhood in the fashionable Marais district, in the company of the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the King's splendid mistress, Athena�s de Montespan, who made the young widow governess to her brood of illegitimate children. The appointment transformed Fran�oise's life, but was fatal to the temperamental Athena�s herself, with the King soon turning his attentions to the graceful governess. Fran�oise was raised to the nobility as Madame de Maintenon-and, unofficially, "Madame de Maintenant," the lady of the moment.The acclaimed biographer Veronica Buckley traces the extraordinary story of Fran�oise's progress from pauper child to salonni�re to the compromised position of Louis's secret wife and uncrowned Queen. An absolute ruler, Louis turned away his many other mistresses to live with Fran�oise only, trusting her as his closest confidante and remaining in love with her for forty years.Sparkling with the irresistible wit of contemporary chroniclers such as Madame de Sevigne, this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form. In vibrant colors, The Secret Wife of Louis XIV paints a portrait of Europe in an age of violent change, and the Sun King's France in the process of becoming its modern self.